I needed a Wrench. Swear I used to have a whole darn set.
But that was before my Mom reorganized my tools Her Way. Her way is to get rid of the case that sorts drill bits by size, and throw them all in the Tupperware you usually use for celery sticks.
"You have plenty of Tupperware," she said. "Hmm. Let me try this one."
I don't have a lot of Tupperware. Furthermore, I don't want to buy any Tupperware.
She took socks and cut off the feet, then twisted them around to keep my extension cords nicely untangled..
"Mom, couldn't we just use a twist tie?"
"No, this will work. You'll see."
"That was a perfectly good sock, you know."
She does this for a living--use tools, I mean. She's actually really good--measure twice, cut once, careful on the job, everything. But I don't see how this works. It doesn't work for me.
Miss Ellen, Miss-Directed
So, I need a Wrench. Miss Ellen's handlebars are suddenly headed West when I want to go North. It is possible to steer like this, but only to Eventual Disaster.
Our HotWind Tax Dollars Are At Work, along with the Federal Re-Build America Act, re-doing the streets in my neighborhood. So far they have sliced a lot of pavement and laid down a lot of metal sheets on the road, then torn up the sidewalks and put in fancy brick stripes and granite curbing. They look great. When this project is done, no doubt I will be very pleased. But there's a lot of gravel and Pitfalls now, and every time Miss Ellen swerves to avoid one-----
-------her handlebars are suddenly headed SouthEast when I want to go West.
She was Always a loose cannon. Now she's a loose cannon with a loose nut, and I don't mean me.
I took Miss Ellen back to a place where direction is not so important, i.e. my living room. I tore up my closet for a nonexistent wrench. Finally I proceeded on half-finished state-of-the-art sidewalks to the neighborhood hardware store. I had a tracing of the nut and was measuring wrenches against it.
The guy behind the counter is a short, wiry caramel-colored man with a grey Afro hairstyle and a grey plaid flannel shirt. He's worked there forever.
"Why don't you get an adjustable wrench?"
"Sounds good."
"Right behind you," he points out. "Look up, above your eye level."
I pick a small one I can leave in my bag. "I've been needing a weapon, too," I tell the hardware guy.
He pokers up. "Need a bigger one then."
"I'm not going to hit anybody with it particularly," I tell him back. "I'm going to sling the bag."
"Yeah, that'll work," he says, still straight-faced. "Like David and Goliath. A course, I got a pipe wrench for $29.95 if you think about it." He hands me the receipt. "Come back anytime."
He probably thinks I am one of those candidates for a floral-print screwdriver. Hah! That is completely untrue.
Anyway, one of Miss Ellen's nuts is all right and tight. The other one still needs some adjustments.
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