Adventures in Plumbing

Spouse and I have slowly been updating the homestead. Spouse is a whiz with carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and other things that need to be done around the house. This has saved us time and money, and also provided instant gratification. Over the years, he has finished off an upstairs, tiled multiple floors, installed toilets, sinks, and showers, painted and wallpapered, wainscoted, plastered, trimmed, and assembled toys from Santa on Christmas Eve.

This weekend we decided to replace the 26 year old dual control kitchen faucet with a single control. Spouse has set our water temperature to the hottest possible so that at 5:00 am on a freezing cold winter morning I can still have a hot shower. Spouse and I have developed a knack for avoiding being burned when using the sinks, but others have not been so lucky. So the trip to the plumbing aisle was really a mission of mercy. We chose our favorite, a Moen, and headed home. Coupled with a trip to the dump that morning, that was enough excitement for the day, and we decided to start on the project first thing the next morning.

While I emptied the cabinet of cleaning supplies and 87 dish towels, spouse gathered the tools and checked the parts against the list in the box. There was one extra part, but we figured its intended location would become clear as the operation progressed. Under the sink spouse went, and started doing his plumbing thing. He removed the old faucet and squirty hose, which was easier than it could have been since he pretreated with WD-40. I think WD must stand for Wonder Drug. The old hardware went into the trash, and spouse was ready to install the new satin-finish single control.

Spouse gave me my assignment, "hold it straight", and the talking part of him disappeared under the sink. I can do this, I told myself. I gripped the base of the faucet and prepared to hold on NO MATTER WHAT. It soon became evident that plumber's assistants should not use hand cream minutes before they start a job involving stainless steel. The faucet was turning in my hands, not staying put as ordered, and I braced myself for some serious man-talk from under the sink. Worse yet, I realized that the faucet actually had four moving parts. Was I supposed to hold all four parts at the same time? I know my hands are good sized, but I didn't think they were up for the job, particularly in their current supple and smooth state. "Hold it straight" didn't quite address the situation I was up against, but when a man is plumbing, an assistant is hesitant to disturb him with silly questions. So I didn't. It might have saved us some time if I had, but spilled milk and all that...

Spouse got that beautiful faucet installed and in working order in about an hour and a half without breaking a sweat. Days later there are still no leaks. The man knows how to plumb. But I think I'm going to retire as a plumber's assistant. It's time to move on to something else, like chopping firewood or building a stone wall. And I'm skipping the hand cream until AFTER we're done.

Halloween Humbug

Halloween is one of the best holidays for kids. I enjoyed traipsing through the dark, tripping and falling over random items in yards or the roadway, with my siblings and friends, and once we reached 6th grade we were allowed to go to Brady Hill where mountainous piles of candy, especially the coveted full-sized candy cars, awaited all those hearty enough to scale its steep hill. It was the biggest neighborhood around, with dozens, maybe hundreds, of houses filled with candy and more candy. In my family we retired from trick-or-treating after Grade 6, but we all made that last year count. Back in the '60s injuring children for kicks by tampering with their candy had not yet been invented, so all systems were go, and we enjoyed many treats on the fly. One of my younger sisters who shall remain nameless was not as sugar-crazed as I, and would ration her candy so severely that it would last until Easter. I still remember slowly opening her chimney cupboard in the bedroom we shared to steal look at her candy bars, always amazed that she hadn't finished them yet. Those were good times.

Fast forward 25 years to the trick-or-treat careers of my own children. I would stay home and dole out the fun size candy to the neighborhood kids, and spouse would take our kids out. They would get half-way down the street before exhaustion set in. Spouse would end up carrying one or both of them. Long driveways were judged not worthy of the trek. By now Halloween candy had to be checked carefully before consumption, and could also be xrayed at the fire station. The children would arrive home and get a burst of energy as they came up the driveway, and once inside, the candy would all be dumped on the (orange and quite ugly) living room rug (it was the '70s...). Even a not yet two year old knew the drill. Dumping the candy was beneficial to all parties. The kids were astounded at all the candy that was before them, imagining eating every bit of it. Spouse and I took the opportunity to examine wrappers and toss anything suspicious, while simultaneously checking inventory of what we wanted for ourselves. Those were good times.

Fast forward another 25 years; okay, 30 years. The kids are now married, living far and even farther away. Our sweet little grandson is too little for trick-or-treating. Can't start working on the Halloween tooth decay process until there are actually teeth. So it's just spouse and me and the cat. The cat hates the doorbell and strangers stomping on the porch. And really, we do have to be kind to our animals. This year spouse and I chose the Halloween candy together. If left alone, I will buy awful non-chocolate candy, like jolly ranchers and fruity flavored candy that is easy (for me) to pass up, but appeals to kids. I know because I see them eat it up like, well, candy, in the office where I work. Anyway, this year we got Milky Way, Three Musketeers, Butterfinger, Twix, and M&Ms, all fun sizes. We got approximately 120 pieces of candy, and as we had over 110 tricksters last year, I hoped we would have enough.

Halloween night arrived, and it was dark by 6:00. This is when my "experiment" began to take shape. I peeked through the curtains and noted the houses with outside lights on; basically everyone but us. Okay, I thought, why rush into this? Let's pull the shades in the front rooms, continue watching the "Murder She Wrote" marathon, and see what happens. As soon as an intrepid child ventured to the front door and rang the bell, I would leap into action, turning on all the outside lights, whipping open the front door, and graciously dole out candy with as genuine a smile as I could force. I know how much little children look forward to getting into costumes and getting candy, and I enjoy seeing the little ones who can't yet enunciate "Trick or Treat". The things I do not enjoy about Halloween are the children who are six feet tall, possibly old enough to drive, the hay wagon that makes its appearance every year in our neighborhood carrying dozens of children, the giant SUVs that slowly cruise the neighborhood dropping the kids periodically to run up driveways, and what I especially don't like to see are kids coming from two towns away, as evidenced by the names on their football jerseys. We don't have 120 kids in this neighborhood, yet 120 kids appear once a year to terrorize the cat and make me very crabby. Back to the experiment... I was ready for the kids, the candy was in the bowl, all sorted nicely. No one rang the doorbell all night (okay, from 6:00 - 7:30 when it's pretty much over in this burg). I sat with the cat giving spouse period updates on the traffic in the neighborhood. The cat kept looking toward the front door. She knowwws what a bowl full of chocolate candy on a table pulled into the front hall means.

If it was Christmas, I would be a Scrooge.

You'll have to excuse me now. There is a bowl of delicious candy calling my name. "Humbug! Oh, Humbug!"