My So Called Life

Shane Halbach, handy man about town

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I was visiting my Grandma. Actually, that’s not true, she wasn’t even there. We were just staying at her house on the way up to the family reunion. We got the kids into bed first thing, so we didn’t get around to unloading the car until dusk. We were standing outside unloading the trunk, when a lady wandered up to us.

“Are you handy?” she asked me.
“Uh…I guess so. I mean, it depends on what you mean by handy,” I replied. “I can fix things around the house I guess, but not like, repair my car.”

This answer was apparently sufficient, because the lady proceeded to tell me her entire life story. She was fighting with her son-in-law, blah blah blah, running the air conditioning all day with the window open, blah blah blah, ungrateful, can you believe it? it’s her house, blah blah blah, kids these days, what with this economy?

Long story short, she decided to punish her (adult) son-in-law by removing the window air conditioners, but she needed help replacing the windows.

::Whew!::

So of course I said I’d help her. I mean, when someone you don’t know traps you for 10 minutes with a drawn out story and then asks you for help, what else would you say? “How is it always you? It’s like they can sense you somehow,” Sara said later. It’s true; I give off some kind of “sucker” pheromones or something. They always know. I guess a sane person would have just said no, but I don’t know. If someone needs help, I feel like I should help them. Unfortunately, being a human being apparently makes me vulnerable to opportunists.

Still, I could see the indicated window from where we were standing. How long could it take to pop over and check it out?

As we were walking over to her house, she continued her prattle. “Now, I apologize for the state of the house. We had the carpet torn up, but I don’t have the money to replace it just yet…”

Wait a minute, why was she talking about the inside of the house? I thought I was just going to help with the window? The one I can see from my Grandma’s driveway.

So, of course, we go inside, and I have to walk through the middle of not one, not two, but three adults in the house. Obviously they could have helped her with whatever it was she needed done, but they couldn’t because they were feuding with her. And now here I was, in the middle of it all, aligning against them with this lady who was quickly turning out to be crazy. “Uh, hi,” I said, but I got no response.

I should have known there was trouble just by the fact that she was asking me, a total stranger (in fact an out of towner!) to come into her house. How did she know I wasn’t a serial killer or a robber or something? The only way is because she knew that, odds are, she was crazier than I was. Nothing to fear.

“Sara knows where I am,” I thought. “If anything happens to me, Sara knows where I am.”

We walked through this junk heap of a house to the bedroom, where she showed me the window. At this point my only thought was to take a look at the window and get out of there as fast as possible. Sure enough, it was thoroughly screwed up, but I managed to fix it after maybe 10 minutes or so. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was able to just sort of look at the mechanism and figure it out, the way any adult should be able to (much less the 4 adults resident in the house). Night had fallen outside. At this point I was ready to make a run for it. Sayonara. It’s been weird, but at least now it’s over.

“Thank you sooo much!” she said.
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll just be going now, then…” I edged my way toward the door.
“You know, as long as you’re here, there’s just one more thing, if you wouldn’t mind looking at it…”

Alarm bells were clanging in my head. I just kept picturing that guy from Misery, chained to the bed while Kathy Bates breaks his legs with a sledgehammer.

What I wanted to say was, “Lady, are you kidding me? I’ve really gone above and beyond here. You have 3 adults in this house staring daggers at my back for helping you, and now you’re going to ask me about something else? I don’t even know you!” Instead I said, “Okay.”

Back we trooped through the gaggle of goth 20-somethings hanging out in the kitchen and NOT helping this lady they lived with, until we reached another window in the dining room. I stood around while she removed a second window air conditioner. “Okay, can you help me get this window back in?” I cannot express how much I did not want to help her get the window back in, and maybe she finally sensed that she had pushed me too far. “Actually, you know what? I think I can figure this one out. I think you can probably go.”

Oh thank god. I could practically feel the fresh air on my face. I had to struggle not to run. Finally I reached the front door, and I grasped the doorknob in my hands, freedom in sight, where it promptly fell off the door, trapping me inside.

As I stood there, stupidly looking at the doorknob in my hand, I made my final peace with the world and mentally sent a “goodbye, I loved you” to my sleeping children. This was obviously it. The End.

“Oh, do you need help with that? The door is a little tricky sometimes,” said the unhelpful son-in-law, with whom I was currently feuding.
“Yes,” I said. I left the “please don’t murder me” unsaid.

Spoiler alert: I didn’t die.

He reattached the doorknob and showed me the trick of opening the door. And he didn’t even conk me with a brick when I walked past him and out into sweet, sweet freedom. In no time flat I was back in the quiet safety of my Grandma’s house.

One thing’s for certain: I will think long and hard before answering next time someone asks me if I’m handy.

Applesauce, 2013

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Once again, we continued our yearly tradition of apple picking and applesauce making.

2013_09_29_9999_3

We only picked half a bushel or so, and then bought the rest (3 3/4 bushels total).

It used to be that if you picked the apples yourself, they were cheaper (which makes sense because you’re providing the labor). Now it’s totally flipped, and picking the apples is actually more expensive than buying the pre-picked ones. Now you’re paying extra for the “experience” of apple picking, not to mention the hayrides, live bands, pumpkin patches, the whole nine.

Well, we just want the apples.

2013_09_29_9999_27

We literally opened last year’s last jar of applesauce days before we made this year’s batch, which has never happened before. So we know about how much applesauce we go through in a year. The answer is a LOT. Also, we usually do this in combination with my mom, but this year we were flying solo.

2013_09_29_9999_55

It took Sara and I long into the night, but we managed to can 43 quarts and 13 pints of applesauce.  That’s a whole lot of applesauce y’all. Our pantry is once again fully stocked to apocalypse levels.

2013_09_29_9999_71

See you next year applesauce maker!

 

Weekend, Chicago-style

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Even though we live IN THE CITY LIMITS of Chicago, we rarely actually go into the city. Even when people come to visit, we mostly just hang around the neighborhood. So when my siblings came over, we decided to do some of the regular, old-fashioned tourist stops.

2013_09_21_9999_14

You never know what kind of weirdos you’re going to find at The Bean.

2013_09_21_9999_9 - Copy

This was as good excuse as any to hit up Cafecito, and then visit everyone’s favorite dinosaur, Sue:

2013_09_21_9999_17

Of course, we also left plenty of time for board games.

I think the most memorable game was The Resistance, which I will have a separate post on coming up soon. But we also introduced some new people to Puerto Rico, and found some time to play Pandemic.

You know, in retrospect, I think I am innately something of a story teller. That’s why I enjoy writing and blogging, and why I always enjoyed role playing games. So, for me, the storytelling aspect is always one of the funnest parts about a game. My brain just tries to fit a narrative to any situation. I would imagine that there are people who play a tabletop game and they just treat it as a straight up game: “I move my piece to this spot in the red zone and play this 4th blue card to accomplish the goal”. I suppose that’s kind of fun, but I prefer to imagine it as, “I go to the research station in the explosive diarrhea epidemic zone and cure the childhood obesity epidemic faster than you can say Fecal Microbiota Transplant!” Sure your job is to manage the island of Puerto Rico, but it’s more than just shifting little cardboard squares. Those little brown tokens working in your fields and factories have LIVES! And you can’t just go on a mission for the resistance, you have to know what you’re fighting for! How can you play your card with the proper zeal if you don’t even know if you’re fighting against Hitler, robots, or nut-free classrooms?

All in all, one of the best weekends I’ve had in awhile. Hope to do it again sometime.

Quote Monday isn’t copying

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Me: “Huh, my accordion strap just broke.”
Ollie: “Oh no! That’s my favorite accordion!”

Me: “Wait a minute. You just told me this morning  you wanted to get some new shoes. How did they get here already?”
Sara: “Well….maybe I already ordered them yesterday.”
…
Sara: “If they had just come tomorrow, I would have been fine!”

Ollie: “I want syrup too.”
Evie: “Ollie, you’re always copying me! You always pick the same thing!”
Me: “Hey, he only had two choices. Maybe he just felt like syrup today. It doesn’t mean he’s copying you.”
Ollie: “Yeah! And also, I like to try what Evie’s trying.”

So much for trying to help him out there.

 

No more working from home

/ Shane / 3 Comments

It’s the end of an era: for the past 5 1/2 years, I have been working from home one day a week in order to watch the kids. Now that the kids are both in school, I will be going into the office (for most of) Fridays.

First off, I feel very fortunate for the ability to work from home. Most people don’t have the option, and I feel like it has been a huge benefit. Working from home allowed me to be a part of my kids lives that I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to be a part of. It allowed Sara to keep her job, which was important to her and therefore important to me.

I honestly don’t know how other people manage their childcare without it. I guess the answer is they pay someone to do it, but this is so much simpler than it sounds. It’s ridiculously expensive, hard to coordinate, and depends on finding the right person. And when it comes to raising your kids, even the very best person is not you. So I am very grateful that we were able to keep the kids with us the majority of the time, and put them in day care for only 2 days a week.

Working from home is a blessing and a curse. Some of the blessings are what I outlined above, and those are the obvious advantages. But what people don’t realize is how difficult it can be to work from home, and there are a lot of negative stereotypes. People (my boss) picture someone lazing around in their pjs and generally slacking off. I suppose there are people who do that, but if so, I think people would catch on very quick, because you wouldn’t be completing your tasks on time. I simply have too much to do to take one day off of every five.

Here’s the secret: I hated working from home. Hated it. But I did it because of the obvious benefits to my family.

I meticulously tracked my time using a timer. Because I didn’t have time to work much on Fridays, I had to make up all of my work at other times. This mostly meant working here or there Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, and frequently on Sunday night. Often I would finish my work at 10 p.m. on Sunday night, go to bed, and then it’s back to work on Monday. If we went away for the weekend or had visitors (which basically describes every single weekend), then I would instead have to work every night of the week. It was exhausting.

I have to say that I’m kind of relieved to only be working from home one night a week now. I feel like a new man; like my nights are suddenly so free. Also, I have been walking on eggshells for years at work, since my working from home was not very popular with my boss. Despite having no major problems and getting all of my work done on time and then some, I always felt like it was using up all his good graces, leaving me no benefit of the doubt on anything else. It was constantly made known to me that I was lucky to be allowed to do this, and therefore should not complain about anything else. Basically, I was living on borrowed time. This caused a lot of stress, and I am certainly glad to be out from under that.

On the other hand, it requires significant gymnastics to make our current schedule work, including relying on the kindness of strangers. It also requires an extra 2 hours of commuting on my part. I honestly don’t think one realizes how awful 2 hours a day of commuting is, and how much it negatively impacts your life, until you’ve done it for 7 years. It’s just dead time that shortens your day, not to mention stressful, driving-in-traffic time that shortens your life. I work the bare minimum 8 hours a day, and yet my wife is always mad at me for getting home so late. I was more than happy to skip that one day a week (and that’s not even counting the impact on the Earth or the impact on my wallet of all those extra miles).

So all in all, it’s kind of a mixed bag. I’m very glad for the opportunity, but maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

For all you employers out there, please consider an arrangement like this. Believe me, your employees are not getting away with something! In the right situation (in a computer job like mine with a dedicated employee who will actually work), it can really help your employee out with minimal cost to you. This is a significant benefit you can offer at practically no cost! In this day and age, it is so easy to reach people, with cell phones, emails, video chats, etc., that it hardly matters where they are physically located. Happy workers with good home lives are worth vastly more to you than the dubious benefit of bodies in the office.