Trina Machacek: Time to name that thingy

When time is on your side some time is spent doing some of those things you think of doing but can’t do because you haven’t got the time to do them. That’s where my other half and I have recently found ourselves — with time on our hands.

We are kind of retired but not really retired because we don’t know how to be retired. So we continue to live and work at things we know how to do and enjoy doing. OK, my part is still to see the house is in order and meals are served and clean underwear is always in the drawers. That means there are always drawers in the drawers. I also write and am on call 24/7 to help him in his endeavors.

As for him? Throughout his farmer, mechanic, machinist, welder, hardware business working life, every so often he would say, “I have a million dollar idea,” then he’d go onto explain it and sometimes he would even build his invention and for the most part they’re all pretty cool. He got his inventor gene from his grandfather who would build anything he needed. Like fertilizer spreaders and other farm machinery. But we never had the time to delve into taking the step to make his thingies in earnest. Until now.

So a while ago he mentioned the soda we were buying was the most expensive way to buy soda. I was buying 20-ounce bottles of soda for say $1.79. We seem to drink more than a few of those bottles a day and that adds up pretty quickly.

Then one day at the store he sees two-liter bottles of soda can also be bought for $1.79, but they’re kind of a pain in the you know what to pour from when you have arthritis or small kids. So his inventor’s cap comes out of the closet and next thing I know he’s in the living room showing me a handle he has built for the big unhandy soda bottles I now seem to be hauling into my house using my old lady cart because two-liters of soda are heavy, bulky and slippery. Oh, yeah, two-liter bottles are way better than the cute 20-ouncers. But I’m all about saving moolah any way I can.

Of course I had to put in my two cents, uh, my woman’s point of view about the apparatus. It needed to be less, well, less cumbersome, I report. It weighed more than the full bottle. So out in his shop we went and after a trial and error or two trials and more errors we finally came up with a design we think is pretty cool.

Now just as anyone who comes up with a new twist on something to make life easier, the dreams start. We’re going to sell these goodies online and make a mint — we think quietly to ourselves. We’ll be on “Shark Tank” and get four offers. Oh, dreams are the food of life.

I think they should be plastic but since he’s a welder they’re made of metal. They’re going to last a lifetime. While in the production phase of this project and moving forward we needed to come up with some packaging and also important — a name for our thingy.

It seems this should be a snap. But I’m here to tell you naming a whole herd of wildebeest as they skitter across dry African plains in a hundred different directions all at once would be easier than coming up with a cutesy, catchy name for a metal thing that’s a handle for a two-liter soda bottle. Take a sec or two and see what you come up with.

We would come up with a great name then Google it and find someone has already thought of it. But of course their products don’t even come close to being as cool and desirable as what we have. We tried “Lug-a-jug.” Used. “EZ Pour.” Used. “Soda Butler.” Used. Oh, the list was long and the task became laborious. But we muddled through and settled on, drum roll please — “Liter Lugger Bottle Handle.” Cute enough.

I can hear family members in kitchens everywhere saying, “Where’s the Liter Lugger?” Oh, yeah, this is gonna be the biggest thing on eBay!

Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Her book ITY BITS is on Kindle. Share with her at itybytrina@yahoo.com.