Show steel-ers
Saturday October 15th 2011, 11:10 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

I was off at a luncheon with some friends (thank you Mary Ellen!) and he was waiting for me to get home.

Okay. Let’s see, the parts are about this much, Costco’s having a sale to just replace the thing altogether for close enough to the same, the work involved is about the same…

And so we played plumber today. A do-it-yourself video was conferred with just to be sure. Richard, on his back under the kitchen sink, glad for that gel mat under him, trying to unscrew going one way while I tried to hold on from the top to keep the faucet parts from moving: his grip vs mine, on and on and endlessly on. It’s a good thing I knit a lot, although more regular piano practice on my part of late would have helped there, too. We tried to trade places at one point, but I simply couldn’t reach high enough. He managed not to break into a chorus of “Short People.”

“Get me an (XYZ) wrench!”

“Which one is an (XYZ) wrench? Where would I find it?” (Digging through his tool stashes. The occasional stifled heavy sigh from the man under there who wouldn’t know a merino yarn from a mink–we do understand each other. )

The assembly was rusted in, but between us we finally got it out of there. It took us all afternoon.

After much resting, pumpkin pie for dinner just because we’d earned it and our mommies weren’t watching, some knitting time for me with some sweet baby alpaca telling my hands, There there, I went over to him on impulse and said, “So between us we’re stronger than steel?”

Took him by surprise. His whole face turned into a not-quite-out-loud laugh, and he shook his head with puckered lips, “No.”

“But it made you laugh!”

We ARE stronger than steel.


10 Comments so far
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Maybe not stronger than steel, but certainly not rusty 😉

I guess the location of the problem area would not allow this to be applied easily, but for future reference: coca cola fizzes rust away. (It also cleans toilets, and ever since I heard that, I have wondered what it does to one’s insides!)

Comment by tinebeest 10.15.11 @ 11:47 pm

Hurray! Must be the season for the short-gal-tall-guy-rusty-kitchen-faucet tango. We did ours last month. But without pumpkin pie. That would have made it a whole lot better. I think I’ll bake tommorow. Yum!

Comment by DebbieR 10.16.11 @ 12:05 am

short/tall tango – yeph, been there done that. Sat off the smoke detectors. I can NOT reach it DEAR. YOU put it in, may I remind you?

Tall guys, got to love them. I mean what else are you going to do with them, right?

Comment by afton 10.16.11 @ 5:57 am

We can’t get by without WD-40 and Duct Tape–WD-40 if it sticks and it shouldn’t; Duct Tape if it won’t stick and it should.

Comment by Sherry in Idaho 10.16.11 @ 6:58 am

Sounds like the tango my sweetie and I used to do, except I know what an XYZ wrench is, having grown up with a handyman father, two brothers and three sons. Bring it on!

Comment by Abby 10.16.11 @ 8:04 am

Plumbing is ALWAYS a PITA. If it’s not rusted out, it’s something messy and if it’s messy, it’s ALSO stinky. And then you spend as much time cleaning up as you did fixing. Bah. Glad it got done with a minimum of hassle

Comment by Carol 10.16.11 @ 8:58 am

Stronger than steel, but more flexible. Yesterday I spent 10 minutes getting the worn out brush off my electric toothbrush — one-handed. I just refused to call Cliff. Did it!

Comment by Don Meyer 10.16.11 @ 9:30 am

Love it!! Congrats.

Comment by Channon 10.16.11 @ 1:26 pm

Strong enough to get the job done…and still have a sense of humour afterwards. That’s pretty dsrn good.

Comment by Ruth 10.16.11 @ 3:56 pm

I always wondered why my Dad would perspire so much just trying to unscrew a piece of hardware until I tried some repair work myself and found out the hard way the reason why! LOL! Nothing was ever easy!

Comment by Jody 10.16.11 @ 5:48 pm



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