Piddling

When will insurance companies start to talk about climate change and it's causes?  It is unbelievable that they remain mute.  Rather, they either quit insuring people's homes altogether as they have in my own home state or raise premiums sky high.  

But, you know, Oklahoma is not that populated, and though the network news hypes it, in the larger picture, it wasn't really all that many homes.  

Right?

The news this morning?  What was that guy thinking?  Did he really believe he would run through all the security with a shotgun and blast the president?  

It is a strange and terrible world.  I've been watching a YouTube travel show by a New Zealander who travels to the slums of Mumbai and Bangladesh to show you how a big part of the world's population lives (link) (link).   I don't think I'll watch any more, though.  I need to watch happy things.  

Are there happy things?  

When I was a kid, at least it seems so in memory, older men would sit in the garage with the transistor radio on listening to baseball games.  They "piddled."  Maybe I'll become a "piddler."  Was life really less hurried then?  I don't remember my mother and father rushing to do much of anything.  Maybe there was less to do.   

My mother's bathroom faucet is leaking.  Just a drip. . . drip. . . .  I've let it go for awhile because it has been so slow, but now it is speeding up a bit.  I looked at YouTube videos on how to fix it.  I used to be able to fix leaky faucets.  Hard to believe, but I have.  They all worked in basically the same way, and you unscrewed the handle and replaced the plumber's tape, I think it was called, some stuff that looked like dental floss.  Same kind of thing with the guts of toilets.  They were all pretty simple. My father had a book that showed you how to do all sorts of home repairs.  I have always called it the Handy Andy Guide, but I'm no longer sure what it is called nor where it is.  It is a relic now, useless.  Now you have to go to YouTube to figure out how to do home repairs.  

The YouTube video I watched about repairing the leaky faucet gave me pause.  The guy making the video ran into trouble and had to work really hard to get the thing that needed replacing, a cylinder of sorts, out.  

I think I am just going to have someone replace the entire faucet.  It looks easier, but I don't think I want to do it.  

Cha-ching. 

The last time I fixed a thing at my mother's house, I successfully changed the guts out of the toilet but I broke the toilet lid.  I DID, however, save my mother money by fixing her dryer.  She laughed when I said I would try.  It had to be the belt.  I ordered one and spent a half day wrestling with the thing, but that was years ago and it still works.  

But it was an old dryer, and I don't think the new ones work like that anymore.  What craps out now are the computer chips.  

Hell, I used to fix my own car.  Tune ups, oil changes, starters, water pumps.  

What happened?  Oh, I know.  

"Greed is good."

But, by and large, I think in my childhood men were fixing things all the time.  Pretty much how they spent their weekends.  Saturdays, at least.  

People either mowed their own lawns or hired a neighborhood kid to do it.  Milkmen brought milk to the house and picked up the empties.  There were diaper services.  Doctors even made house calls.  

Is it true?  Was any of that real? 

Hell, I can barely remember life without computers.  

Not really.  I hitchhiked around the United States with nothing but a map.  

Didn't plan on this riff.  It just came out, a contrast to those slumdog videos.  I've been lucky.  I could have been born in Mumbai.  

Time to fix breakfast for mom.  I've piddled enough here this morning.