Day 220 - Zen and the Art of Screen Repair

Having someone sad to see you leave is wonderful thing.

It's a little less wonderful when they tear through your screens to try to follow you.

The screen that can contain my dog has yet to be invented. She can tear a hole in a screen in seconds, a hole big enough to escape through. Which she then uses to escape through.

My house lives in pretty deep shade, so in the spring and fall, and most of the summer, it's cool and pleasant. As long as I can open the windows at night, that is.

Four paw-shredded screens have been a windfall to the power company. I haven't run the AC this much since I was in a "utilities included" apartment in grad school.

But today I reclaimed my right to fresh air and a breeze that doesn't originate from a big metal box in a closet and blasted out from tin-covered holes in the floor.

Fixing screens is the only handyman-type project I ever saw my dad do. And if he could do it, anyone can.

So you'd think that, after repairing, let's say "several" since the number is embarrassingly high, screens of my own, and a couple for others, I'd have it down. Yet every time I have enough damage stacked up to perform screen surgery, it takes 2 or 3 before I re-remember all of the tips. Just in time to have one screen that is more-or-less right, and that took me within an order of magnitude of the amount of time it should take.

Learning is a weird process. How can seeing something, or doing something, or even just having someone tell us something, rewire the goo inside our skulls?

And why, when it comes to home repair, does it only stick enough for me to remember that I used to know it after I relearn it?

Probably the same phenomenon that explains people signing up for a second marathon.

Good running,
Doug

Numbers: 1.4 miles. Couldn't talk The Middle One into joining me after his "bowling injury".