Miss Fix-It Freeze

Although this blog is not my usual Acts of Kindness Sharing; know there are many examples of kindness throughout.

On Monday, February 1st, 2015 we got hit with a snowstorm. My brother Rocky showed up the next day with someone to plow the yard and may I say I was very was thankful. Now you have to know a little something about me to understand this next part of my story. I’ve always been obsessive about having a neat driveway in the winter.

The truth about that obsession goes way back to my childhood when I used to help shovel our family’s driveway with my younger brother, Howie. We would head out after a winter's storm to take on the big job of clearing away all the snow left behind by Mother Nature. Howie was very particular, as he would carefully cut out neat blocks of snow and toss them out into the snow bank. We never seemed to have freezing rain way back then so it was much easier to do. That and possibly the fact we were much younger and stronger. The outcome was we always ended up with a driveway that was easy to drive in and out of even in the most serious blast of winter.

Over the years, I developed the same snow shoveling techniques as my brother and believe me it has driven my son crazy. Apparently I was unable to inspire him the same way my brother inspired me. To be honest, I think that is a mother's job although I have no doubt Josh he would argue that comment with me.

Now back to the story of yesterday. After the plow had finished the job, I felt it important to neaten up and spent an hour doing so at the expense of hurting my back. I headed back into the house and pulled on the screen door to get in. Nothing happened!

Now again I must digress to last week and the frigid cold temperatures we experienced which at the time caused me to have a difficult time opening my screen door. But on that day I found a hammer in my garage and thinking it would be a good solution to the problem attempted to tap lightly on the handle of my door. When that didn’t work I tapped a little harder. Still nothing so I tapped even harder. Finally it opened but at the same time I heard some teeny tiny piece break inside the handle and fall through the crack between the step and the doorway.

I quickly saw I had messed up the door’s handle and raced to Hector’s Building Supplies in Stellarton to find some supplies to fix my door; some longer screws was my answer to fix the strike attached to the door jam as it had come lose because of my hammering. I fixed it as well as I could and thought the problem was solved until yesterday (back to original story).

Because I couldn’t open the door I went next door to where my neighbor who was clearing his driveway. He came over and after trying for 10 minutes still had no luck. Finally he had to break the handle so once again I was on my way to Hectors, this time for a complete door handle.

I looked at the instructions and was sure I could handle the job without any assistance. Everything was going well until the push button fell down in between my step. At this point, I may have said some choice words not becoming to a 55-year-old woman.

How was I going to get the push button underneath the step? My thoughts were, “I’ll clear away the snow and go underneath the deck sliding my way to where the door would be (with my sore back) and searching the snow.” I cleared the snow away and realized I would need something warmer for the trip so into the house I went.

Now maybe it was the warmth of my house or the sudden picture I envisioned of getting caught under the deck in a snow bank frozen and unable to move but thankfully I came to my senses. I called my son at work and asked him to pick me up another door handle kit as I figured that would be less expensive than ending up in the hospital with frostbite.

Josh and his friend Joey came to my aid and now I can get back into the house knowing I have a secure door handle in place. To my defense I did an excellent job at attaching a new strike to the door-jamb and learned some valuable new terminology.

I will leave the fixing up jobs to people who know what they are doing. However I have invested in a kit to fix a chip on my windshield and have watched some great You Tube Video’s so I am armed and ready. As my good friend Candace would say, "Easy Peesy, Lemon Sqeezey!"

Stay tuned!