My Week 218: MacGyvering

Like a lot of people, I’m pretty good at MacGyvering—that is to say that I can solve complicated household problems with very common household items. I come by this skill honestly—my father was a machine shop teacher and toolmaker by trade. He can make a tool to fix just about anything out of an Allen key, and there were always several things in our house held together with contact cement. Me, I prefer Gorilla Glue, but same concept. Last month, the gingerbreading on our Victorian screen door broke, and there was no way to screw or nail it back together, so I just glued it. Worked like a sticky charm. I have a utility drawer in both my condo and at home which contain the only 4 actual tools I’ve ever needed. 1) One of the many hammers I own 2) needle nose pliers 3) a multi-screwdriver 4) a staple gun.

It’s a thing of beauty.

Everything else is assorted flotsam that I can use to MacGyver, including:

a) Cardboard: This is handy for folding up and putting under a table leg or whatnot to stabilize it. Also, our house is very old and tilty, so sometimes cupboard doors will just swing open. There’s nothing like a cardboard wedge to keep them in place. Neatly hidden of course—who wants to see cardboard?

You can barely see it.

b) Plastic food containers: I recently put the empty tub from a very delicious garlic spread upside down in a plant pot in order to raise my Thanksgiving chrysanthemum up high enough that it could be seen. I could have used a smaller plant pot, but hey—I had a tub.

c) Paper clips: These are a multi-use invention that I have rarely used on paper. Zipper pull on your boot broken? Paper clip. Screen on your hair dryer clogged? Paper clip. Feel like poking a hole in something? Paper clip. Bored at work? Paper clip. Enough said.

d) Toothpicks: These handy little gadgets are terrific for repairing reading glasses. One leg is ALWAYS going to fall off and the screw is going to disappear into a space/time void. What better item to use to fix it than a toothpick? Just shove one through the screw holes and snap it off. No one will ever know. Also, if you have 17 jar candles that are burned down really far, and trying to light them with a match burns your fingers, make a longer match with a bunch of toothpicks taped together.

e) You can hang a picture on a pushpin if it’s not too heavy. You can move any piece of furniture across a smooth surface by putting a towel under it and dragging it. You can wrap duct tape around your hand, sticky side out, and use it as a clothes lint remover. SOS pads are the only thing I use to clean old, dirty wood before I refinish it.

And so on. But this week, I had my most MacGyver-y challenge yet. My most recent roommate, who is a vegan, messaged me to tell me that she had broken her toilet. “I went to see the concierge,” she wrote, “but he said you would have to hire a private contractor.”

“What part of the toilet is broken?” I asked. She sent a picture of the chain.

Private contractor? Hah! I thought to myself, putting three paper clips into my purse to take back to the condo. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll take care of it.”

Now, the only thing the girl eats is fruit, so I don’t know WHY she was flushing the toilet hard enough to break the chain, but I don’t eat a lot of roughage either and I recently broke a toilet in the train station. I didn’t tell the station attendant, who is always extremely rude to me–I just got on the train and fled, leaving behind a complete f*cking disaster that I refer to as “her karma”. So who am I to judge? At any rate, I got back to the condo, went straight to my roommate’s bathroom and examined the toilet. I knew enough to drain it first, then I pulled out the chain. Turns out that it wasn’t the chain itself that had broken—the thing on the flapper that the chain was attached to had been ripped off. Well, the flapper was rubber and I had a paper clip, which is always handy for poking holes into stuff. All I needed to do was pierce the flapper with the paper clip and then attach the paper clip to the chain.

Toilet Repair Kit

Unfortunately, the rubber was too thick and all I managed to do was pierce my own thumb. Once I was finished swearing, I thought for a minute, and went to my utility drawer. Eureka! I had a push pin. A yellow push pin to be exact. I pushed it into the rubber flapper without sympathy (revenge for my thumb) and hooked a paper clip around it, which I then twisted around the chain. I filled the tank back up and gave it a flush. Perfect. “Flush away!” I told her. “It’s all fixed.”

The next morning, I was at work when I got another text message. “I’m so sorry,” it read. “I must have flushed too hard—the chain came off again.” Then I remembered that she had had a large meal of pumpkin and pineapple the night before—perhaps that was the culprit. Then came the second message: “And the pushpin went down the pipe.” I felt more than a little defeated at the thought that all my MacGyvering had amounted to nothing. It was time to watch Youtube videos and buy actual parts. Which I did after work. I bought three different flappers, not knowing which one would work the best. Luckily, the first one seemed to do the trick, so after draining the toilet, installing it, and practicing a few good flushes, it seemed good as new. “Just be gentle with it,” I made her promise. “And you owe me a new pushpin.”

My Week 217: Things You Learn While Travelling

I just got back from spending a week on a cruise ship sailing around the Caribbean. It was great fun but I definitely learned some things about myself among other things, as one does when one is on a boat.

1) I’m not good at packing. I mean, I can PACK just fine—I’m a f*cking amazing packer. I roll everything into tight little sausages which makes them more compact AND unwrinkled. I can fit so much stuff into a small suitcase, you wouldn’t believe it. Also, I never pack until the night before, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the process and what exactly I will need. My parents actually PRACTICE packing to make sure everything will fit. They practiced on the Tuesday before we left and did such a great job that they just kept everything in the suitcase until Friday and I was like “My god, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?!” Me, I have no problem waiting until the last minute because I might end up needing something important, like what if Benedict Cumberbatch invited me to an impromptu pool/cocktail party and all my sh*t was locked inside a suitcase? So it’s not the packing itself that I struggle with—it’s WHAT I pack that’s the problem. The last time that Ken and I went away, I didn’t pack enough ‘daywear’ and had to buy a couple of souvenir T-shirts and now I will never forget where the halibut fishing capital of the world is (apparently it’s Homer, Alaska). So this time, I overcompensated but when I repacked my suitcase to come home, I realized that I hadn’t worn even half the sh*t I brought. Also, I packed twelve pairs of shoes. I was only away for 7 days.

2) Canada is a lot smaller than you think. You know how people assume that all Canadians know each other, like how people joke “Oh, you’re from Canada? Do you know Bob?” Well, it’s true. We were on a bus tour and people started saying where they were from:

Woman 1: Oh we’re from Kitchener.
My parents: So are we!
Woman 1: What part?
Parents: At the lofts at Benton!
Woman: Oh, do you know John Smith?
Parents: Yes!
Me: I’m not from Kitchener; I live in Drumbo.
Man 1: My brother’s from Drumbo—do you know Frank Jones?
Me: Yes!
Woman 2: We’re from Edmonton.
Me: Oh, we were there last summer. We stayed at the Chateau Louis.
Woman 2: Did you hear the piano player in the lounge?
Me: Yes, we did!
Woman 2: That’s Jeff—he’s my husband’s best friend! They host Blues Fest at the Chateau Louis every year and he always plays for that too!
Man 2: Oh, I think I saw him when we went there from Newfoundland last year! He was really good. We bought him a drink.
Woman 2: Wait—are you Bob?!

That’s Canadians for you—6 degrees Celsius of separation.

3) I don’t actually like monkeys. That might not seem like a big deal, but don’t forget that I have often waxed poetic about the joys of having a monkey butler. His name would be Ralph Van Wooster, obviously, and he would wear a little tuxedo with a hole cut out of the bottom for his tail. But in reality, I don’t think I like monkeys very much if my reaction to hearing that there were wild monkeys out and about on one of the islands we visited is any indication. Our tour bus driver was telling us about how people used to smuggle monkeys onto the island but then when they got older and more aggressive, they would release them into the wild, and now there were non-butler-type monkeys roaming the island and hanging around on the rooftops. And all I could think of was how terrifying it would be to wander around the botanical gardens and come face to face with a simian who was super pissed off at being tossed out onto the street and probably didn’t know how to make a dirty martini. Our tour guide also told us that people on the island ATE monkeys, and then he said, “I’ve never eaten monkey myself. I mean, I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat monkey, but if someone had some cooked monkey and it was right there, I would probably eat it” and I was like “How did it come to this, Ralph Van Wooster?”

4) Sea turtles have attitude. I got to go snorkeling with sea turtles, which was pretty awesome. The guide on that tour told us not to touch the turtles but he didn’t say anything about the turtles not touching us, and one of them slapped my dad which was a real dick move because my dad is Scottish and feisty as f*ck even in his eighties but he couldn’t fight back because he had to use two hands to hang on to his little floaty. So I also learned that sea turtles can be assholes but I guess when you’re “endangered” you get to do what you want.

Anyway, it was a great trip. We did tours of the islands, learned about spices, waded in waterfall pools, sat on beautiful beaches, and made good use of the “premium beverage package”.

Today is my birthday, but it will be a quiet one since I just got back late last night. My parents DID get me a cake on Friday night at one of the restaurants on the ship. When it came out, I started laughing hysterically. The maître d’ looked at me in confusion and said, “Isn’t your name spelled correctly?” and I said, “Not even a little bit.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said, “the pastry chef is from Thailand” and that was even more random, and made me laugh even harder. Good times, good times.

My Week 215: Delusions Under Which I Suffer

When I was very little, I had a painful type of eczema on my hands called dyshidrosis. For some reason, the doctor became convinced that I was allergic to chocolate and oranges. This, of course, was patently untrue, as it turns out the causes of dyshidrosis are linked to seasonal allergies and stress. Go figure. But nobody knew that 50 years ago and as a result, I wasn’t allowed to eat chocolate or oranges for years in the hope that my hands would stop looking and feeling like they’d been stung by a thousand angry bees. I was OK with the chocolate, never really having had a sweet tooth. Oranges were a different matter though—I loved the tangy sweet taste of oranges, tangerines, and clementines, and I longed to be able to eat them. In my child’s mind, I coped with the deprivation by convincing myself that things that LOOKED orange actually tasted like oranges. I realized this about myself on Thursday, as I sat in my office, carefully separating a roll of Rockets into various colours and saving the orange ones for last.

Colleague: What are you doing?
Me: I like to eat the orange ones last. They taste the best.
Colleague: Rockets all taste the same, no matter what colour they are.
Me: No they don’t. F*ck off.

OK, I only said that last part in my head, because a) I like my coworkers and would never swear AT them and b) deep down, I know my colleague is right. Orange rockets don’t actually taste like oranges. Neither do orange coloured Smarties, orange coloured lollipops, orange vitamins (unless they’re Vitamin C, and then they taste slightly tangy like citrus), or most other things that are made mostly of sugar and food colouring.

I know it’s different in the States, but I’m Canadian.

Yet this is a delusion under which I suffer. It’s so deeply entrenched that when I was a kid, I used to sneak baby aspirin because it was orange. If you’ve ever tasted plain aspirin, it’s sour and acidic. So is the baby kind, but I was convinced that’s how oranges tasted. Also, it was lucky that I wasn’t accident prone because I’m sure my blood was thinner than water thanks to all the aspirin.

Now that I’m an adult, I can eat all the damn oranges I want. But I don’t, because oranges are a f*cking pain in the ass to eat. First there’s the peel. Then there’s all that white sh*t UNDER the peel. Then you have to chew through all the other bits and try not to choke on the seeds to get to the orange-y part—you might as well just drink orange juice. Or eat orange Rockets.

But this whole experience made me realize that there are a lot of other things I believe that are absolutely not true, yet I persist in believing them.

1) If I’m having trouble getting something to load on my cellphone, I hold it higher up in the air, because that makes the signal stronger. And if that doesn’t immediately do the trick, I also shake it. Ken makes fun of me for doing it, but it works. Ken also makes fun of me for wearing UGG boots, so that goes to show you how much HE knows. They’re comfortable AND stylish, Ken, so keep your opinions to yourself.

2) I’m a great singer. In the car. Nowhere else. But man, alone in the car, I can totally rock anything on my IPod. I’m like Beyoncé, if Beyoncé was a middle-aged white woman who only sang in her car. And I don’t have to worry about taking my act on the road, because my act is ONLY on the road. If I sing anywhere else, or there are other people around, I sound terrible.

3) I can predict the future. On Friday at work, we were talking about what we were going to have for dinner, and I said, “Ken will want homemade pizzas” and then I got a BBM from Ken:

I see pizza in our future…

I’m like The Amazing Kreskin if the Amazing Kreskin’s spouse was completely predictable and ALWAYS wanted homemade pizza for dinner. I should play the lottery more often.

4) I have many celebrity friends on Facebook. Obviously this guy is the REAL Justin Timberlake, who of course goes by a pseudonym and posts stuff like this:

It’s really Justin Timberlake. For sure.

You can see that he has lots of fans and is VERY busy. I’m also friends with Andrew Garfield, Mandy Moore, and a couple of the guys from The Walking Dead. Mandy Moore likes to post things like “Which character on this is us is youse guyses favourite?” I always assumed that Mandy Moore would be a little more articulate, but you know those Hollywood types. Andrew Garfield mostly just sends out Facebook Messenger messages with crying faces—I’m sure being famous is very lonely.

5) Oil of Oregano can cure any kind of cold or virus. I know this is true because whenever I feel like I’m starting to come down with something, I take some Oil of Oregano and automatically feel like I might be dying, but then I drink some wine and feel better. Last month, I ran out so I bought a new bottle (of Oil of Oregano–I NEVER run out of wine), but when I took it, it tasted even more horrible than usual. I checked the label and guess what? It also had orange oil in it. Now I love the stuff.

I asked Titus if he had any favourite flavour:

Titus: Bacon, beef, fish, chicken, the hot chocolate powder inside of K cups, green beans, cauliflower, bouillon cubes, cake, crackers, pie crust, white wine, the milk at the bottom of your cereal bowl, green peppers, red peppers, apple slices, strawberries…oh, and turkey. There’s probably some other stuff that I’ve forgotten.
Me: Oranges?
Titus: Don’t be gross.
Me: You fool.