Home Repair, Part 2

This entry should actually be titled "Home Destruction/Home Repair". My last home repair job was the result of an act of nature; this one, an act of me.

A few days after the roof tile incident, Kyra and I ventured into her room on a quest for toys. Each week part of Kyra's homework is to collect objects beginning with the letter of the week and place them in her "letter can". She then takes her letter can to school and presents her chosen objects to the class. Of course, we had waited until the last minute to put the letter can together, so we were rushing to get it done before she left for school.

This weeks' letter of the week was "A", and Kyra wanted an airplane for her can. One of her toy playsets had an airlpane in it and I made a beeline to her closet to get it. The sliding doors of her closet were both open and overlapped in the center of the track. I spotted the playset and tried to push the doors open to get to it, but they would not budge. Kyra, you see, has a knack for knocking her closet doors off their tracks. I have absolutely no idea how she does it. She's just a little thing, and it takes a fair amount of pressure to get them off track. Normally it's a relatively easy fix, just pop the rollers back on the track. But on this special occasion, both doors were off track and completely jammed together. I shot Kyra a look. I didn't have time for this.

"Sorry, Daddy." she whimpered.

At this point I should have grabbed the airplane and left the doors for later, but I didn't. After a fair amount of pushing, hitting, and cussing (under my breath, of course) I finally freed the doors from each other and was able to get the front door back on its track. The back door would have none of it. One set of rollers was off its track and it would not go back in no matter how much I fiddled with it. I was pissed at this point and decided to pop the other set of rollers out of the track and start from scratch. Only they didn't want to come off. "How did she do this?" I said to no one in particular. Sometime in the midst of all the pushing and pounding, Kyra silently dismissed herself from the room. "I'm three times her size, and I can't even get this thing off!!" The door wouldn't go on and it wouldn't come off. I finally gave it one last frustrated shove. CRACK!! That did the trick. The door broke free...literally. The rollers, still attached to a nice little chunk of door, fell at my feet, mocking me.

Expletive. This one was out loud because I noticed Kyra was no longer around. I really didn't want to buy a new door. I picked up the door chunk, inspected it and thought maybe I could reattach it using wood screws. Cool. I'd get to use my drill. Besides, I figured I'd try anything before buying a new door.

I angled the door to get it out of the closet, but before long, it was wedged in tight between the floor and the upper molding of the closet. Remember, the front door was where it was supposed to be and had easily snapped back into place. I didn't want to remove it to get the back door out. Expletive. I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!

I finally dislodged the back door...again...removed the front door, and freed the back door from my youngest daughter's demon closet. Now we're getting somewhere. I put the door down on the floor of the den and headed out to the garage to get my drill and some wood screws. After digging around the tool box for ten minutes (man, I gotta clean that thing out), I finally assembled a rag-tag team of wood screws. I grabbed the drill and returned to the door. All I needed to do now was reattach the wood chunk and we'd be back in business.

I set the first screw in place, applied pressure with the drill and pulled the trigger. RRR-RRR-RRR. The battery was dead. "I'm really not good at this," I laughed as I finally grasped the absurdity of the whole fiasco. I left the screw half-drilled into the door and put the drill battery in its charger. That was my final clue that maybe I should take a break. I guess I'm not that good at picking up on clues. I'm certainly not stubborn.

I have no idea of what Kyra was doing this whole time. She could have been juggling chainsaws for all I know. What I do know is that I cooled off and we finished her letter can...without the airplane. I couldn't find it. She had to settle for ants, Ariel, and aardvarks. She went to school with her letter can and I returned to the door after the battery recharged and finished the job...without a hitch. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you exercise a little patience. I may not be efficient, but I get the job done!