A day at the farm

Couple of years ago I bought one of those Craftsman socket sets when Sears had them on sale at a good knock-down on the regular price. Every socket you could ever want, in metric and imperial, plus three socket wrenches (1/4, 3/8, and 1/2 inch drives), plus extensions, plus deep sockets...

I was set for life!

Not that I haven't been set for life before. There was not a socket or a ratchet in that kit that I hadn't bought at least once before. But they get lost. They get borrowed and not brought back. They get misplaced.

My rationale for buying this kit was that I'd never have to look for a misplaced, lost, or borrowed socket again. Everything I could ever want was right there in one convenient package!

Plus, at 60% off, it was one of those deals you pretty much had to buy anyway.

So the other day I'm planning a trip into the woodlot with the Stihl and the wood-wagon to fetch a couple of weeks worth of wood. Gotta take care of a couple details first. The wood-wagon has been sitting forlornly behind the woodshed since July. The tractor has been parked in front of the garage since August. Gotta do some battery shuffling to fire up the tractor and get on with the day.

The Escape has been my main wood-fetcher for the past couple of months, but the battery doesn't want to hold a charge anymore. Gonna swap out the battery for the one in the F-150. It's got four flat tires but a strong battery. My original plan when I bought the Escape was to swap the tires onto the 150, and I think the reason that never happened was because it was just way too much fun to blast that Escape around the property... up and down the hills, over the fence-rows, donuts galore in the pastures; hell, I bought the thing for $400 thinking it was a great deal 'cause it had $600 worth of rubber on it, and then I got a bonus couple of thousand dollars worth of entertainment out of it!

But that was then and this was now. I'm gonna swap in the battery out of the big truck, which was new just this past spring (the battery, not the truck). That's when I realized I need a 5/16 deep socket. That's because there's a battery tie-down secured by a couple of threaded rods that you have to undo before you can lift out the battery.

No problem! I've got that complete compendium of socket sizes just a sittin' in the pantry cupboard! I'm ready for any eventuality! THIS MOMENT is exactly why I bought that kit!

So I go to grab it out of that pantry cupboard...

Hmm... not there.

WTF?

Well, maybe I took it out, and although it's highly unlikely, maybe, just maybe, I forgot to put it back?..

So I check every cupboard in the pantry.

I check the wood-shed.

Been doing a bit of furnace maintenance, so I check downstairs.

I check upstairs too... not that I recall having the tools up there, but I'm running out of places to check.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

WTF? I buy this magnificent socket set so I'll never lose another socket again, and I've lost the entire kit???

How the fuck is such a thing even possible?