Back here in the real world things aren't always that bright and that's okay. No one but a fool is happy all the time.
Please excuse me while I pray for a moment..."Jesus please make me a fool or perhaps I should say more of a fool...thank you and Amen."
Back to what I wanted to write about - I spent New Years Eve inside a big metal box.
I can hear my friend Forky saying, "What??.....NO!!"
You have to have watched Toy Story 4 and the associated shorts to get that "joke".
Okay here's the deal. Our house was built in 1920 so it is 100 years old in this fine young year of 2020. Yeaaa!
The house came with a furnace that may be as old as the house. The furnace at one point was oil fired but had been converted to natural gas before we moved in 33 years ago. It's a huge metal contraption compared to modern furnaces. You can tell that parts of it were built by some talented craftspeople on-site in the basement.
After so many years of sometimes close contact with that blue beast I have some affection for it's durability and analog nature.
A little after nine on New Years Eve I was home with Edgar when we were startled by the furnace making a bad sound. The furnace has a squirrel cage type fan which is driven by a belt connected to an electric motor. A slipping belt was causing the bad sound. Getting the belt tensioned correctly took me about 4 hours. You'd have to be there to understand why that is...
If you've ever tensioned the fan belt on an old VW you may have some idea (and who hasn't done that? ;-) Old VW engines use shims between a split pulley to control the fan belt tension. You take shims out to make the belt tighter and put shims in to make it looser. It's totally non-intuitive and takes a bit of trial and error to get right. The furnace belt tensioning is similar in that's it's non-intuitive and takes a bit of trial and error.
So anyway I spent New Years eve in a box. I got all dirty and sweaty (so at least I had that going for me).
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Switching gears a little bit here...
I am so thankful for all life has given me and feel compassion for people I know who are suffering. I wish I was better at showing that but I'm a broken object in some ways and probably a selfish jerk in other ways...
For all of us living non-curated lives here's a thought..
The Japanese Tea Ceremony honors objects with imperfections, and prizes a broken tea-cup that has been repaired with Kintsugi (gold gilt) as the the most beautiful. In 2020 I hope that all us broken tea-cups find the Kintsugi we need.
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