A few weeks ago, I accomplished a long held goal when I met the inventor of Sonic Bloom and visited Hazel Hills Nut Tree Farm in Wisconsin.
I am halfway to achieving another odd goal.
Today, I bought a chest freezer.
I had decided to buy a 7 cubic foot unit from Lowe’s but as a last ditch effort, I responded to two (or should that be tutu) ads on Craig’s List.
A women from Liberty, MO called me back. She had a Kenmore freezer that was 4′ wide. That was a foot longer than I wanted.
However, when she told me that it was one foot deep, I became interested. I haven’t seen one like that. Most of them are about two feet deep. That would really fit our balcony very nicely.
So, I drove 45 minutes to her house, walked in the door and was staring at a two foot deep freezer!
“I thought you said it was one foot deep?”
“It is.”
“That’s not one foot.”
“But I measured it!”
What was I going to say? “Woman, you can’t read a tape measure!” That wouldn’t be very nice.
What was I going to do? Turn around and drive 45 minutes home?
It looked to be in good condition so I bought the freezer.
It wasn’t until I moved it into place on our balcony that I remembered that our apartment complex has a rule that you can only have patio furniture on the balcony!
Why didn’t I think of that earlier? I could kick myself…
But what good would that do? It’s not like that will make me smarter the next time!
Then I got an idea…
The spirit of the rule is to prevent people from turning their balconies into a storage bin. So…
The way I see it, if I make my freezer invisible, then I should be in compliance with the rule.
Kind of like Moses’ parents…
Pharaoh commanded them to throw their baby boy into the Nile river…
He never said that they couldn’t make a basket and cover it with pitch!
So I went to Home Depot looking for my basket. I saw a sheet of wood siding that was painted nearly the same color as the apartment siding.
Hmmm, I could cut that and make it into a fake half wall…
Sure enough, when I put it in place, presto, my freezer disappeared. You cannot tell that there is anything there! In fact, since we are on the third floor, it looks like a clean patio with just our table and chairs on it!
The dream is still alive!