Darned PODS

Today, I did many house-prep things. I finished polishing the grout off the tiles in the master shower, I cleaned up the crawlspace thingee under the stairs, I vacuumed the garage, and I put the cap back on the pickup.

I had to put the cap back on for two reasons. First, it was dangling from the ceiling of the garage on its winch, which is right outside the door from the family room. It hang about 5' 6" off the floor, so normal-height people bang their heads on it if they don't duck. We didn't want people looking at the house to have to duck to get into the garage. Second, I'll be driving the truck to Fort Collins with whatever stuff the moving company won't take (primarily alcohol and propane), and I don't want anyone to steal that stuff.

Putting the cap back on was an ordeal twice over. I started lining up all the re-attachment equipment, which is basically a couple wrenches and the cap clamps. I quickly realized that, though I had set aside the clamps, the nuts and washers used to affix the clamps to the cap were packed away neatly in the box that held all the hardware from the dresser I took to the dump.

And that box was one of the first ones into the PODS.

So, after a round of The Mrs. making fun of me for being an idiot (though, I still remain the best she could do), HannieC and I were off to OSH to buy more nuts and washers. There are a couple spares on the mounting rail that do not have clamps, so I grabbed a set of them off that to make sure I got a match.

I quickly learned that though the bolts appeared to be 5/16", the nut simply would not go on. Eventually, after a lot of trial and error, I stumbled upon the metric fastener section and discovered that this was something called a "No. 8 - 1.25". Oye. But once that hurdle was jumped, it was smooth sailing. Until I got home.

The way these cap winches work is you back up under them, and then hoist the cap up off the back of the truck. To reinstall, you need to back to up the same spot and drop the cap down. You need to do this with roughly +/- 1 inch of precision. HannieC decided she would come along for the ride, and sat in the back seat while I did the maneuvering. I backed in, got out, looked at the alignment, and then made adjustments. After about the third round of adjustments, HannieC started whining.

Aren't you done yet?
Don't you know what you're doing?
Come on, this is easy. Don't you know how to back up?
Did you do it wrong again? It's so simple. Why do you keep doing it wrong?
Come oooonnnn Dad. You're wasting my time!

Now, as you all know, I'm a very even-tempered person. But every man has his limits when it comes to nit-picking backseat drivers. Finally, I said, "Look. You have two choices. You can be quiet, or you can go in the house."

"But why can't you just do it right?"

"This is hard to do. I'm trying to line it up just right by looking in the mirrors. And it's a lot harder to do if you're constantly criticizing me from the back seat. I don't see you up here driving if it's so easy."

Great. I'm reduced to having a marital spat with my 6yr. old daughter. And people wonder why I hate long weekends.

"But Daddy, if you'd just stop messing it up and do it right, I wouldn't have to criticize you."

"Stop. Either stop, or get out and go in the house."

"But Daaaddy, that's what women are supposed to do. Men do stuff, and women criticize the way they do it. That's what Mommy does, and you don't make her go in the house."

I have no response to that.

I swear I'm not making this up. HannieC, certified super-genius, has latched upon the Meaning of Life just shy of her 6yr-old birthday.

Well, eventually The Mrs. came wandering out into the garage to see why I had been backing up and going forward a couple inches at a time for like 5 minutes. I put her to work as a spotter. I said, "I'm going to back up. You tell me when this lip here gets 1/4" from the back of the tailgate."

Bam. Done in 10 second.

I'm gonna have to send that HannieC to military school.