Why are my fingers numb?

It’s not like I fell from another planet and don’t know what cold is,  but somehow I *forgot*.  Or I’m an idiot.

Going out to get the car out of the garage in my shirt sleeves wasn’t a big deal,  mostly since I’ve long been able to wander about in the cold ever so briefly without really giving it much thought.  Emphasis on “briefly”.

Seems that anything more than a few minutes though, and I start to solidify.

It almost seemed like I had discovered cold for the first time.  It’s a helluva thing.

 

One of my big “jobs” for today, is to try and sort out our central vac.  Giving it a major cleaning is a job best done in the out of doors,  since that usually involves copious amounts of cr*p flying around.  A bit of a breeze never hurts.  There’s nobody outside working as most of my neighbours aren't home.  Or at least their windows are closed.  Aren’t they?  Better be.

It was at this point that I realised that a pair of gloves was in order.  It’s barely above freezing out there!

 

There’s certainly nothing wrong with this machine.  It has two motors (yes, TWO) and could probably suck the hind end out of an elephant.  Not sure where that is on the “sucking scale”,  but that’s strong,  trust me.

The thing is,  in our absence over the last almost five years, (that living in Europe thing, remember?) we’ve had *pets* in our house.   Not my pets,  you understand,  but that doesn’t matter,  since their wonderful odours have been left behind in our central vacuum system. 

Oh goodie.

So every time I vacuum,  guess what I smell?  Kind of a “hind end” theme going on there.

It turns out there’s heaps of information on the line,  and so I was doing a little reading this morning.  Well,  probably more reading than needed,  but such is the way of the internet.  Can’t just take five minutes.  That would make too much sense.

After a bit of a sniff test,  I’ve also determined that the smell of pet dander is in the pipes as well.  Now, isn’t that special?  I just need to get me some of them “Lysol doo rags”.   Or something like that.  Well actually,  that would be if your head smells.  We’re talking pipes here.

Something like, Lysol wipes.

Here’s a widdle picture.

There’s also something called Tornado Power Central Vacuum Maintenance Cloths,  but I somehow think they fall under the,  “There’s a sucker born every minute”  category.  Forty bucks?  A little pricey.

Meanwhile,  I heard the whine of the city boys,  coming around to suck up our leaves.  I realise that “suck”, and anything to do with “Leafs” might have you think of a local hockey team,  but that’s not what I’m talking about.

This is a fall event that takes place in these here parts,  since we have copious amounts of trees,  and no real place to dump the leaves.  I’ve mulched up a bunch of them,  but eventually it gets to be overwhelming.  These lads go along the curb and vacuum whatever leafy things you’ve managed to put out there.  Loose, of course. 

So I had to (put on some gloves) and finish off a couple windrows that I started yesterday,  just to try and get the actual *blankets* of leaves off the lawn and out to the curb.

 

That’s the sucker-upper.  The truck was full and had left to do a dump. 

It still seems like there are leaves just about everywhere,  but they do come around again in a couple weeks.  So they say. 

It’s been windy,  so raking leaves can be never ending. 

 

Well,  that’s today’s exciting edition.  Now you know why I skipped four days last week?

 

Keep those sticks on the ice.

 

Thanks for stopping in.

 

 

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