After putting it off for as long as possible, I finally decided that it needed to be fixed. There's a Lowes right up the street that I would normally have gone to for repair parts, but I've been in a bit of a snit over the window blinds issue. When we first moved into the house, we bought a dozen (or more) wood blinds in a nice, complimentary Oak color. Hogarth was much younger back then, and he too did his fair share of damage to the abode. Chewing some of the blinds was his contribution to the depreciation of the homestead. As he would mar a set of blinds, we'd move them to the garage windows where they were less noticeable.
As the blinds aged, a couple sets of them simply wore out and the closing mechanism failed. Unfortunately, the "spare" blinds in the garage were not suitable for use in the house, so I had to go to Lowes for replacements. The first set that broke were easily replaced, but just a couple of weeks later when another set died, things weren't quite as easy. In the interim, Lowes had replaced their entire inventory of Oak blinds with Walnut, thereby orphaning entire households of Oak blinds all over the city. I tried three different locations before giving up in disgust. Frankly, I was pretty pissed off at Lowes.
When it came time to replace the screen, I took my business to Home Depot instead. I went well prepared - I took a sample of the rubber tube that holds the screen in place ("spline," in the parlance) and a piece of the old screen. It was good that I brought a piece of the spline as there were numerous sizes to choose from. What would have been gooder would have been bringing my reading glasses too. I'm quite far-sighted as it turns out. With my inadequately acute vision, I wasn't able to tell whether my sample was closer to the .125 diameter spline or the .160 diameter spline, the only two options that were even in the neighborhood of what I needed. I opted for the .160 since it looked like the .125 was a little smaller. I also decided to spend a little more on the more expensive aluminum screen over the fiberglass variant, thinking it would be the stronger of the two and I really only wanted to do this once.
Come time to install said spline and I found that it was going to be quite the battle. I really had to bear down on the spline installation tool to get the stuff into the channel to hold in the new screen. It took quite an effort to get only ten inches of what would ultimately a couple of hundred into place. Such an effort, in fact, that the tool slipped and ripped right through the new screen. Argh!
In the interest of personal convenience, I set aside my petulant pout against Lowes long enough to go get more screen material. Interestingly, they had a variant of spline that had been unavailable at Home Depot: .140 diameter. Hmmm. Perhaps that would work better than the recalcitrant .160 size.
As I was checking out, the cashier asked me if I had found everything I was looking for. I replied in the affirmative, and shared that this was my second time buying this stuff as my first effort had gone amiss.
"Oh, did you know that they will install that for you at Home Depot?"
No. No I hadn't known that.
The new screen replacement went well and we had a nice, new screen on the patio door. Until a couple of days ago, that is. Cabot ran through it again.
This prompted me to ask the vet if perhaps young Cabot is far-sighted.
"No," he replied, "it's more likely that he's just stupid."
He said it jokingly, but as we all know, all good jokes contain a germ of truth. I suspect that this may be one of those cases.
Other than that and a constant insistence upon always, always, ALWAYS having something, ANYTHING!!, in his mouth, Cabot is maturing very quickly. In fact, he got his "big boy" collar yesterday.
(Chewing mulch)
(Chewing mulch)
(Chewing on a clump of dirt with grass attached)
(Chewing on a twig)
And he sure does look up to his big brother!
(Chewing on Hogarth)
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