Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

Up with Washers!

Posted by Ralph at 11:01 Up With

Feb 232015

Assorted washers: flat, split, star and insulated

Image via Wikipedia

Now I like clean clothes and swear by our faithful washing machine, but I’m not talking about clothes washers. I’m talking about the washers that keep your faucets from dripping. Or at least that’s what they used to do. Repairing a faucet was easy. Turn off the water. Take the faucet apart and replace the washer. It didn’t take much time and it was a simple task. The biggest effort was the trip to the hardware store to get the right washer.

Today it’s not so simple!

These days with all the modern improvements, a dripping faucet isn’t so simple. Yesterday I decided to deal with the dripping shower head that had been bugging my wife for a few weeks. I felt confident that it would be a simple task, yet something warned me to delay. Finally, those comments from my wife kept getting sharper and Monday seemed like the right time to take care of the problem. In our old house, I was quite familiar with the fixtures and fittings. Here at the new place, I’d gotten soft enjoying the luxury of everything being new. Was I still the man of the house? Would I give up and call a plumber or be the master of my domain and fix it myself? I didn’t hesitate.

Attacking the problem.

It didn’t take long to get into the faucet but there were layers within layers before I finally got down to the control. I was feeling good. It wouldn’t be long now. I pulled it out. Now where is that washer?

It’s a lump of black plastic.

Somewhere down deep in this black plastic assembly lies the washer but it is quite clear that Kohler never intended for me to replace it. Why let me repair my faucet with a 25 cent washer when they could sell me a $30 module.

At the hardware store, I show them what I need. They don’t have it. They can order it but it will take a week. I’m thinking I can put the old one back and let it drip for another week but the hardware guy finds a place that has it in stock so I drive to the next town and get the part. It’s only $31 and so far I’ve dedicated 4 hours to this project but now I feel elated. The rest is going to be easy. I’m a winner!

I put it back together.

The new assembly is almost identical to the old one which is very comforting and it fits the hole nicely. I tighten the screws and turn on the water. The water doesn’t spray. I’m getting really cocky. I’m still the man of the house. I carefull replace the decorative elements and the handle and test the operation. Water flows. Water stops. I finish replacing all the parts and return to normal life. Modern technology had done it’s best to beat me down but with sheer persistence I had pushed on and fixed my dripping faucet.

The story continues.

Lying in bed last night flush with my victory, I relived the day, minimizing the difficulties and rejoicing in the triumph. I hadn’t lost my ability to solve household problems. I started to drift off to sleep when I heard a noise from the bathroom. It was a rhythmic sound that was very familiar. It was the steady dripping of my shower faucet. After all the time and expense dedicated to fixing the drip, it was as if I had done nothing. The new assembly was no better than the old one.

So, as I wait for the plumber to fix my drip, I yearn for the good old days when all you needed was a washer. These modern times where simple, inexpensive and easy to service devices have evolved into expensive assemblies which require professionals to install them properly. Bring back the washer.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Daylight Savings Time is over and I’m happy

Posted by Ralph at 11:01 Reflections

Feb 232015

I’ve got a love-hate relationship with daylight savings time. When I had a job, I hated driving home in the dark. There was nothing more depressing to me than the feeling that the day was over and I was still in the office. I was fine with going to work in the dark. I even preferred it. It seemed that I was getting a head start on the day. Coming home in the dark was a drag.

These days I find my priorities are changed. Even in the fall with daylight savings time, on most days I sleep late enough to get up with the sun. It’s the days when I have to get up earlier that make me long for daylight savings time to be gone. Twice a week we have exercise sessions scheduled at 7:30 and to get there we leave around 7:00. While we never jump eagerly out of bed to do sit ups and squats, it’s less painful when the sun is shining.

Still whatever the benefit of daylight savings time on the economy or my mood, the change of time- even just one measly hour- twice a year messes up my body, my sleep patterns and my routines. It is difficult to decide whether after all is said and done, daylight savings time makes my life better or worse. But, no matter, since it seems that daylight savings time is here to stay, I won’t worry about ending it. For now I’ll just enjoy

10 reasons to be happy that Daylight Savings Time is over. Continue reading »

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Parent Alert: These days parents can’t even pack a sack lunch!

Posted by Ralph at 11:01 rants

Feb 232015

a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, top slice ...

Image via Wikipedia

Can you believe it?

Every day this country goes father downhill. These days there is no end to stories about how American’s can’t cope with the pressures of modern life. For an old Coot its hard to understand. It’s not like the good old days. So many of these things used to be taken for granted. Kids didn’t need safety equipment to go bicycle riding. Parents could be trusted to ride in a car and hold a baby at the same time. Kids used to ride in the front seat of a car – WITHOUT SEATBELTS and without risk of death from the life-threatening air bags. It’s hard to believe that we have lost so much judgment that the government will arrest us and threaten to take away our children if we even think about acting like a responsible parent from my childhood would act. I’m talking about the 50’s here.

When I look around, it’s hard to see that much as changed. Parents these days look responsible. They stand up. They walk and talk. There isn’t any obvious sign that they are inferior to my parents but you can’t argue with the government any more. And the government tells us that parents these days can’t be trusted to safely raise their children without serious help. Hillary was right. These days it takes a village of bureaucrats to raise a child.

My wife and I resisted.

We tried to do the right thing by our kids. I did get a helmet for the younger one just to shut up my nosy neighbor but I never made him wear it. He had his share of bumps- he broke a leg learning to slide into second base and a got a concussion from high school football but he never had anything more than skinned knees from riding his bicycle. The other one surfed. I wonder when the government will insist on helmets for surfing. I am sure that somebody is working on it.

Anyway my kids risked life and limb in our household because of my wife’s and my carefree parenting style. They grew up to tell the tale just like my brothers and I survived our helmet less and seatbeltless childhood. Perhaps the trauma they suffered explains why they are still unmarried and childless but it’s hard to know.

But there is more!

Anyway, each day we seem to discover more inadequacies of modern day parents. Just today, I learned that some eager PhD student in Texas has discovered that parents can’t even manage to pack a lunch for their kids. According to his rigorous study of packed lunches at a nearby preschool, those parent can’t even manage to pack a safe lunch for their kids. It seems that they were all at an unsafe temperature- whatever that means.

I remember sack lunches.

My mom packed lunches for us from time to time. Usually there was a sandwich- either peanut butter and jelly or bologna, an apple, a bag of chips and either a candy bar or some cookies. I never remember getting scalded or frozen eating one of them and those are the only unsafe temperature options I can think of. Mostly those lunches were ice cold if they had been in the ice box overnight or room temperature. The worst case was having the candy bar melt which was messy but not unsafe. I just can’t figure out what this PhD student knows that a parent doesn’t about feeding their kid a sack lunch What I do know is that generations of Americans thrived on sack lunches before this rigorous study discovered the peril in sack lunches with a pretty high survival rate.

Are we doomed?

What this new generation of parents is doing wrong is hard for me to know. Maybe it’s the result of the failing education system or maybe somewhere along the line, the tradition of American parenting self-sufficiency was broken- possibly in the 60’s when black became white and the other way around. All I know is that America seems to be doomed. Nobody seems capable of independent action and responsibility any more and this rigorous study of sack lunches just confirms the fact. The way things are going the only way to fix the problem is to just get those inadequate parents out of the way. Dumb as parents seem to be these days, they might not even notice.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Down with antibacterial soap!

Posted by Ralph at 11:01 Down with

Feb 232015

Cover of Germs

There is at least one good thing about old age. It means you have been fooled so many times by people who claim to know everything that you stop being a sucker. When you see how many times the experts change their minds about things like ‘health food’ you pretty much ignore them and eat what you like. It’s not just food where you find out that the experts are actually wrong. It works with health too. Take the ridiculous fixation on killing bacteria these days. It’s so mindless that any fool should recognize that killing bacteria is the last thing we want to do.

It makes absolutely no sense that the human body which has been defending us against germs for thousands of years needs special help now. To begin with, the idea is based on a false premise. It assumes that the only good bacteria is a dead bacteria when there are so many bacteria that make life better. Indiscriminate killing of bacteria could make us worse off, not better. It just one more of the crazy ideas that keep cropping up.

The human body is a pretty remarkable system to keep germs under control. It’s not disputable~ We have thousands of years of experience to prove just how resiliently the human body resists disease. There are still some bad boys that occasionally do serious damage but those aren’t your common, garden variety germs. You won’t be picking up the Ebola virus down at the office or anthrax off the cart at the supermarket. Are you one of the foold that uses the sanitizers on your shopping cart? Who decided that we need hand sanitizer to buy groceries anyway. I tell you the world has gone mad.

I can’t explain the hysteria these days about germs. Just try to find a soap these days that doesn’t claim to be antibacterial. I know because I make it a point not to buy that crap and there aren’t many left. Heck, what’s life without germs? How can you grow up strong and healthy if your body never leans to deal with germs. If the antibacterial soaps were actually effective we would end up a race of weaklings.

The one germ I’d be willing to fight is the scaredy cat germ which seems to have taken over America. I grew up in an America unfettered by this madness. We were clean back then. We washed out hands, covered out mouths and all but we weren’t afraid of getting sick from time to time. It was just part of life. Everybody got a cold once in a while and nobody I ever knew got the flu. Today, nobody has a cold. It’s always the flu and it isn’t just any flu these days, it’s swine flu or bird flu, always the big guns. It scares them to death to get sick. People rush to the doctor, demand some medicine and worry. In my day, we just got over it.

The way I see it, the reason people get sick these days is because they went crazy about this antibacterial nonsense. They do everything they can to kill the bad bacteria and kill the good ones while they are at it. They lose both ways. They have protected themselves too much. Everybody is so protected from germs that when one finally gets in, their bodies don’t know what to do about it. Because they protect themselves so much, any germ can make them sick and any illness seems catastrophic.

It turns out that it’s all a marketing gimmick anyway because you have to soak your hands in the stuff for two minutes for it to have any effect so most people are no better off than if they used regular soap. It’s all touchy-freely crap, but these days that’s all that matters. We’ve got overpriced universities full of over-educated know nothings that think it’s their job to tell us how to live. Mother was bad enough but in my day, mother never heard of antibacterial soap and she didn’t depend on anybody to tell her how to raise her kids. These days it’s not just your mother who is telling you what to do. Try to find somebody who isn’t. The mayor of New York wants to tell you what you can drink. What’s going to keep him from deciding that you need to use antibacterial soap. And if New Yorkers are going to let nanny Bloomburg run their lives then it’s probably all over for the rest of us.

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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Down with exercise.

Posted by Ralph at 11:01 Down with

Feb 232015

Old age isn’t for wimps!

I’m OK with the cantankerous old coot moniker. Cantankerous is fine. I sure don’t want to be just one of the herd. Even Coot has a raffish charm. It’s the ‘old’ that’s begging to bother me. Calling yourself old is fine so long as you can continue to exercise plausible deniability about the reality. So long as you can continue to deny that the old prune looking back at you in the mirror each morning is you. Even the best deniers eventually have to face the truth. And the truth comes in a way that you can’t avoid- pain. I stay away from mirrors these days but you can’t do much to deny that your joints hurt and moving hurts.

I’ve long been an enthusiastic advocate of exercise as a tool in the fight against getting old. It won’t stop the process but it can mitigate and delay. Unfortunately I’m an advocate but not always a practitioner. I’ve been slacking off. It seems easy enough in your head to take a few minutes several times a week to exercise. Actually exercising, however is harder. I’ve been doing more thinking about exercising in the recent months than actually doing it. Last week, however, I got back in the game with walking, sit ups and push-ups. Now I’m paying the price.

The relentless aging of my body has brought aching knees, loss of balance and an awkward clumsiness that I haven’t experienced since my growth spurt at 15. With my youthful optomism and energy long gone, none of these recent developments feels good. I can’t expect to ‘grow’ out of my awkwardness and pain has become my invisible friend. Still I believe that more exercise can help. I need to use my muscles, work my joints and be more active if I want to get back some of my grace and mobility. It’s not an option. So for the past week or so I’ve exercised and what do I get as a reward? Continue reading »

Ralph

Ralph is the inspiration for Cantankerous Old Coots and is our Grand Duke of Cantankerousness

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