One!

I came wobbling back home from my first Monday back at work since vacation. I say 'first Monday' and not 'first day' because I was corporeally present during the previous Thursday and Friday, but I was not present mentally. And the week coming up isn't shaping up too well, either.

I figured I'd get back from vacation on Thursday, bounce through catch-up stuff at work, come home and start applying all of the pent-up Bus-buildin' & fabricatin' enthusiasm that had been building while I was on vacation. (Clarification: My employer considers this vacation, since I book time against it, don't show up and get paid anyway. I do not personally consider it vacation because I am an introvert and this trip was to share one house in San Diego with most all of my wife's relations living in California. (15 people: some elderly, others senior, middle age, young parents, children and toddlers) for a week straight, plus assorted dinner guests occasionally raising the population to 21 for meals under one roof for six days. All lovely people, but we don't really go anywhere, we just sit around sweating (no AC) with occasional relief dips in the pool.

Nuts. That wasn't vacation. That's the relational equivalent of Chinese Water Torture. There isn't even anywhere to hide to read a book. The closing weekend, my wife and I were scheduled to decamp with my kids (still not a vacation if I have to ride herd on them) to Los Angles/Thousand Oaks with her brother and his family, who are all introverts, thank God. The relentlessly close quarters finally got to my son who had a grand-mal freakout which disqualified him from going, so my wife and I did the sensible thing when two parents have two children: each take one kid and go to opposite corners. I went to LA with my daughter and my wife stayed in San Diego.

Don't get me wrong...I love my daughter, despite the congenital defect of being an extrovert and a delusional (even for a 7 year old) narcissist. I love my brother-in-law, his wonderful wife, and my delightful nephew. But this still isn't vacation in the 'I get to do what I'd like to do' sort of way. Since every single vintage VW shop in the state (most of which are in LA) was closed for the long Federal Holiday weekend, there wasn't any place I could go that fed my vintage vehicle habit; even the perpetual car shows that seem to run from March to November in California were all shut down for the time I was in state. In lieu of being able to move my much delayed project forward, I decided to push sight-seeing for my daughter, who fancies herself an adventurer. So I gave her some adventure. (Cue fright music here.)

We drove South on Rt. 23 over the Santa Monica Mountains, what is considered to be one of the more notoriously dangerous roads in the state, as its mere 12 miles is repleat with wicked twists and mostly unguarded drop-offs into deep canyons while climbing and weaving up and up to a height of 2200ft. With foothills aplenty and near the ridgeline, you can see clearly to the Tehachapi range about 50 miles North-NorthEast, or 180° to the South and see the Pacific Ocean stretching out to the horizon.

Absolutely...blew...her...mind. Her biggest sense of scale previously has been driving the Walt Whitman Bridge over the Delaware River into Philadelphia. Mind officially blown.

Of course, that only used up about 90 minutes. So we continued down the mountain to the Pacific Coast Highway, parked by the side of the road, slipped on swimsuits, and went in the Pacific. At a surf beach. Bad idea. Bashed against rocks, my prescription sunglasses are swimming with the fishes, and I just about lost her (and she, me) to the ferocious undertow. Nobody said "Adventure" was safe.

So for ten days of declared 'vacation' I got one day off my leash, but with the proviso that whatever I do, it has to be safe enough, interesting enough, and mundane enough to justify taking my easily bored seven year old along.

When we returned home, I was chomping at the bit to 'do the next thing.' But things were broken, or that needed fixing, and nobody feels like cooking, and could I PLEASE clean up some of the jetsam in the bedroom. In a foul mood, I slogged through the piles in the bedroom and found the long ago ordered oil separator plate (and the weirdy-special 5.5mm broached button head bolts from Subaru) all of which replace the stock plastic (PLASTIC!?!) plate which is prone to leak like a wicker basket. Having lost the evening cleaning, I set the parts aside for installation, as the one thing I have learned in spades is to never go out to do delicate work when you are tired, angry, and stressed out. That is a recipe for broken pieces, ruined tools, and psychological meltdown. It can wait ONE night.

Except it was the same drill last night. Seeing that I was starting to look a little crazed, my beloved told me I was off my leash for the rest of the night and I scooped up the parts and headed for the garage before she changed her mind.

The oil separator plate replacement is about as idiot simple as they come. 6 screws & plate removed and tossed, clean the mating surface of old sealant, then Permatex Ultra Gray for the new seal, then apply 5 bolts randomly and one 'special' where the arrow points. Torque to 5ft/lbs.

I cleaned that mating surface until it was a narrow, curvy mirror letting all of my pent-up OCD out on it because the spot is a notorious leak point which cannot be accessed in situ, so the plate must be installed before I can transfer the engine to the hoist or add the flywheel or anything else. In project management speak, this was a 'blocking' procedure that prevented any other move to be made.

Having buttoned everything up, I marched back into the house and announced "ONE!"

"Sorry?" My wife looked up from the game on her phone she was noodling with while not attending to a baseball game on the TV. Both are there for her distraction, the same reason that I work on old cars.

"ONE thing is done. After weeks of immobility, I just got ONE LOUSY THING done."

One. Yet, it was the next one upon which all others waited. So in the totality of the project, it is a barely a pimple. But in this moment, straining at the leash before beginning major work to install the engine, it was the next thing, even if it was the only thing I've been able to shift in a month. Between nothing and something...I'll take one.