Nothing Wrong

28^th January 2015

Dear Cassi,

There was nothing wrong with my dishwasher. Pickle has simply failed to clean his plates before putting them in the sink and so had clogged a tube under the sink. It cost me ninety five dollars to learn that and a hundred and seventy two to get my dryer to stop chirping.

Pickle did not pay for any of that, but then I guess not hearing him complain about it was enough to keep me quiet. I tell the man over and over not to put food in the sink, scrape your plate over the trash, don’t let food dry till it’s hard, but he never listens.

Normal people, Cassi, clean when cleaning is needed, wash dishes after they use them, and can fold their own towels. I was not brought up as a normal person so these things are hard for me. However, Pickle has all the time he needs to do whatever he wishes and so could do a fair job at cleaning these things.

There are times in my life that I feel as if I’m not human. As if I’m an experiment in trying to be human. It is as if I am the retype of some other manufacture’s trying to make a copy of someone else’s product. This is me, the Neal 3, third experiment where we tried to figure out what makes a human work.

Now I think I know why my mother wanted four children. She was thinking that number four would have been the one she got right.

Keep to the right, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Live Clean

27^th January 2015

Dear Cassi,

My dishwasher has been out of order and I have so been washing my dishes by hand until the repairman comes tomorrow. This has made its largest impact on my smoothies which I make often. A blender is one thing they didn’t have back in the day. As best I can tell, the blender was first patented in 1922 and the first home dishwasher in 1924. This is to say that blenders are commonly washed in a dishwasher.

This is because, at least to me, getting the dang things clean is hard work, and you can never be sure you got them properly disinfected. The heat of a modern dishwasher deals with that nicely. This is not to say that my blender jars are always clean when coming out of the dishwasher, but I am confident in them being disinfected.

I have six blender jars and they’re all dirty. Most have water in them to prevent the goo from drying and making them hard to clean. I have not had this many blender jars dirty since I took over the bulk of the dishwashing.

As I’ve mentioned, I make my smoothies with red wine to cure them, and this may kill the bacteria, but I’m not sure. I never use milk as Pickle is lactose intolerant, but I do use yogurt. The vast majority of certain nutrients in my diet come from smoothies. It’s where I use all my blueberries.

Tomorrow the washer will be fixed and then I’ll likely wash every blender jar at once just to be sure they are all clean. That goes the same for the silver where, colanders, and the cutting boards.

Live clean, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Frankenradio

17^th May 2012

Dear Cassi,

As it happened, the radios at work have been giving out from the time I started and last night the finally died. This was a major pain to me as I need those things to call for folks to come and let me use the lavatory. As it stands I may have a long wait for that but now it was a big problem.

I was caught in hesitation for a night but then looking at the problem I could see that there was nothing for it but to have a look at the radios and see if I could make then squawk and talk again.

I was successful with two radios. Getting them back online was a trifle but at least now we have a total of five working. That gives almost everyone a radio for the night. I had three radios to work with Fix all dead for different reasons.

Two I felt I could save by cannibalizing the third. The first was no problem at all. The battery latch had failed on this device and so I had to break the latch out of another radio. Then I removed the spring from this latch and place the spring-less latch in the old radio. The latch will stay as well as it can but if would fly off with the spring still intact. Once again this radio could hold a battery.

The second unit had lost its send button and the most broken radio still had one. The problem here was that the buttons are glued in and getting them out may crack them.

First, I tried to work the button free with a screw driver but this proved only to damage the plastic some. I knew that I could break the buttons so I didn’t want to press harder. Then I unscrew the antenna and found a screw on bit holding the body to the works.

Removing this ring of steel was a harder task than one would think as a tool is needed that I am without. I wedged the screwdriver in and made the ring turn then bent the body to let the button off. These I taped to the other radio and made it work again.

Sometimes my persistent is an asset, Little sister

Richard Leland Neal