Smile-breaks
Screwing Around
I've been screwing around a lot lately. Wait! That came out wrong! Not that kind! The kind with a screwdriver and screws, putting things together, tightening things up. . .
You know how everything bigger than a nail file comes in long flat boxes nowadays. Or you bring it home in a long flat box. Which needs to be opened and put together. Not the box. You have to take that apart first. Good luck with that! Anyway, once you rip through the tape and yank the cardboard open and put a band-aid on where you cut yourself on the cardboard, you're ready to "assemble" all those flat pieces that are in the box hidden among Styrofoam pieces carefully formed to protect them while they wait patiently to test your patience.
If you're lucky, you'll find an easy-to-follow instruction manual lurking somewhere in the depths of the box you've just torn apart, along with a plastic bag full of a scary number of screws and tools. Makes you almost feel like a bona fide DIYer, not a screwer-around.
Besides the putting together of things, there's the tightening of things. Our outside gate stopped swinging and latching. Well, it swung but it didn't latch. Which calls for more screwing. Phillips or flat blade? Phillips for this one. The wood's soft; old wood does that, goes soft in its old age. So the screws don't hold for long. So I get to do lots of—um, screwing around.
Getting pretty good at it. Phillips, flat blade, or those little, sometimes big, ‘specially-sized wrenches that fit perfectly into the wee holes in the head of the eighty million screws that come in the package. I got all the screws in the first time on the new end table. Good job. I flipped it over and oh, no. . . Top's on backward. Back to screwing—well, un-screwing then re-screwing Yep—that's better.
A few days later another big flat box arrived at my doorstep. The footstool I foolishly ordered. I screwed it, flipped it over and. . . Did it again. Top's upside down this time. The pretty cream-colored quilted cushion is facing down against the framework instead of looking up, breathing the fresh summer air.
I've gotten pretty darned good at this un-screwing and re-screwing, so it wasn't long before the cushion was on right. I stood back and admired my work. Now. . .
Back to the swinging gate. Screwing it tighter didn't help much. It still wouldn't click shut. The latch and the bar that catches the latch didn't line up. The little wire piece that dangles the latch wasn't dangling the latch right. So you already know what it needed: the universal remedy for non-working things, WD40.
WD-40 worked! For now, anyway… Old things, new things: they all need screwing once in a while.