Boud abhors a vacuum

Wildly windy day, neighbors busting in all over, very welcome though surprising, one saying I need the ladder from your loft, already halfway up there with his helper to get it for some vital work happening next door.  One bringing lovely spicy food, and announcing her birthday and wanting my blessing for it.  To me that consists of a massive hug and kiss and wishes, and a fervent wish I'd known earlier..

Anyway, on the way upstairs to see if I have any little something she might like, I realized I hadn't watered and trimmed out the upstairs plants, so I did that, and made a bit of leafy debris on the bedroom floor. No problem, I have a trusty vacuum cleaner right there.  Plugged it in, and it sucked up all the leaves then sent them all flying back in my face.  Oh.

Probably a clog.  I unplugged, learned how to take off the footplate, removed the little interior hose, riddled it, nothing in there, no clog, put back the footplate, not without some sweating and cursing.  Tried again, still shooting debris all over the room gracefully landing everywhere.  Oh. And the main part wouldn't hug the floor right.  Oh. Took off the footplate again, getting good at this, took out the small hose, put it back more snugly, hoping this was the answer.  Which is sort of was.

Except that the cleaner was still emitting, not accepting.  Got out the book that came with it many years ago, see there's a reason to keep these things sometimes.  And went through all kinds of studying, having done all the things they suggested at this point.
Hm.  On the point of saying, out with this vacuum, out I say, I noticed the diagram of the fully organized one.  And noticed that the hose which is supposed to take the debris in and keep it there, was detached and had been left in the wrong clamp.  

 See that pipe thing running down there, now correctly plugged in, into the base of the unit, the hose coming out of the top of it?  It and the one on the left had got reversed.  This does not work other than to give debris a quick round trip back onto the floor in a new place.

Ah, put it in the right place, plugged in again, and now it works.  It would have been very good to notice this before all the strenuous taking off and putting back of footplates, but anyway I know how to do that now.  This is a desperate attempt to rationalize things, but doesn't cover my ineptitude.  Actually I think I just qualified for a cabinet position in DC.

And I realize that this abhorred vacuum caper was the aftermath of another exciting appliance adventure earlier in the week.  That was when two friends helped with my broken down clothes dryer, which we all concluded was clogged (my week for clogs, should learn clog dancing, really) on account of hammering on the roof having dislodged a mass of lint back down the hose into the machine. 

They were a little at odds, one wanting to dismantle the entire thing to see it better, one insisting we should check first in case it was simply clogged with damp lint.  Guess which was the male friend...
So, by the time we'd blown through the back and sucked through the front, and both friends and the landing were liberally decorated with dryer lint, the vacuum had seen good service. One of the friends reassembled the various bits she'd used, and that's when the hose got out of commission.

No pix, enough hot air from the dryer and the friends without adding in unflattering pix of them valiantly trying to deal with each other and the dryer, which is now working a treat.  They're back on speaking terms, too.  Throughout this activity, we had an interesting discussion on how we would run the country better than anyone who is on the point of trying to.  Actually, since two of us are GOP and one a Dem, we were a model of civility about the whole thing.

It's been quite a nervy week, what with the national scene, about which let's not talk just for a moment, and the roofing drama, and the dryer breaking down, and the neighbors breaking down over their struggles to get their houses ready for roofing and then the vacuum.  Art cannot exist in a vacuum.

So though nature may abhor a vacuum, she's nothing compared to Boud at the moment.  Fortunately I didn't call in any friend for help and look even sillier than I do now, when they would have taken one look and reorganized the hose...

However, all is not dark.  Remember that nice little table I found at the dumpster?  turns out it was handmade by my contractor/artist neighbor years ago, no room for it in the runup to the roofing cleaning, and though he had noted how fast it vanished, didn't know I had it.  I emailed him with a pic of it in situ, and everyone's happy about this.
 
My cats are bookending me in a friendly way, explaining that the various breakdowns weren't their doing, and I'm going to have a teatime with lemon bars any minute now.  The bars have been going down very well!  Handsome Son polished off a few, and birthday neighbor had several the other day and texted three times with her reactions. 

And now I remember I was on the way to check out the stash of completed stitchery to see if there's anything she might like.  I wonder if I dare try again. You never know what challenge I might find. It's dangerous going upstairs in search of a little present.