A sunny day with little humidity and a breeze is what all that rain kindly left for us today. I headed out to the deck with my papers and coffee, saw the feeders were empty and filled them. The morning is always brighter when the birds keep me company. When I sat down, I noticed my umbrella’s power in light indicator wasn’t lit. My first impulse was to jump up and find out why, but I restrained myself and finished the first paper and first cup of coffee. After that the fun began. I went under the deck, checked and found the umbrella cord was connected to power. I then try to determine if it was the umbrella adapter, the outlet or the extension cord which wasn’t working. That meant plugging the extension cord into another outlet. The only one available was off the outside of the deck. I got on my hands and knees and tried to plug in the cord, a lovely yellow one, but couldn’t figure out in which direction the prongs needed to go. I then went down the stairs, looked up and hoped I could see the outlet. I couldn’t. A dilemma. My solution was simple. I balanced one flip flop clad foot on the end off the stair rail, used one hand to hold on to a part of the deck rail and hoisted myself high enough to see the outlet. While I was up high, I was able to plug in the extension cord then went back under the deck to make sure all the plugs were attached. The extension cord, underneath the deck, spanned from one side of the deck to the other and was so tightly strung that I wanted to cue the music for the Limbo as I had to go under the cord. Back up on the deck to check the umbrella, I touched my face and found blood then touched it again to find the injury. In the process, I managed to squash a mosquito in the midst of removing my life’s fluid. That was the only injury of the entire enterprise. The umbrella is now connected.

I got my second cup of coffee and read the paper. I was tired and sweaty, but I had no cuts, sprains or broken bones, an unusual occurrence for me.

This entry was posted on August 26, 2010 at 11:57 am and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.