It Broke Free

Our car broke down the other day on the way to work. I left home from work and noticed my front tire looked really low.  So I stopped and filled up the tire hoping the problem would Brake Free. Brake free is my term for fixing it self. I was sitting in traffic on the Marcum bridge and somebody signaled me that my tire was flat. Portland is that type of town and people are nice that way. So 3 long minutes later (they were probably 72 seconds long -you know you have had them) I pulled in front of OMSI and put the wobbling car next to the curb. Quickly a homeless person pedaled up to me on his bike and offers to fix the tire. I once again wondered if the problem would break free again.  But for the life of me I could not find the spare tire and the homeless man quickly grew restless and pedaled on. There I was with a flat tire and with  precious little time to rush home get our son and head off to our beloved soccer teams game at PGE park. Then I thought like a super hero. At the time super hero could have been a term for large hoagie from Pennsylvania. But out of the phone booth I emerged determined to make the footy game.

From droppingtimber.com

So I did the illogical thing at the time and took out the directions provided in my car. The car never broke free or fixed itself. Then I read the directions and actually followed them. All the time thinking about one time when I had gnarled my finger as a teenager changing a tire for my girlfriend on an icy frigid day in Pennsylvania.   But i surprised my self and actually located the spare on the Prius (Toyota hides them to save mileage by encouraging walking when having a flat tire) and changed it with an attitude.

Thank you tire for not breaking free and fixing your self. We made the game and had a glorious evening at the Timbers game.

We just back from Maui on what I would describe a perfect vacation. We had a wonderful young man named Anthony house sit while we on vacation. He was asked to do he usual stuff like walking our very bad beagle, watering the plants during Portland non rain season and just live there and not party too much.

We got back and the house was in an expected disarray when a teen ager stays in your house. But the one thing I did notice is that garbage disposal simply did not work when we got home. I would turn it on and either the entire sink shook violently or the disposal did nothing but hum. I asked Anthony about the disposal and sheepishly said that it shook violently albeit rather surprised that I would notice such a thing.

So I spent the last few days just doing nothing to the disposal (taking an Allen wrench and spinning the nut on the  bottom of the disposal like some direction book I had once read) and still the disposal either hummed or shook the kitchen violently.

Today I woke up early for work and mindlessly put the coffee grounds from the coffee maker into the disposal. In retrospect, I usually dump the coffee grounds into the compost can we have on the kitchen counter but in my groggy state I put he grounds down the drain then Iand mindlessly turned on the disposal.

The disposal had broken free.
It was working perfectly.
It had fixed itself.

It broke free.

As in no charge to fix it when its broken.