Too Cold to Golf

For normal people, the fact that it is too cold to golf is insignificant. But at my parents house, this fact throws a real wrench in the daily routine. My father’s regular weekly schedule includes golfing Monday through Saturday, and watching sports on Sunday. He has winter golf clothes and a heater for his golf cart, and has been known to golf in light snow, so he pretty much can golf all year around. But occasionally, in the winter, there are days when it is just too cold to golf. I asked him how cold it has to be to not golf, and his response was “I don’t think that’s ever happened”. So maybe it’s not the cold so much as the snow making a mess of the golf course. Who knows. But when there are several days in a row when it is too cold to golf, my dad starts to go stir crazy sitting around the house and my mother starts going stir crazy having him sit around. She has purchased lots of sudoku books for my father to do, to help him keep his mind busy and ward off Alzheimer’s, but you can only do so much sudoku. Besides, my dad says instead of Alzheimer's, he has Sometimers, which means sometimes he remembers and sometimes he doesn’t.

I had mentioned to my parents a few weeks ago that one of my toilets was not flushing right and that I was thinking about buying a new one. My father is a pretty good handy man and had replaced a few parts in it, but I was still having problems. Apparently, my parents decided it was ridiculous to purchase a new toilet when the old one can be fixed, and since my dad was in need of things to occupy his time while the snow melts, he decided to give it another try with some different parts. He called me on Saturday night and said he would be over at 9:00 am on Sunday morning to work on it. I asked if he was missing church to fix my toilet and he said yes, because he had to be done in time to watch the Chiefs play football at noon. I questioned whether that was really wise decision making and my father informed me that if he was going to hell, it wasn’t going to be because he skipped church to fix my toilet. Hmmm….can’t argue with that logic. Did I mention that my dad is funny?

This morning I met some friends at Panera to work on children’s ministry stuff for church (church is on Saturday nights so Sunday mornings have become a good time for meetings) and when I got home a little after eleven, an unfamiliar man walked into my house and straight upstairs to my bathroom, where I assumed my father was. I said hi to him as he walked by me in my living room and followed him upstairs. After a few minutes, I realized it was one of my neighbors. Apparently my dad had run into some problems and went to my neighbor’s house to borrow some tools or something. My parents know my neighbors better than I do. I’m not really sure what to make of that.

The time for the Chiefs game was nearing, and the guys were having trouble getting something loose, so they gave up and dad said he would probably have to call a plumber to take care of it tomorrow. Fine by me, since I was assuming the plumber would say I needed a new toilet and then I could say I told you so to my parents. But then later in the afternoon, when I was taking my Sunday afternoon nap (really, what is better than a Sunday afternoon nap?), my dad suddenly appeared in my bedroom (the Chiefs lost) and said he was going to try something different. I tried to ignore him and continue my nap, but after about twenty minutes of some kind of weird sawing noise (I didn’t even want to ask what he was doing), I gave up and decided to get my camera so I could take some photos of this event and see if I could make it into a good story for my blog. And just in case you're wondering, the toilet still doesn’t work.