Long Burn

Happy Birthday to Me

Hey everyone, just turned 40. I celebrated by staying at home for 4 days fixing things. Finished the trim around the stairs. Did a lot of work re-renovating the recently flooded bathroom. Got out the winter tires (required by law in Sweden). As is often the case things didn't go as well as I had hoped. For one thing, can you believe it, I spent parts of two days trying to get the bolts out in order to remove the right rear wheel of the car. This morning a committee of neighbors and one pet dog assembled to give me advice. We tried tying first a hockey stick, then a steel pipe and finally a 2 by 4 onto the tire iron in order to get more leverage. The hockey stick flexed too much and the steel pipe buckled. I ended up bending the tire iron itself using a long crowbar. The bolts did not budge. I tapped on the bolts with a smallish sledgehammer a few times but that didn't loosen them up either. WD-40 did not help. Finally one neighbor loaned me his 1600 W heat gun and I blasted each bolt for 5 minutes, and tried removing them with the 2 x 4 wrench, hot andthen cold, without success. Finally I had to call off the enterprise in the interests of preventing a hernia, but not until I had put some serious strain on my back. There was a funny incident yesterday when I had both hands on the tire iron and was pulling with all my might and the iron slipped off the bolt. I launched myself head first into the fence and then fell onto my shoulder--poetry in motion-- my wife thinks I should be made an honorary Stooge. So here I am, 4 decades of walking the earth, 5 cuts on my hands, two band-aids, sore back, bruised shoulder.
I started the first day of my fifth decade (ouch) with High Mass served by the Bishop herself in Lund Cathedral, built in 1103. The first step was to let go of my church anxiety, a psychological state attained by watching your father and sometimes also your mother prepare for services for many years. And I tell you it is a whole 'nother thing to receive the service instead of somehow feeling involved with the presentation of it. These church family issues are my own business but I did enjoy a description on Real Live Preacher ('Advent Comedy of Errors') of what the preachers daughters were up to during the service.
Thanks to friends and family for remembering me on my birthday. Happy holidays everyone.

posted by Matt_J @ 3:09 PM