Month: May 2023

Is there an easy way to install low voltage staples?

Published on by dfitzgeraldLeave a comment

I mean, I’m really asking because I am a woman with relatively normal-sized fingers. I can’t imagine how difficult this is for some thick-fingered dude.

I tried Google for the answer and all she came up with was a guy who said to stick the new staples in the holes leftover from the old ones 🙄.

Well I didn’t have any of those. I was just trying to finish installing this garage door opener that was almost installed about five years ago.

I know it’s probably best to start at the opener end of the wire and work your way down the connector wire to the safety sensor, but when we installed this, I guess we didn’t have any of these staples because the wiring was installed like this.

The purple iris support I was looking for two weeks ago

And I needed that pitchfork to turn over the compost.

So because the safety sensors were already installed I had to start at the bottom and work my way up. I considered taking the sensors off and starting over but I wasn’t confident that I could get them put back together.

I also very much considered calling a garage door repair guy but people like me who don’t have a lot of disposable income have to try to do this stuff ourselves first. Which brings me to the reason why I was doing this in the first place after living with it happily twined around that pitchfork for the last four or five years.

I had taken extra days off for the holiday weekend so I could do all the stuff around my house that I had been neglecting. But I woke up Friday in a surly mood and knew the only thing that would snap me out of it was to go outside. So I loaded my bike up for a short ride on a nearby path.

In my haste to get out the door (mostly because I made no haste getting out of bed where three cups of coffee, The NYT Morning newsletter, and Wordle kept me overtime), I accidentally let the dog out. He’s a ninety pound runner and the only way to catch him is to open the car door and act like we are going somewhere fun. So Ben ran to the garage and rescued me by getting the dog to jump happily into car only to be disappointed later and sent back into the house. In the process Ben accidentally hit the overhead door remote and the door came down on my bike strapped to the rack on the rear end of my waiting Subaru. The bike was fine. The door was fine (we thought). So I left.

When I got to the path I decided (already being surly and oppositional) to ride south instead of north like I usually do. There I discovered a whole new experience that led to this:

OMG. OMG. OMG.

And, well, I had to try it out. The trail was way too technical for my old gal (my bike) and this old gal (me), but I couldn’t resist so I went for it. I bailed on more the downhills than I rode, but it was really fun.

The best thing was that I was all alone. There wasn’t another human being anywhere so I didn’t have to feel stupid jumping off my bike when it seemed too risky and sliding down the dusty track after it. After a bit I heard three kids on the trail behind me and lots of “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.”

Which is pretty much what I said, too, interspersed with some negative self-talk calling myself a wuss and some self-encouraging, “You got this next hill girl. Make it your bish.”

I made no hill my bish that day.

Needless to say, my short ride turned into hours of goofing off and causing trouble much like those kids on the trail behind me at noon on a school day.

So most the day was wasted on the joy of the ride and fun I had taking pictures to share with my bike-loving friends and all that stuff I had been neglecting, got neglected some more. I promised myself it would get done the next day.

In an avoidant move on Saturday I also promised someone else I would help them get their house ready for a party that night. When I tried to leave the garage, the screws holding the bracket, holding the track, holding the opener popped out and the whole thing fell down. So yeah, I considered calling the garage door repair guy but like I said, people like me don’t have people like that on speed dial. The fix for the door was pretty simple. I just got some longer screws and reattached the bracket to the wall and reattached the carriage arm to the door and it worked fine. So when I also found this box of wire staples in the bottom of a crate full of nails, I decided to finally finish the original installation and do something with those wires.

So there I was in my garage three days into the holiday weekend hammering my left thumb and forefinger into the wall trying to attach these staples. The worst part was when I got to the ceiling.

I’m not that good at standing with one foot on a ladder and the other on a shelving unit doing a backbend and hammering over my head but I managed (thank you yoga).

Most DIYers will tell you they would trade a kidney for a third hand when working alone and that’s clearly what I needed if not just to have a different thumb to pound on. But finally when I was three staples from the end of the second wire I had my eureka moment.

I made myself a little third hand, of sorts.

Out of tape.

Like this.

Grasp staple with tape.

Some kind of stickier tape probably would have worked better but, my mom always taught me to make-do with what I had and painters tape is what I had. And honestly this worked pretty well.

I could hold on to the little wings or just hammer blindly into the tape secured on the ceiling and save my finger and thumb from any further damage.

Secure to the wall (or ceiling in my case).
Hold the little wing thingie.
Or just save your finders and let the tape hold the staple while you hammer.

When I was done, the hook on the ceiling needed a new purpose. So I swung it around and made a nice spot to hang my bike rack next to my lovely, muddy bike.

But they won’t stay there for very long. I’m feeling surly again.

Mother Church, Father Church?

Published on by dfitzgeraldLeave a comment
Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash

Anybody think it’s weird that less than a week after I leave the church, I started having significant insights into my daddy issues?

Huh.

I think I had been trying to get attention from some unsuspecting innocents. A pat on the head from the men in my life, maybe approval and attention from them where I never got it from my dad. I thought that men in my grown-up life were supposed to be helping me heal wounds from my kid-life. Isn’t that what the relationship experts say? But then I realized that’s too big of a job for anyone. No one should be saddled with fixing me. And so, I began learning to father myself.

When I was a kid, I loved going to the hardware store with my dad, or the dump, or anywhere, really.  I just wanted to be with him. He rarely spent time with us kids, working all day, then going out to the garage to work his side hustle buying, fixing, and selling wrecked cars. So, when I could get him all to myself and go someplace as interesting as the  landfill, I jumped at the chance. But I was a girl, and it was hard for a dad to know what to do with a girl in those days. He never really noticed that I was a girl who loved the smell of grease and car paint, and could build and fix things. And so most of the time I was just the pretty little girl he seemed to enjoy showing off to the guys at the lumber yard or parts store when he accidentally ended up alone with me. I don’t think it was so much that he didn’t want to be with me, he just didn’t exactly know how. 

When I got to around fourteen-years-old, sometimes I saw how other men looked at me; sometimes my friend’s fathers. It felt strange to see them noticing me. I wanted to hide. My body image suffered. I hated being a girl sometimes. My legs were growing long and (I thought) awkward. There were so many limitations and talk of how I should learn to type or do bookkeeping so I could get an office job when what I really wanted was to be a park ranger or race motorcycles.  I felt powerless most of the time, just assuming “something” would happen and map out a life for me.

And it did. I had a baby before my nineteenth birthday and my life was mapped—at least temporarily. I spent the next fifteen years trying to make up for it. I was the perfect daughter, the perfect mother, and the perfect wife hosting football parties and poker nights for my husband’s friends. Everything was perfect. I perfected my body, my skills, and my cover up. And I thought for the longest time, I had to do all of this. But I didn’t. 

Somehow, I realized I could exercise free will. So I willed myself back to college. I willed myself out of my marriage, and into the arms of another man. Imagine how I then married him, a new man who didn’t know how to be with me either. 

I knew when I tried to get his attention, I was just that little girl wanting to hang out with her dad again. When we were dating and he was remote, then in a sort of startled way noticed me across the table and say, “You’re a pretty little thing aren’t you?” that it felt just like my dad saying it.

Still there is something in your mind, like when you were a child, that tells you this is normal, and therefore, good. But it wasn’t all that good. He had all he loud, scary traits of my dad, and all the opposite ones of my first husband. Which meant I didn’t have to host football parties and poker games anymore, but which also meant, those daddy issues were something I hadn’t even recognized yet. It wasn’t until after Ben was born, I was divorced—again—and left to alone to figure out my life that I really started to see it. 

One day during all of this, I found myself looking into my bathroom mirror, pouting like a six-year-old about how everything I ever wanted to do, my dad would say something negative about and stop me from doing it. There was the major in Forestry, there was motorcycle racing, there was getting married (oops, you get props for that one dad). As I stood there feeling sorry for myself and looking at my teary reflection thinking about all of this, I heard that voice say, “Yeah, well who’s standing in your way now?” 

That’s what I think gave me the courage to take on my own life, leave organized religion, and start believing in what I really believed without feeling anyone’s condemnation about it. I learned Reiki and meditation without feeling guilty. I started cooking and eating organic foods again. I had sex for the sheer pleasure of it. I took responsibility for my own decisions without the crutch of a church or a husband or any other daddy-figure to approve or disapprove. 

And you know what? The world did not come crashing down around me. In fact, the world was kinder, brighter, more wide open. 

It was clear that although I had abandoned the church, god had not abandoned me. And in fact, was still on my side. And much like when I heard Warren Macdonald say, he’d  “. . . best get on it,” I heard loud and clear, it was my own turn to do the same.