220122 Sentinel, Making do with what you have.

I have a junk drawer where I keep odds and ends, thinking I may need one of them later, for what, I never know.

Yesterday my seat back on my office chair broke, nearly causing myself some serious injury as I was leaning back in the chair.

I looked at the situation and concluded it was time to get a new chair. I looked closer at the seat back and decided to see if there was something I could use to repair the chair. I was down to the bottom of my junk drawer when I found some old brackets that came with something I had purchased years ago. I went to my tool bin and drug out some tools and went to work, drilling some screw holes to mount the brackets and repair the chair. It took me the better part of an hour to reshape the brackets with the barbed wire pliers that I have had for 30 years now. Then I put some screws in the brackets to hold the seat back in place. Those odd screws have been in the junk drawer for a long time, some have been used years ago and then removed to save for just such occasions as this. I sat in the chair last night and again this morning. One never knows when he will need a good screw.
I have an old knife that Joyce’s father made from a file and he made a leather scabbard for it some 70 years ago. Joyce or I have never used it and likely never will, but it still stays with me and will until I pass away. Besides being a hopeless romantic, I am also a keeper of sentimental things. I have some pottery Annie made for me when she was a little girl in grade school and a wooden piece for wallet and change when she was in high school shop class decades ago. I still use them today. I donated almost all of Joyce’s clothes to the needy, but kept 3 items of clothing she loved along with 3 table cloths she loved and 3 Christmas ornaments she kept. One of them is over 100 years old. I am a firm believer in the power of three in our lives. A mulberry leaf is eaten by a caterpillar that excretes a single strand of silk. That silk eventually becomes a silk gown, there are 3 steps in the process. A 3 legged stool is more sturdy than a 4 legged stool. Chinese foods include 3 basics, broccoli, ginger and garlic and we all know how long they live. I load up on those 3 things every day in my salad. 3 aces in poker wins more hands than they lose. 2 pairs in poker were almost always a losing hand for me, unless they were 2 pairs of 3s. They never lost.