The Direction of Intention

Twice in the past few months we’ve made a pilgrimage to the local Ace Hardware to seek the wise counsel of Kevin. He is not in a hurry. He listens. He commiserates with the odd issues that arise in a house built nearly 100 years ago. He invokes laughter and settles nerves. He doesn’t view his job as selling stuff. He views his job as helping people like us who come through the door with anxious faces betraying a single truth: we have a pressing problem and don’t know what to do or where to begin.

We returned from both pilgrimages with the magic solution: Backer Rod.

I did not know about Backer Rod prior to our sessions with Kevin. At first glance I doubted Kevin’s guidance, however, after following his instructions, our seeming impossible problem met a very worthy solution.

Our latest pressing problem was the new water feature in our sitting room. There’s a strange phenomenon in the midwest called “ice damming.” Ice overwhelms a gutter while the heat of the house simultaneously melts the underlayer, transforming the ice back into water that has nowhere to flow but inside the house. We first heard the drip, drip, drip at 11:39pm and worked through the night to melt the ice, clear the frozen gutters and popsicle downspout.

And still the water came.

Kerri and I are master improvisers, our solutions are often temporary, triage solutions, that work until the real fix-it-masters can come. In the case of our water feature, the fix-it-master, the gutter man and the electrician (a failed outlet is the real source of our pain, rendering the heating cable in the gutter useless), cannot come until the current ice age retreats and the ice encasing our house melts. Keep in mind that the ice melting is the source of our troubles since it has nowhere to go but into our sitting room.

So we ran to Kevin. He sent us home with Backer Rod, some words of wisdom, and some borrowed confidence that our band-aid solution would get us to the warmer weather while minimizing the river running into our home.

I’m heading out to follow his instructions. If this works, if Backer Rod stems the flow, then I fully intend to elevate Backer Rod to the high status of duct tape, baling wire and hot glue. I will elevate Kevin even higher.

We’ll keep you posted.

read Kerri’s blogpost about BACKER ROD

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Filed under: Gratitude, Merely A Thought Monday | Tagged: Ace Hardware, artistry, backer rod, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, gutters, ice, ice damming, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, story, studio melange, support, the melange, wisdom |