TGIM

What a weekend.

Friday I came home early, having contracted whatever plague Michael had brought home. The disease we’d shared was characterized by an unrelentingly stuffy nose. He suffered through his bout by continual, vigorous sniffing. This of course served no useful purpose other than to annoy his older sister; it did not provide any relief for his symptoms. Since Oregon doesn’t allow the OTC sale of Psuedoephederine HCL, there was little to do but just ride it out.

And there wasn’t much rest to be had on Friday anyway as there were many errands to be accomplished, for which I volunteered to be chauffeur. Fortunately I got something akin to rest for the half hour that sister S had her physical therapy appointment. Michael and I sat in the car in the parking lot. I attempted to allow myself to dip down into a lower state of consciousness briefly while Michael peppered me with questions from the back seat regarding the movie he was watching (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs).

The real fun began at midnight.

Michael woke up because he heard the downstairs phone loudly declare its rapidly declining battery life. His manner of dealing with this crisis is to report it to his parents immediately. And that meant crawling into bed with us. I tried my best to remain inert, but my alleged snoring was found to be disturbing to Michael’s mommy, and amusing to Michael. I was asked to roll over. Instead I got up and went downstairs, first and foremost to grind that annoying phone into a fine powder put the phone back on the charger, and then to curl up on the couch where I wouldn’t disturb anyone. My absence proved more disturbing than my snoring, so I was soon joined by my wife and son. We watched “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” yet again.

At 2:30 I put Michael back to bed, and his mom and I tried to recapture our sleep.

At 7:30, Michael comes bombing into our room, chipper and fresh as a daisy, ready to greet the day.

I opted against decaf coffee that morning.

We got a few clean-up and preparation projects accomplished, and took Michael to “The Chicken Nugget Store” (aka McDonald’s) as per our standing agreement: if he has a good week at school, he gets a treat on the weekend. This week he picked a trip to McDonald’s for chicken nuggets and playtime on the indoor play structure.

Naturally he spent his hour playing on the videogames there instead of crawling, sliding and climbing on the play structure.

Fortunately he did nap. It was a requirement that he do so, or his mom and I would shoo the Easter Bunny off the next morning. My wife and I attempted to catch naps ourselves, though that was difficult with one absent teenager choosing that time to provide sketchy text information regarding when her impromptu visit with her friend would be over, and when and where she’d need to be picked up.

Sunday started rainy again. I had vowed that after Church, I’d finish working on the hot tub. The week before I’d refilled it and started it up, only to find that rather than starting up and running, it would merely emit an ominous buzzing sound. After shutting off the power, I pulled open the spa’s electrical control box to discover that the GFCI was not wired properly. I’d need to repair that. To compound this repair job, I thought it would be smart to disassemble the jet diverter unit as well, since over the years the jet control knob had been getting increasingly difficult to turn.

I learned a valuable lesson right then: do not attempt to undo plumbing in a system that is currently under a great deal of water pressure.

So this weekend, since the hot tub had completely drained itself, I would fix the diverter and the faulty GFCI. Fortunately the diverter was easy to fix: a little smear of vaseline on the o-ring and it was perfectly happy. The GFCI was a different matter. The one in the hot tub was not wired right, meaning our beloved hot tub had been a potential death trap for as long as we’ve had our house. Code states that the GFCI be in the breaker at the main box, so I bought one online for what I knew to be a great price.

Sunday afternoon I shut down the power, and attempted to remove the electrical panel. It was then that I discovered that the shelves I’d put up in the garage included a brace that was covering three of the screws securing the panel.

Brilliant.

I had to cut holes in the brace to get the screws undone.

With that complete, I peeled back the panel cover (which had been left open). I was greeted with a black spider the size of Rhode Island, a critter that had been happily living under the electrical panel cover, and who was only millimeters from my fingertips at one point.

I am not a lover of spiders. I must have given out an involuntary scream (yes, I confess – they really bother me that badly) because my wife called out “Tom! Are you okay? What happened?”

I met her at the garage door, still shuddering.

“S- s- sp- spiiiiiider!”

Michael of course had to see, so I led him outside to view. Once he got within eight feet he ran inside and cowered under a blanket on the couch. I dragged out my favorite spider-slaying device, the trusty Miele vacuum.

Once the spider was devoured, I was able to move on to replacing the hot tub circuit breaker.

After pulling out the old one, I discovered that my low-cost, sight-unseen internet purchase was the wrong type.

So here I learned another lesson: be sure you know the manufacturer of your electrical panel before buying circuit breakers.

After all that, I could not finish my project. This weekend warrior had been defeated.

I hate when that happens. Makes me glad for Monday.