Possumblog

Labor Day!

In which I, Moron of the House, do sally forth to buy more things.

As you note, no mention is made of the volleyball net in the preceeding entries, because I never got to a point of purchase until Monday, after hearing all weekend how much everyone wanted a net.

OKAY!

So, off to Academy, and I took Catherine with me to help pick it out. She being the most vocal about its necessity. Looked in all the ball racks--soccer, baseball, basketball, football, softball, ballball, even volleyball. No nets. What the?

Had to ask a salesman--"Oh, those are over in camping equipment."

Oh, but of COURSE! Nothing like sleeping out under the twinkling stars wrapped in a volleyball net. So, over to the camping stuff, and sure enough, all sorts of badminton/paddle/tether junk, and volleyball nets. Let's see, they had the Good, the Better, and the You're NOT Going to Believe What Some People Are Crazy Enough To Buy.

Obviously, although I am a moron, I am not crazy--or at least crazy enough to pay THAT much for something that will be outside, so I got the cheapo $17 version. AND it came with a BALL! No way to get anything cheaper without a ball, so now we would just be equipped with two balls.


AND SO ANYWAY, we got that and headed home, where I took it out of its handy carrying pouch. Net. Plastic poles. String of unfathomable complexity. Plastic ball. Whew--instructions.

Which turned out more to be disinstructions. Never have I been so completely baffled by a set of printed words. Maybe I just needed to go outside and see if I could figure it out one I had everything spread out.

First, the poles have to go down into the ground. The poles are lightweight plastic. The ground is made of ground things. All of them a good deal harder than plastic. Thus requiring the first major effort of the morning, digging some holes.

Now, I might not have much, but I got yard tools. Including a pick. An old-timey one, too. Belonged to my folks, who probably got it from a roving band of '49ers. Big heavy thing, but PERFECT for spiking two holes in the ground for the little flimsy plastic poles. Get pick out of Not A Shed, and carefully swing it back and down and make myself a nice square hole. I tried to make it a bit deeper by striking it again, but I only succeeded in making three additional holes adjacent to the first. Fine.

Picked one of the holes, tapped the first pole segment down into the ground. Clipped in the second, and then topped it off with the last segment. That I put on backwards. And had to fix.

Now then, the net.

Ever put up a tent? All those lines and such, and they have to be taut? It can be sorta hard. But on a scale of 1-100, with "tent-putting-up" being about a 50, and building a fast breeder nuclear reactor as 100, the volleyball net turned out to be something like a 116. I don't know why, but there were all sorts of rubber hooks and loops and blidgets and thumsers and libityfloos to make the net tight and the poles relatively plumb. And by this time the sun was hot, and I was already in a Not Good Mood, and the instructions were as inscrutible as Chairman Mao's tombstone, and I needed my hammer out of the garage which resulted in yet more time spent uselessly plundering for it.

BUT, I managed to get the hateful cords and pegs and lines and tension done!

Now on to the OTHER side. Same deal, pick hole, tap in bottom section (lightly--it's plastic you know!) middle section, top section. Now, string the net over into the slot and down with the cord A over the hook 7 while holding sller vleihs under buil norcking less that five inches, without holding while less than moving cord. Tapped in the first peg, then the second peg holding the pole, and the final peg and D'OH!!

Did I mention the little holdy pegs were plastic? Looked a bit like tiny tent stakes. Except of soft plastic. I had just tapped one in, and it apparently hit a rock and the whole thing split down the middle and squished itself sideways into unpeggability.

::sigh::

I knew I probably had something in the garage I could use to fix it, and, in fact, actually looked around a bit. But I was overcome with a fit of pique, so I figured it would be best for all concerned were I to take my leave for a few minutes and go down the hill to the hardware store. Found a big screw eye that would be quite serviceable for the intended use.

Home, and tapped that thing down in the ground with extreme prejudice, did some final adjustments to the strings so that the poles were equally misshappen, and TIME FOR FAMILY VOLLEYBALL FUN!!

We got everyone out and they oohed and aahed and we began to play a few plays. And then the ball (the one purchased Thursday) went over Reba's head and rolled right up to the neighbor's big lummox of a dog, who slobbered all over it.

Blech.

We played some more and actually kept score, and no, I resisted the urge to win at all costs. But something was wrong--the ball was not holding air.

::sigh::

I don't know if it was the rose bush, or the pear tree, or a stick on the ground, but it had a leak, and no amount of pumping would keep it inflated for more than a round or two of serves.

Drat.

Well, at least we DID have the cheap vinyl ball that came with the net, we could use that! We played and played and played for several hours--long enough for Oldest to throw a temper tantrum and storm off, and then for a good long time after that. And then, someone got all full of him- or herself. No, not me. But one of the kids (I think it was Rebecca, but I don't know) absent-mindedly kicked the ball, hard, and it slammed home like a rock into the base of the big running rose bush in the planter by the kitchen. THUNK!

I could almost hear it exhaling its last breath from where I was standing. Big tears welled up in Catherine's eyes--NO MORE BALLS!

Yes, you do guess correctly.

Back down to Winn-Dixie, where this story started, to get aNOTHER volleyball.

They promise to be much more careful this time. I find myself unwilling to put that much trust in their ability to make good on this pledge, for some reason.

Anyway, that was the weekend.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 5, 2006 04:34 PM