Communication

Tina has been fairly successful saving diapers. I made the decision for her to stop using cloth diapers, so her life would be a little easier which means that we are using disposables. Tina is saving diapers by attempting to train Lou to use the toilet. At 3 years old it's about average time to learn. With his Down Syndrome, we are not quite sure what to expect. He seems real smart so she's giving it a try.

She has put him on the toilet a number of times today and after no longer than five minutes at a time sitting on the toilet, he went poo twice and pee thrice. Now the next additional step is to get him to tell us when he has to go. Sign language seems to be the best way right now. He is saying please in sign language now and he does understand some Creole and English.

Boring car stuff… (with a good lesson learned at the end)

Today was supposed to be a putz-around day. I was going to work on the parking brake of the Canter because it is currently not functional. But, I ran into the guy who bought the rear brake cylinders for the Canter and so we started working on that. After banging my head twice pretty good (chock up one reason for having hair – padding) and initially installing one of the cylinders upside down and stripping one brake line, I was correct in saying that installing the cylinders on the passenger side would not help the brake issue – the pedal still goes almost all the way to the floor. Also, in the process I learned how the former driver-made-mechanic bleeds brakes. It was not the right way, but that is not is causing the problem.

Now I am thinking that the master cylinder is the problem and it may need to be rebuilt or replaced. The truck is a 2004 and has only 42,000. It’s strange because there is so little room in the front. The driver and passenger actually sit in front of the front axle which leaves little room for parts. I think that will be the next step in trying to resolve the issue. So far only the passenger side rear brake cylinders have been replaced unnecessarily, so not much has really been lost or wasted.

That took all morning and I was tired and discouraged, so I didn’t do any more mechanic work. Also, I was humbled in that I was thinking that something the driver-made-mechanic did was really odd, backwards, and unnecessary. After he humored me by letting (and actually helping) me do it my way, I realized that what he did was necessary to get the parts apart. If there were no language barrier, I would have figured this out right away and not made any negative assumption regarding his methods. I would have simply asked if what he did was necessary.

What amazed me the most was that he was more willing to humor me in what I was doing than I probably would have been if the tables were turned. I probably would have insisted that it been done my way and he would have never learned (like I did). Not only did he not insist that it be done his way, he helped me do it my way (the wrong way which created unnecessary work). My learning curve is steep.