Our first fight at the "Rents"

We are currently staying with my wife's parents. They are in their late 70's. They are wonderful people. They are, like most folks of that generation, quite unique and true to themselves.

That being said; my wife and I are attempting to bring some help to them in the form of organization, financial advise, and household maintenance. While my wife excels at all these things, there are certain things left to me. One of those things is garage door openers.

Within the first few days at Vicki's parents it became apparent that their garage door opener was on the frtiz. Since I actually worked on them professionally for two years I felt duty bound to fix it. Turns out that the opener is just old enough and requires just enough parts and labor that a new one is a better option. I had hoped to baby the old one along till Monday, but as life would have it that was not to be. It gave up the ghost today and in doing so presented me with a difficult and dangerous problem.

The limiter switches which control the up and down movement finally died today and left the opener with severe and potentially deadly tension on the cable that is attached to the chain. I ended up on top of my father-in-law's car undoing this mess, cussing my plight somewhat and keeping my head down in case the damn cable broke and tried to take my head off. At this very moment my beautiful spouse came out and attempted to give me advice as to how to proceed. I didn't react to that well and the resulting words were short, curt, profane and ended in her storming out of the garage and not talking to me.

Rather than attempt any more conversation I drove to Lowe's, purchased a new opener, some new rollers and a bar to be used to turn the springs when I balance and adjust the garage door. I am now at the Starbucks a few blocks from the "Rents" house and will finish this post before I return to ground zero. There are a lot more things going on here than just what we fought about and I hope tonight we might talk it out. I've learned to leave things alone with Vic for a while, otherwise it gets way worse before it gets better.

Tomorrow we will visit our old church and then I will install a new opener and tune up my in-law's garage door. I am also hopeful that Vicki and I will make up.

Wish me luck!

The Daily Husband