D.O.P.-T.

[weofodthignen]

Yesterday evening I opened a Yule gift from my brother and sister-in-law: a circular wall-mounted clock with the cycle of the Wiccan year. We've been jigsawing together in the evening since the COVID lockdowns started, and the housemate keeps having to check her cellphone to see what time it is, so I suggested we put it where it can be easily seen from the dining table, where we do the jigsaws. A hunt ensued for a hammer. She found her stock of nails in a very grimy box in the cold garage, but couldn't find her tools, which she thought she'd moved out there. I couldn't find my hammer where it used to be in the slightly less grimy basement. I opened further mysterious and filthy plastic storage tubs in the garage for her, revealing saws, awls, and much else, but no hammer. After much handwashing, she was about to use a ritual hammer (we each have one of course), when I insisted on searching in the non-garage corner where she used to keep her tools before a shipment of Meccano came in and displaced them. As I suspected, she'd forgotten about a long, red, metal toolbox which when dusted off and opened, proved to have three standard-sized hammers in the bottom compartment. But not before she'd dropped it on her thumb. So while she applied ice to the thumb, I fed the clock a battery and set it. Then, having identified a suitable position on the dining-room wall, she set about hammering a nail into the plaster. But was unable to do so; she just made a big round hole, and couldn't get the nail to go into the underlying wood. So we gave up and I instead removed a paper lei she had hanging on another wall, and put the clock on that nail. The lei is now on one of our two Santa Odins on top of a bookcase; he looks a bit embarrassed. And I had to reset the clock because it turned out the design wasn't straight with respect to the top of the nail hole on the back, as I'd assumed it was, so I had it an hour off. But it's up now!