Thursday, October 1, 2009

Proving the Laws of Thermodynamics

As all y'all know, there are three laws of thermodynamics. They are:
1. Conservation of energy - or, you can't win.
2. Entropy - You can't even break even.
3. You can only lose (technically, it has to do with cooling an item to absolute zero)

Well, this is one of those periods where I am the embodiment of those laws. Spawn has hourly exams at college, husband is sick and needy, housework and business needs and pet and other life needs continue. I'm racing around doing everything I can, but still falling farther and farther behind.

And it's not helped when I make mistakes that take time, energy, and cash to correct.

And every attempt to correct one problem leads to a tangle of problems that turn out to be intertwined. Like what happened when I just wanted to make some tea.

I filled the kettle (oh, the plastic bits on the kettle that cause it to whistle and that pull the whistling part back when I want to pour the hot water out have broken) with water and go to put it on the burner. It dawns on me that the burner has been flaky lately, so rather than start heating the water I take the electric burner out, and see that the connectors are somewhat corroded. Husband goes off to file the corrosion off, I remove the back burner of the same size to put IT in and make my tea, but find its connections need work, too. Husband works on that as well.

Meanwhile, the refector pan under the burner is terribly dirty. I don't want to consider how many pots of whatever have boiled over and burnt on to it - well, on to the aluminum foil I have covering the rusty, corroded reflector pan. I figure I'll take off the foil, wash the reflector, re-line it, and it will be happy and reflective again.

Turns out that there was so much fatty gunk on it that I had to spend a lot of time and energy scraping the foil off of it, and a lot more time washing the gunk off the refector. Then had to towel dry it, then air dry it to prevent MORE corrosion. Then, finally, cover it with aluminum foil (shiny side showing), put the reflector in place, put the newly filed burner in place, put the kettle of water on the burner, and heat it for tea.

Normally the reflectors would have had routine maintainance/cleaning, and even if the burner connectors had needed work it wouldn't have lead to the mare's nest of issues. But once I start getting behind, entropy gets a firm grip on EVERYTHING, intertwines the problems, and anything I try to do takes more time and effort than is typical .... and more time and effort than I allowed for in my plans for the day.

So, while I have three loads of laundry to fold, I can't do that until I remove the hair that the cats have left on the couches, so that when I put the folded laundry on the couches they won't get covered with that lint. If I don't vacuum soon then sick husband will be woken when I do the vacuuming and I'm pretty sure he won't be pleasant about having been woken up.

So, I'm off again, back to work. Laters!


Frondly, Fern

2 comments:

  1. 1.put sick & ailing old man in room with a tv with lots of noise
    2.run vaccuum & suck up cats & their hair. 3.put a sheet on the sofa, fold clothes
    4.clean house & lay down the rules:
    anyone that lives in the house to eat, drink, get ill or want to live at said house, learn to pick up after yourself!

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  2. Someone really needs to find a way to IMprove the laws of thermodynamics. This whole entropy thing is really messing with me!!

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