It’s the Little Things – DIY Fix-It Tips | Hour 3

Dean continues to share his little things, tips and skills list. The secret of using a screwdriver. Dean recaps the show’s tricks, tips and techniques & discusses the different colored meanings of wire nuts.  Dean talks about the splitting of hardwood and softwood & how to avoid it.+ how big should pilot holes should be. Dean explains the differences between a wrench and pliers.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
KFI AM six forty. You're listening to Dean Sharp The
House Whisper on demand on the iHeartRadio app. Welcome home
your Home with Dean Sharp, The House Whisper, where every
week we talk about ways to turn your ordinary house
into an extraordinary home. And you know, this very program

(00:23):
is also what's known as the House Whisper podcast that
you can listen to anytime, anywhere on demand. This very
episode that we're doing right now, this broadcast becomes a
podcast about an hour after we go off the air,
and every one of our broadcasts have done the same
hundreds of episodes, all searchable by topic. It is a

(00:44):
home improvement reference library. You can find it on the
free iHeartRadio app or wherever your favorite podcasts are found,
Apple Podcasts, Spotify. You just search for Dean Sharp or
The House Whisper or Home with Dean Sharp. Find it Boom,
you'll pop up. You'll see my ugly mug right there
underneath our orange logo, and you know you have come

(01:07):
to the right place. So, if you've missed any part
of today's show, and you've missed any of the tips
and tricks of DIY fix it that we have talked
about thus far this morning. You can just go back
and listen to the podcast and listen to it as
many times as you like, whenever you want. And if
you're thinking, that's all great, but what we really need
is Dean and Tina in our house solving some very

(01:28):
specific problems, well you can do that too. You can
book an in home design consult with me and the tea.
You just go to house whisperer dot design. You'll know
when you're there. You'll see Tina's beautiful smiling face right
up front where it belongs, and you'll see my ugly
mug somewhere in the background where it belongs way back there.

(01:49):
You'll know you're in the right place when you get there.
All right, I want to continue our list of DIY
tips and tricks, a very specific list though. Okay, this
is not the kind of stuff that you're gonna find
on YouTube or in regular instruction videos, because these are
not necessarily the steps that you take to get one

(02:10):
project done or another. These are the little tiny things,
the little techniques and skills that you end up doing
while you're doing that project that you realize I'm not
good at this, and I don't really know what I'm doing.
Case in point, let me make it about as simple
and ridiculously simple as possible. I say ridiculously simple. I

(02:34):
don't think it's ridiculous, but you might think, oh my gosh, really,
you're about to tell us how to use a screwdriver, Dean, Yeah,
I am. I am about to tell you that. Okay,
here is why the secret of using a screwdriver is
not as obvious as what a lot of people would imagine.
A screwdriver is a great device, and for the sake

(02:57):
of making like easy, Okay, I don't even want to
talk about the complexities of using a flathead screwdriver with
a slotted screw. Okay. That is what I'm about to
tell you is you take this and you magnify the
importance of these skills ten times. If you're gonna take
a flathead screwdriver and use it to loosen or to

(03:21):
screw in a slotted head screw. Okay, it's so much
trickier than most people realize. But let's start with a
very very simple, basic, and maybe the most universal situation
these days, and that is a Phillips head screwdriver. Phillips
head screwdriver has got that little cross shaped on the

(03:41):
end of the screwdriver. The tip is not flat, it's
divided into four fins. And you know that a Phillips
Head screw has that little cross shaped indentation in it. Okay,
So what's the big deal Dean with that? What's the
big deal with using a screwdriver? You stick the screw
driver in the whole of the screw and you turn it. Well,

(04:04):
go right ahead, and then you can call me later
and tell me all of the hassles about doing that.
Here is the thing, This is what nobody ever tells
you that when you're starting. And let's just say, for
the sake of argument or for the sake of our illustration,
that we're going to put a wood screw into a
piece of wood. And it's a Philip's Head screwdriver and

(04:25):
screw tip. Okay, And yes, I know there are Torques
heads out there that do this easier. I'll get to that.
Philip said, screwdriver has a point to it. Okay. There
are angles, and those angles correspond to the angles that
are down inside that indentation in the screw, the recess

(04:46):
in the screw. Here is the thing. You cannot simply
put a screw on the end of a screwdriver, touch
the tip to a piece of wood and start turning it. Otherwise,
because nothing happens, the screw falls off, the screwdriver comes out.
It's what we call camming out. It just comes out
of the top of the screw. You have to apply

(05:08):
some pressure. But if you apply too much pressure, if
you put put it there and you push really hard
while the screw has yet to go into the wood,
then the next most likely thing that's going to happen
is you're gonna get it a little sideways. It's going
to fall off to the side. The screw goes off
to the side, and the screwdriver goes right into the

(05:29):
wood and makes an ugly indentation, and you've just marred
the surface that you're trying to fix and or a
fix and repair. Okay, yeah, now you know what I'm
talking about. You've been there. This has happened to you,
and if it hasn't happened to you, it will. So
here is the point. A screwdriver requires pressure gradient pressure.

(05:56):
You start with light pressure with you holding the top
of the screw and the screwdriver in thumb and fore finger,
and you get the fatty flesh of those two fingers
around both the end of the screwdriver tip and holding
on to the top of the wood screw itself so

(06:18):
that you're holding it in place. And then light pressure,
not so much pressure that you're going to make the
thing go cock eyed and ram that screw into your
finger and or the wood, but just enough light pressure,
and you begin to turn gently pressurized until the tip

(06:40):
of the screw starts penetrating into the wood, and as
you turn it, the first beginning part of the thread
starts to take and hold How long how far do
you know that you need to go until you can
remove your finger from the screwdriver tip and the the screw.

(07:00):
When the screw has started and it's now standing up
on its own, it's far enough in that it is
now sticking up like a tree standing on its own
out of the wood. Now we reapproach. You still use
your fingers lightly there, and we're going to re engage
the screwdriver and understand that from here on out the

(07:21):
screw is going to encounter more and more resistance from
the wood, but it will become more stable the further
it goes in, and so you as a result will
need to apply greater and greater forward pressure as you
rotate it, so pressure starts light, just light enough to

(07:42):
get it started. And then as you turn the forward
pressure of the screw driver into the screw head so
that it doesn't cam out, meaning spin and strip and
come out of the screw head, you continue to apply
greater and greater pressure until you've got that thing all
the way in. This is something that I as far

(08:03):
as I know, no YouTube video that I've ever seen
has ever covered. But this is how a screwdriver works
well without screwing up the project that you have prepped
so so very carefully. That's how you use a screwdriver. Now,
of course, there are screw heads out there these days,

(08:24):
torquees head screws that cam out far less. They're superior
to a Phillips head screwdriver, and that's why they're by
and large replacing Phillips heads in most places. They're kind
of star tipped, they have more surface area, they create
more tension, they go down straight or and further into

(08:44):
the screw. But the same principle still has to apply
because the further a screw gets into a piece of wood,
the more pressure you have to apply behind it to
take it the rest of the way. And they don't
tell you that. You just think, oh, you just turn
the thing and it goes in on its own. No
it doesn't. But too much pressure up front will screw
the whole thing up way too early. It is a gradient,

(09:06):
kind of a bell curve of pressure as you put
a screw into the wood. All Right, you're either saying, Wow,
you just wasted five minutes of my life, or you're
thanking me forever. Hopefully it's the latter and not the former.
All Right, we got more of these for you right after.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Thanks for joining us on the program today. I am
running down my own special list, a very very special
list of DIY tips and tricks, because you know, it's
the season. It's time for you to get out and
get that honeydew list handled. And I know, I know
you're great at following instructions. I know that you're going

(09:54):
to take your time and you do your research and
you make sure that that project that you're about to
tackle the you've taken everything into account. But I'll tell
you what doesn't end up on those instruction lists or
those YouTube videos or the kind of little things that
I'm talking about today. And sometimes it's the little things
that you have to do again and again and again

(10:15):
and again in a project that ends up giving you
the greatest frustration or the greatest victory. And so that's
why I want to make sure that these little things
are handled and that you know what to do. We've
talked about how to glue wood. How many times do
you turn a pipe thread? You know how much of
a pipe thread has to be covered to know that

(10:35):
it's on right. The kinds of things that you only
start to think about once you're actually doing it and
you realize, I don't know this, I don't know how
far I'm supposed to screw this pipe in here. That's
the kind of stuff that I'm trying to help you
with this morning. Literally, if if you just joined us,
then you just missed me explaining how you use a screwdriver.

(10:56):
And I mean that in all seriousness, because there is
a physical technique to using one adepthly, and so we
talked about that. So you have to listen to podcast.
If any of these great tips and tricks that you've
missed along the way. In the spirit of what I
just described with the screwdriving very quickly, what's the secret

(11:20):
to setting a nail and nailing nails in without hitting
your thumb with a hammer? Okay, it's very very simple.
This one does not take as much time as the
screwdriver tip. It's it's very simply this. The biggest problem
that people have with hammer and nails and their fingers
is the fact that they start off too aggressive with it.
That you hold up the nail and you try and

(11:42):
give it a good whack while you're still holding the
nail and the nail hasn't started to enter the material yet. Okay,
So it's very simple. You hold the nail and you
hold the hammer, and you tap, just tap, tap, tap,
very light tapping on that nail until the nail is
standing on its own, and then you remove your hand

(12:04):
from the crime scene and continue to hammer it in. Now,
I can't guarantee that you're gonna hit that nail on
the head and that you're not gonna mar up the
material around you. That takes a little coordination and experience,
but at least at least if that hammer is gonna
miss it's not going to land on one of your
phalangies and give you a black and blue nail and

(12:26):
so on. So the point is this, you just tap
the nail until it gets started and is stuck in
there standing up on its own, and then you know
that little tapping is never gonna Number one, it's not
a swing. It's never going to miss, and even if
it did miss, it's just a little tap against your finger.
So you just lightly tap it until the nail is

(12:48):
on its own and then remove your hand from the
area before you start swinging that hammer. For real, very
very simple. Something that a lot of people don't know
the answer to is if you're doing any electrical work,
and I don't mean rewiring your house. I just mean,
let's say you're changing out a switch or an outlet

(13:11):
and you run into a situation where there's a wire
nut that you have to undo something, and then you've
got to redo it. Wire nuts. You all know what
a wire nut is, right. They're a little cone shaped plastic.
They're either well, they come in different colors, and they
come into different colors for a reason. There's different gages
of wire nuts. There's orange, there's blue, there's red. There

(13:35):
is when I just cover yellow. These are different gauges,
meaning that wire nuts are raided to have a certain
number of wires shoved up inside them before they twist
and hold on to them, and so on. The package
of wire nuts on the box itself, it'll tell you
that a red wire nut is rated for four you know,

(14:00):
twelve gauge wires or six fourteen gauge wires or you
know whatever, that kind of thing. But the question is
assuming you've got all that right, because that's just instructional.
That's like, okay, that's the technical thing. I've got three
of these wires, and so according to the box, I
should use the yellow wire nut. Okay, got it. Now

(14:21):
I have the yellow wire nut and I have these wires.
How do I know what I'm about to do is
done right? Okay? Because it's not just put the wire
nut on the wires. There's a process there, right, So
it's very simple. Here we go. Choose the right wire nut,
have the wires stripped appropriately to the right depth, very

(14:44):
very important, not too far and not too short. Again,
the box will tell you how far quarter inch, half
inch of exposed wire, whatever the case may be. Use
a gauge and strip the wires to the right depth
the nut on until it begins to grip. All three
wires hold them together, and you feel that it begins

(15:07):
to grip, and then keep twisting the wire nut until
it's what we call bottoms out. When it bottoms out,
it means that those wires have been drawn all the
way up inside that wire nut and they're not going
in any further. And then keep twisting that wire nut
until the wires themselves, the wires that you can see

(15:28):
down outside the wire nut, begin to twist around each
other at least once. Yeah, that they actually spin on.
That's how you know that wire nut is as tight
as it's going to go, and it couldn't go any tighter.
And believe me, you ask any electrician, they will tell
you the biggest problem with DIY electrical work is that

(15:49):
people don't put wire nuts on tight. In fact, the
biggest problem that they have with their own apprentices is
that you guys didn't put the nuts on tight enough.
Down the road or somewhere, something slipped, something wiggled, and
now we're losing contact. So wire nuts go on as
tight as possible, how tight all the way in and
we keep twisting until the wires themselves start twisting around

(16:12):
each other. You don't have to do it ten twenty
fifty times. Just get those exposed wires where the part
of the rubberized insulation that you can still see cross
over each other at least one time, at least once twice,
just to be super safe. You don't need to go
any further than that. And there you go. All right,
I got more for you.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Live streaming and HD everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Yes,
we are broadcast, and we are digital. We are terrestrial,
and we are streaming. We are everywhere. We're right behind you.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Watch out.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
Okay, I'm just kidding your Home with Dean Sharp the
house whisper. Thanks for joining us on the program. Today.
I'm doing a list of those little tiny fix it
tips and tricks that really really really end up making
a difference. Either take your next DIY project and make

(17:16):
it a pleasure, or if you don't understand them, make
it a great frustration, even though you're following the instructions
to a t Because these are not the kinds of
things that end up in YouTube videos or instructions. They
are these tiny, mechanical and sometimes coordinated tricks and tips
and techniques that most people just don't talk about. And

(17:41):
because I care for you, and because I know the
kind of frustration that you experience when you get out
your set of tools and you get right in the
middle of a job and you realize, well, nobody told me.
Of all the things they said, they didn't tell me
how much to do, and how where did I get it?
I get it? So let me get back to the list.
I'm going to try and make this a bit of
a lightning round. I want to get a few more

(18:01):
of these in. How many wraps of electrical tape is
enough when you are using electrical tape, Now, electrical tape,
you know, we use it for a number of different reasons.
Sometimes we use it to repair a nick or a
cut in the or break in the insulation on a
electrical line. Sometimes, after we have put a wire nut on,

(18:23):
will give a few wraps of electrical tape just to
kind of seal up the gap underneath the wire nut
to the wires themselves. A lot of electricians like to
do that as a as a just as a habit
of extra moisture protection and so on. There are a
number of different reasons to use electrical tape, but electrical

(18:45):
tape primarily is an insulating and a repair tool, and
it's very rubbery and it has an insulating quality to itself.
So how many wraps is enough? Wraps? You see? That's
the thing? How many is enough? This kind of gets
down to the remember that old Tutsi pop commercial from
do you remember? Are you old enough like me to

(19:07):
remember that? From like the seventies and eighties, where the
kid wanted to know how many licks does it take
to get to the center of a Tutsi pop? And
he asked the rabbit, and he asked the bear. I
don't remember, he asked several woodland creature. I don't know
why he's asking woodland creatures, but it's cute. Finally, they
all referred him to the owl, and the owl said, well,
let's find out, and he took like three licks and

(19:28):
then he crunched it with his beak and he's like
three So I don't think that was good advice, but
this is good advice. How many wraps of electrical take?
The general rule is this to exceed to meet or
exceed the thickness of the wire insulation. So, in other words,
if you take a look at that little rubbery coating

(19:50):
that the wire has on it, and you're repairing a
piece of missing insulation or cracked or damage, then how
many wraps rapid enough so that the electrical tape wraps
are roughly the same thickness as the wire insulation. And
there you go. That makes sense and you'll be able

(20:10):
to remember that from now on because it's not a number,
it's just matched the thickness of the insulation of the wire.
All right, A pilot hole. You know what a pilot
hole is when you're putting a wood screw into a
piece of wood or some other sensitive material. Putting a
screw into sensitive material. You got to understand this that
screws are basically wedges. They're wedge shaped. And so if

(20:37):
we just take us and a lot of people ignore
this because the wood that they're going into is soft,
it's like pine or it's redwood or something like that,
and you screw a screw down into a piece of
soft wood like that, and you're not going to see
anything happen at first, But then you come back later,
whether it's hours, days, or weeks later, and all of

(20:57):
a sudden, where the screw is there's a crack. It
has split the wood. Now, hardwood will split immediately, it'll
show you the error of your ways right away. Soft
wood might hide it for a while, but eventually the
wood will split along the line of the screw because
it's a wedge and you can't just put that much

(21:19):
pressure into the wood and not expect the wood grain
to split. So how do we avoid that. We use
pilot holes. We drill a hole through the wood so
that we're removing material and as the screw goes in,
it's not wedging and forcing all this material around it

(21:40):
to move out of place. So the question is how
big should a pilot hole be? And it's a very
very simple answer. You take the screw in question and
you hold it up to the light. You want to
ignore the threads. The threads are the part of the
screw that bites into the wood. But inside the threads
you'll see the shaft of the screw going the length

(22:03):
of the screw, the thickness of that shaft. That's what
you match your drill bit up to. Okay, your drill
bit should not be any larger or smaller than the
shaft inside, hiding inside the threads of that woodscrew. You
drill that hole, and as the shaft goes in, it
will not be splitting the woods. And yet the threads

(22:25):
will dig into all the sides in three hundred and
sixty degrees and the screw will hold beautifully. By the way,
it also makes putting that screw in a lot easier
in reference back to screwing screws in with a screwdriver.
So there you go. The pilot hole is the thickness
of the shaft of the screw itself. When fixing my

(22:46):
sprinkler lines, Dean, which a lot of you're going to
be doing. How much glue do I put on a
PVC pipe and how many times do I turn the fitting?
I've heard I'm supposed to turn the fitting, spin the
fitting after putting the glue on. Very very simple, very
very simple. Right, you apply to your PVC pipe after
you have put some primer on. Primer very important first, Okay, first,

(23:12):
a little bit of watery purple primer that opens up
the porosity of the PVC. Put primer on the pipe
and on the fitting. Both then one unbroken band of
glue all around the fitting and the pipe, push them
together and then make a one quarter turn. You turn

(23:33):
it too much and you're wiping the glue away. Don't
turn it at all, and you don't have the assurance
that you've got even spread. So you put those PVC
fittings together with the glue after the primer. One quarter
turn and you're done, and you wipe off the excess

(23:54):
and move on, and don't get the purple primer or
the glue on your hand. You'll be fine. But it's
a mess, and so wear gloves, have a rag nearby
that you can throw away, wipe it all up, and
you're good to go. All right, I got a couple
more for you. We'll do it right after.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
You're listening to Home with Dean Sharp on demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Dean Sharp, the house Whisper at your service. Hey, thanks
for joining us on the program today. It is truly
a privilege and an honor. I really mean that. I
take that very very seriously. I know I say it
every week and it sounds cliche and it can get rote,
but the fact of the matter is, I know how
important your weekends are. I know how hard you work,

(24:42):
and I know how important your home is, and you
don't have to. I sound like the flight attendant on
a Southwest flight. We know you have options when you fly.
We thank you for flying Southwest. Well, I'm just saying
I appreciate your attention and your confidence and your trust
in me coming together to do everything we can to

(25:06):
take your ordinary house and make it an extraordinary home.
Because you know, at home is ground zero for all
of our lives. It's where we live literally, and to
improve upon that place, you know, is to improve everything
about our lives in every meaningful way. And so that's

(25:27):
why we do what we do around here, and I
appreciate it. Just a quick reminder, follow us on social media.
We're on all of the usual suspects, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, x,
at Home with Dean same a handle for them all.
This very program, this broadcast will very shortly after we

(25:48):
go off the air today, become yet another episode of
the House Whisper podcast, which is everywhere your favorite podcasts
are found, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the free iHeartRadio app, wherever
you listen to your favorite podcast and if your home
is in need of some personal house Whisper attention. You
of course can book an in home design consult with

(26:10):
me and the tea. All you have to do is
go to house Whisper dot Design and you'll know you're
in the right place because you'll see Tina's beautiful smiling
face right up front where it should be, and my
ugly mug way in the background where it should be,
and you'll know you're there and you can find more
details on that as we go. All right, very quickly

(26:32):
as we're wrapping up, can you believe another three hours
has gone by? The time flies when you're having fun,
But very quickly, as we're wrapping up the list of stuff,
fix it tips and tricks that we do along the way,
I want to I want to explain one thing to

(26:54):
you before we're done here. And this is something again
that happens in a lot of dy projects. You've got
something that needs turning, tightening, grabbing, spinning, and you need
a tool for this. It doesn't come as a surprise
to me that most people couldn't give me a cogent,

(27:16):
immediate answer as to what is the difference between a
wrench and a pair of pliers. I know you can
picture it in your mind, But if you really get
technical about a thing, that's where things get start to
get a little fuzzy. And I know they get fuzzy
because I've been on many a project where I have asked,
please hand me grabbing that bag over their pliers, and

(27:38):
I have been handed by some assistant let's just say,
a wrench, or I've asked for a wrench and I've
been handed a pair of pliers. And so the question
is what is the difference? And I want to explain
it to you, very very simply. Wrenches can come in
all sorts of shapes and sizes. Okay truly, but as

(27:59):
a general rule, a wrench is part of a uniform
system of mechanical parts that addresses the shape and the
size of another part. In other words, a just imagine
a wrench, your classic wrench like a mechanic's wrench, and
one end it's kind of open ended. The other end

(28:21):
has a circle around it or a circle enclosed end.
That wrench is designed to go on a nut, and
that nut has smooth sides on it that are parallel
with each other. And therefore that wrench is designed with
smooth sides that are parallel with each other. There are

(28:43):
no teeth on that wrench, okay, because it doesn't have
to grab into the metal. It simply slides along the
edge of the nut, lines itself up, and then it
gives you some leverage as you start to spin it
and put the nut, you know, tighten and or loosen
the nut. It's a classic definition of a wrench. You
do not have to do anything other than slide it

(29:05):
on or insert it into the pre shaped mechanical system. Okay,
A half inch nut takes a half inch sized wrench.
A three eight s nut takes a three inch sized wrench,
and you put it on there. Some wrenches are adjustable
end with that little spinner at the end, so you
can move the jaws back and forth to fit the nut.

(29:26):
So you can have one wrench that fits a lot
of different sized nuts, but the principle is still the same.
A pair of pliers inevitably has some kind of teethy
grooves on it, because pliers are really all about non
uniform systems. This thing is weirdly shaped, or you have
to grab two of them at the same time and

(29:46):
twist them, or it's round, or it's oblong, or whatever.
Pliers are all about grabbing onto things that aren't necessarily
uniform and structured. Pliers almost always have teeth on them
because they need to get as good a grip as possible.
And most importantly, pliers are almost always dependent on the

(30:06):
strength of your squeezing them for their effectiveness. Now you
think about that wrench. That wrench slides onto a nut,
you don't have to squeeze it, all you have to
do is turn it. Okay, so your hand grip is
not dependent upon its effectiveness or the other way around,
I should say. But with a pair of pliers, the
degree that you can squeeze it and the strength that

(30:28):
you apply in the grip of your hand to hold
it onto that uneven, non uniform surface is directly related
to how well those pliers grab and how well they
do their job. So yeah, there's a difference between wrenches
and pliers. And there you go. And that's the last
thing I have time to tell you today on the broadcast.

(30:52):
And I hope that these things have been useful to
you and beneficial to you as we've been going along here. Okay,
wrapping it up, I'm gonna leave you with this thought today.
Some of you have noticed that in the past few
weeks there have not been too many closing thoughts at

(31:14):
the end of the show, and that has sparked a
bit of concern among some of you, and perhaps a
question or two as to whether everything is okay over
here or we're changing the format of the show. No, no, no,
and yeah, there have been some things, but TEENA is okay.
I'm okay. Let's just say we've had some unexpected seasons

(31:39):
of loss and pain that have kind of crossed paths
with us here. Some of our close friends have suffered
some loss and some pain recently, some of our family
has suffered some loss and some pain recently, and some
loss and pain have hit us too. And that's all
I'll say about that, because I don't need to say more.

(32:00):
Apt At a couple of weeks ago, a dear friend
of mine sent me some beautiful prose by a woman
named Rose Marie Tramer that probably expresses where I'm at
with all of this better than I could, so I'm
going to read it to you. She writes this, She said,
I want a word that means okay and not okay,

(32:24):
and more than that, a word that means devastated and
stunned with joy. I want the word that says I
feel it all at once. The heart is not like
a songbird singing only one note at a time. It's
more like a tufin throat singer, able to sing both
a drone and simultaneously two or three harmonics high above

(32:48):
it a sound the Tuvans say that gives the impression
of wind swirling around rocks. The heart understands swirl. How
the churning of opposite feelings weaves through us like an
insistent breeze, leaves us wordlessly deeper into ourselves, blesses us

(33:11):
with paradox, so that we might walk more openly into
this world that is so rife with devastation, and this
world so ripe with joy. Yeah, I think that's a
good way of saying it. The heart understands swirl. Yes,
I have a swirl on my forearm. I resisted for

(33:34):
a long time, but now and forever I have a
tattoo of my own design on each of my forearms.
They are simple images stick figures. In fact, they are
modeled after ancient Native American petroglyphs. The one on my
right arm is simply the image of a man with
uplifted arms and swirling above him and in him. Is

(33:56):
the great mystery of life, depicted as a spiral, a swirl.
It is the ancient Hopey image of the whirlwind, and
something powerfully felt but unseen, present but out of reach,
constant and constantly changing, dizzying, difficult, and beautiful all at once.

(34:20):
Part of what it represents to me is the familiar
and the unknowable. Part is how life sometimes throws everything
at you all at once. So yes, I agree with
Mss Traumer when I tell you how I'm doing. I
too want a word that means okay and not okay

(34:40):
at the same time, a word that means devastated and joyful.
But also maybe I don't need one, because I suspect
you know exactly what I mean. The heart understands swirl.
So not sure there's a message here, except perhaps to
update you, to remind us all that seasons come and

(35:02):
seasons go. Pleasure and pain, joy and grief. They come
and they go. But our hearts are big enough, and
with a little help from our friends, they're big enough
to hold it all. The heart understands swirl. Wounds are real,
but a heart can heal and a heart can find

(35:25):
its way back to building itself a beautiful life. And
so I'll leave you with that today. Get out there,
enjoy this beautiful spring day or whatever the weather is
offering you today. Make this the most important day, because
it's the day that's in your hand. And we'll see
you right back here next weekend. This has been Home

(35:48):
with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune into the live
broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from
six to eight Pacific time and every Sunday morning from
nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app