Fans Cool People, Not Rooms

The mantra of the cost-conscious retiree as she turns off the fan before stepping out of a room.

This morning I was thinking about the new screen porch to come and wondering what kind of screen will be used. I know it will be metal, but will it be as hale as the old-fashioned screens in many of the windows in the house? I tapped the screen in my mother’s bathroom: quite robust. Very robust indeed. Impenetrable, in fact—because there was a whole pane of glass immediately behind the screen. Sheesh.

Much of that fresh air I thought I was enjoying was illusory. I wondered why the paint smell was lingering so determinedly in the bathroom. I went around and checked the other windows in the house and found that the majority were the same. What I thought was a screen inviting the breeze in was a solid pane of glass.

In the afternoon, my sister came over to examine the windows with me, with the upshot being that while some WD-40 or a bit thicker lubricant might ease things for certain windows in the short term, it is probably time to shop for windows. For each window, the screen has to go both up and down, and the neighboring pane of glass has to go both up and down. Not even one of the four is possible for some of the windows. Or, to be precise, I do not know if the thing will come down because, for instance, it cannot be made to go up.

I fetched my all-purpose tool and was able to fix the big gap in the living room window that was no doubt inviting a lot of bugs to come in. My sister said she herself would have used a wrench instead of a hammer, but in this case, it did the trick.

I went today to Ricewood to have lunch with a friend. With Morgan Wallen in mind, I took Packard instead of Washtenaw, which turns into Stadium Blvd. I was correct to identify this as a potential problem. While there was no slowdown at all getting to the restaurant via Packard, right across the street from Ricewood were two women advertising event parking for $60, 1.3-mile walk to the stadium then required.

I took my sister to see my neighbor’s mesmerizing lawn extension and she also thought it was gorgeous.