Fix it!

October arrived fast and furious.  Winter is now behind us and the heat is weighing heavily on me.  It sucks my energy and makes me want to do nothing outside of the shade.  I am, however, very thankful for the breeze that provides a little relief most of the time.  The rain finally returned, very late this year, so our gutter bucket is back in action collecting water for bathing and washing clothes.  We have a little outside building with a bathtub in it that never became a bathroom and instead has been used to store yard tools, scraps of crap and other shit my Mom didn’t want to throw away.  I can’t blame her because I have found uses for much of the crap scraps and other shit to fix things around the house.  Earlier this week I gave her nonfunctioning gutter a facelift with some wire, a few rusty oversized nails, a borrowed ladder and my priceless Gerber (way better than a Leatherman.  Thank you Darin)  Now it’s working beautifully.  I cleaned out the bathroom/junk area and prepared it for a sunshower that should be arriving from the states in a couple of weeks.  My Mom and I are so excited to be able to rinse down and cool off at the end of a hot sticky day.  We had to cut down one of our mango trees because it just up and died on us.  It’s been sitting out in the yard for weeks and I was wondering what she had planned for it.  Out of not wanting to deal with it she probably would have given it to someone to burn.  I spent this morning cutting the entire tree into pieces of wood that will fit in our coal stove next winter (July-August).  It feels really good to be productive around the house.  My Mom is always cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.  I keep the kitchen clean on a daily basis and I scrub the bathroom once a week but my Mom just never stops.  She is on her hands and knees all the time wiping down, scrubbing, polishing or buffing something.  That kind of house work just isn’t my cup of tea.  So when I can do things like patch cracks in the tub with caulking and an old bicycle tube, take her washer apart and fix the leaking pieces or replace and wire a light fixture in the bathroom that has fallen apart over the years (all with my Gerber of coarse) I feel like I am doing my part.  My Mom is always amazed and so thankful when I fix something or improve it.  Her brain just doesn’t work that way I guess.  Her gutters had been out of commission for years, the outside bathroom was built four years ago and was never used and she was ready to buy a whole new tub for the inside bathroom (which she couldn’t afford) because the cracks were getting so bad.  I love being resourceful and working with what I have around me to repair what isn’t working.  It’s kind of fun, actually.  My brother, Danny, always told me to leave a place better than you found it.  Whether it was picking up a piece of trash or fixing a loose board on someone’s front doorstep.  He is famous for being the visitor who asks for a screwdriver because he noticed the door knob was loose on his way in. So I have adopted, happily, this way of thinking and acting.  If you can fix it, fit it and make someone smile.