Saturday, November 10, 2012

By the force of our longing

Yesterday I wrote that "I do need to get some exercise during the weeked", and today I got plenty of exercise, maybe even excessively.

This morning I realized that the weather was perfect for changing studded winter tires to the car: dry ground, +4 °C. So I needed to get the tires out of the shed where I have been storing them, which meant moving stuff out from there.

It turned out that some mice had generated a bit of a mess in the shed, making holes into a bag of lawn seed and spreading that around, with their droppings mixed in. I had to clean that away, which took some time, until I was ready to change the tires.

I have been doing this myself since I bought the car 12 years ago, and even though I'm not an expert, this hasn't been such a big deal if the weather is fine as it was today.

Although one time I run into problems as one bolt got stuck, and I had to get this fixed in a garage (cutting the bolt and replacing it), which cost more than changing the tires would have cost, but never mind.

Today everything went fine, and I even had a helper, our youngest daughter. She was quite keen, carrying the tools around, asking a lot of questions and watching what I was doing. She even practiced elevating the car with a jack, and pumping air to the tires.

After changing the tires I went to the nearby shop with my daughter, who seemed to have plenty of energy. She rode the bicycle and I walked. And after a late lunch she was still keen on going out, so we went by car to Luukki, going to the lake. There was a thin cover of ice on the lake, which was a pleasure to play with for my daughter. We had something to eat, and warmed up her gloves which got a bit wet from the play.

(Posting title is from the poem “The pond is sheathed in ice” by Melanie Braverman.)

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