Three Battles

We’ve had a series of battles lately. Three of them, in fact. It sort of reminds me of fairy tales in which a hero must complete three difficult tasks in order to win the reward.

The first battle has been with the heat. The temperature has been in the 90s. That’s just too dang hot. I often think of people in areas that regularly get very hot–near or over 100 degrees. I don’t know how anyone can endure such high temperatures. To each his own, but I prefer chilly jeans-and-sweatshirt (or even cold winter) weather instead of high heat. The heat has made me melt like a snowman. I have little energy.

The mornings have been relatively coolish so we open the windows and turn on fans to draw in the cool fresh air. I think AC air can feel stagnant after awhile so I enjoy opening the windows when we can. When the temperatures start to warm up around noon, we turn on the AC to survive.

I am most concerned for the chickens who pant at night in their coop when it gets hot. I worry even more for the little vulnerable chicks. We are doing our best to cool the coop down a little. EJ fixed a fan near the ceiling to blow out hot air and we put jugs of ice in the coop when it gets really hot, but that’s not much. We considered putting in a portable AC…but we don’t have an AC to put in. (Our house has central air.) We were tempted to put in the free standing AC JJ left behind when he left for Alaska. Technically he gave it to us, but we’ve been keeping it safe for him in case he decides he wants it after all. If he decides he wants it, he probably wouldn’t appreciate it having been in the chicken coop.

The second battle is with our rooster, Richard VI, who has repeatedly escaped the fence for several months. We’ve spent a lot of time herding him back inside where he’s safer from predators. EJ thought about it and finally fastened smaller t-posts to the top of each end of the panel where he’s getting over.They reach higher than the panel and he stretched wire fencing between the t-posts. It’s not very picturesque–it looks like a prison fence–but Richard hasn’t escaped since EJ put it up. I confess I’ve been mocking Richard a bit: “Hey, Richard, how come you haven’t escaped the fence lately? Oh, you can’t? What a pity.” But, then, I think he crowed mockingly whenever he escaped so he deserves a little mockery in return. To be honest, I really like Richard VI. He’s such a character. He makes me laugh.

The third battle has been with Elf 9. Months ago, our washer started occasionally flashing an error code: E1F9 (E-one-F-nine). I turned off the washer, waited for it to erase the code and unlock the door, and then restarted it. But obviously something was wrong. I kept forgetting to tell EJ about it so I finally wrote E1F9 on our little dry erase whiteboard on the door which we use for reminders. EJ saw it and asked “Who’s Elf 9?” so we’ve been calling the problem Elf 9 ever since. “Grrr! Elf 9 is causing problems again!” we say when the washer alarm goes off and the code flashes.

Elf 9 has been increasingly making an appearance and sometimes it takes awhile for the code to go away and the washer doors unlock. Sometimes Elf 9 doesn’t appear at all, while other times it appears multiple times for each load. There are times I’ve wondered if we’d have to wrench off the door to get our wet clothes out. It can take hours to get the laundry done. So late last week I put “Defeat Elf 9” on our To-Do List (which made EJ laugh). EJ researched Elf 9 on the internet and tried to resolve the problem. At first he thought it was the filter but even though we’ve used the washer for 11 years, there was no debris, which he says means that the filter is either nonexistant or wasn’t doing its job because there should be some debris after all that time. As he fought with Elf 9 last week, he was able to finish our laundry but he doesn’t think he has won this war. He says he might end up having to change out the pump or something. Ditching the modern washer and buying a used old fashioned one with no Elf 9 error codes is not off the table.