accidents

Inventive Issues

/ Diane Henders / 41 Comments

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but curiosity is its indulgent grandparent.  You know; the grandparent who feeds their grandchild as much candy as s/he can hold and then returns the child to its parents ten seconds before the kid spews technicolor vomit all over the new rug.

(For the record, I thought my mom was remarkably heartless when I stumbled in the back door many decades ago and announced, “I don’t feel good.”  I was looking for a hug and some sympathy, not a bellow of, “GET OUTSIDE!”  I didn’t make it in time, of course.  This is one of the many reasons why I never had kids.)

Anyhow…

Hubby and I are both inventors.  We’re blessed (or cursed) with the kind of rampant curiosity that frequently leads to… *ahem* …interesting results.

The problem with inventing stuff is that you usually don’t get it right the first time.  Or the second.  Or sometimes even the tenth.  Our house is like a cross between Hogwarts School of Magic and a lunatic asylum: a place of sudden loud noises, unidentifiable odours, and shouts of triumph or chagrin.

Most of my experimentation is culinary, so it’s generally pretty unthreatening (unless you’re Hubby, who has an automatic gag reaction to garlic and curry).  I love to create new recipes, which is wonderful when I perfect the new dish; but not so wonderful when I end up with three saggy, soggy gluten-free cakes that taste fine but have the texture of shredded paper marinated in half-set wallpaper paste.  (I did finally get that recipe right, though!)

But I’ve never actually risked our health or safety.  Unlike Hubby.

He’s an electronics genius; but if one of his inventions goes wrong there could be showers of sparks, the resounding SNAP! of an electrical breaker tripping, and/or the throat-closing reek of scorched insulation.

Which is why, when I was upstairs sewing the other day, I only had a momentary thought of, “Gee, this serger is starting to smell a little hot” before I bolted up from my chair and dashed down the stairs, following the ever-increasing stench of burnt plastic and yelling, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?”

Surrounded by a faint miasma of smoke, Hubby gave me a sheepish grin.  “Don’t worry, my power supply just tripped the breaker.”

He carried the carcass outside and we opened some windows and turned on the fans.  But the smell didn’t seem to be dissipating.

We prowled through the mancave and inspected the surge suppressor and outlet that had been connected to the offending device.  Nada.  But the smell wouldn’t quit.

After sniff-testing the mancave several times over the next few hours (and I can’t recommend that as a pleasant Sunday-afternoon pastime) I finally discovered that the culprit wasn’t one of Hubby’s inventions at all.  One of his PC fans had seized, and it was crouching there smouldering quietly and waiting for night to fall so it could kill us in our sleep.

We banished it outdoors in disgrace, but I didn’t sleep easily that night.  I kept imagining the firefighters questioning us while we huddled outside our burning asylum house:  “But didn’t you smell smoke?”

“Well, yes; but that’s normal…”

Any inventors in your house?

* * *

P.S. Just hit 75% on Book 13, and I hope to announce a release date soon.  Woohoo!

I’m A Hoer

/ Diane Henders / 19 Comments

I admit it.  I’m a hoer.  Now that the weather is beginning to cool off, I’ll soon pack it in for the winter, because it’s pretty much a fair-weather pastime for me.  But most nice warm days in the summer, you can find me by the side of the road, waving at all the passing cars.

A few weeks ago, I even caused an accident because drivers were gawking at me.  That’s no mean achievement, when you consider the fact that I was out in the middle of nowhere, and the average traffic load on that road is about one car an hour.

I’m talking, of course, about hoeing my garden.  Wait, what were you thinking…?

And before you ask, no, I wasn’t wearing anything gawk-worthy.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Dirty, baggy jeans and T-shirt, with a too-big long-sleeved shirt over top, along with my white Stetson (I’m from Calgary, I can get away with it) and a pair of geeky sunglasses.

I have a big vegetable garden by the side of the road at our acreage outside town.  I don’t know what the protocol is these days, but when I grew up in the country, you waved to passing cars, whether you knew the driver or not.  So I waved, as usual.

Apparently, the two drivers were lost, and the one in front decided to stop and ask for directions at the same time as the one behind turned to wave at me.

Seconds later, there was a crash, and then I was gawping like an idiot at the sight of two cars mashed together on an abandoned gravel road in the middle of nowhere.  Pandemonium ensued as one of the passengers went into hysterics.

I’ve never actually witnessed hysterics in real life.  If I get a Chrysler suppository or some other unpleasant shock, I’m more the ‘swear-loudly-and-hit-something’ type.  So observing hysterics first-hand was… enlightening.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt, the drivers apparently remained friends, and the two cars limped off into the sunset.  I think I heard one of the drivers mutter something about giving up and going home.  I stood there, hoe in hand, feeling vaguely guilty about the whole thing.

I’ve heard that hoeing is a dangerous undertaking, and now I understand why.  So if you happen to pass a badly-dressed middle-aged woman working in her garden in the country, please don’t be offended if I don’t wave.

Just throw money.  I’m a hoer, after all.