Come See the Egress

As if Beadboard Manor didn't have enough problems - big and small - for me to worry about...

About a month ago, the doorknob on the front door underwent S.M.E.F.* This is not at all an unprecedented event, here. The doorknobs are all as old as the house (that's 93 years, to you) and take turns coming off in people's hands, particularly going in and out of bathrooms. The front door, however, chose a really clever time - it was just as I was pulling the door shut to lock it before our Rhode Island trip.

So I've been meaning to get to it, but it's on my list of things I've been meaning to get to, and its number has not yet come up. It was behind the steps, and the basement, and the yard, and the window screens, and the office, and the general clean-up that we so badly need, and on and on.

Home ownership - what Spalding Gray termed 'terrors of pleasure' - is full these things. Little constant make-work for you, which you put off until you realize that now there is no landlord, no father, no anyone else except yourself who must first decide how to deal with it and then deal with it.

Usually, it goes in this order:

1) Try to repair it yourself;
2) if 'succeed,' have a beer
3) If 'fail,' go to step 4
4) Call a professional

We often bypass step two, but have the beer nonetheless. This evening, after DeScK (DeSCK? dEsCk? descK?) practice - which was also beset by difficulties of the technical sort - I was reminded of the doorknob's need when it tried to leave with Christine. So I set to with screwdriver and flashlight. And it was a real steps 1 and 3 kind of night, with step 4 happening tomorrow, and a gin and tonic sitting in for the beer tonight.

I guess I'll offer the Rambler's first dedication, by posting this blog in honor of Karl, who just closed on his house a couple of weeks ago, and is in the process of chopping away at the big things.

D.

*Douglas Adams-speak for 'Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure,' a corporate acronym assigned to a truly spectacular engineering SNAFU.