July 20, 2001 ~ Fear of plumbing
In some ways, I'm pretty brave. I get up in front of people and talk, trying my best to entertain, and hoping to convince everyone that I know what I'm talking about. So far, they seem to be buying it. Whew. And public speaking is one of the things that I fear most in this world, yet I manage to do it anyway. It helps pay the bills.
I have faced angry bulls, hissing snakes, even a bobcat or two, and have lived to tell the tale. But there is one thing that strikes genuine terror into my heart -- plumbing. Plumbing repairs. The very thought almost makes me sick to my stomach. I am very, very weird about home repairs. At times I have wished that we had a landlord, so somebody else could worry about these things. And sometimes I've wished we had a mobile home, because when too many things went wrong, too many things that couldn't be fixed, we could just... buy... another one. Well, I KNOW that's a dumb idea; you don't have to point that out. Home repair stuff makes me crazy. Nutso. Bonkers. I cannot stress this enough.
For the longest time we had toilet demons... little gremlins that lived in our toilet, making the toilet flush (all by itself!) at the strangest (and most inopportune) times. This went on for months, while our water bills climbed higher and higher, until I had to face the fact that we would HAVE to do something about it. It took a while -- it always does -- and several trips to the hardware store, then back to the hardware store again and AGAIN -- just like always -- and incredibly, it got fixed. Larry actually fixed it. He claimed there were no demons or gremlins or varmints -- said it was the "float" or some such thing -- but I was not convinced. For days, weeks, afterward, I would sneak into the bathroom, thinking I would surprise the toilet and catch it flushing itself. Ahem. I TOLD you this stuff made me crazy! Okay, okay, so I know it was really the float. Maybe. ANYway...
Both bathroom faucets drip. A lot. And this has been going on for awhile. Don't even ask me about our water bill. The really scary thing, though, is the shower. That faucet drips a WHOLE, WHOLE lot, and you would be right if you thought this had been going on way longer than anyone else would tolerate. Larry can't hear the faucets dripping, and I try not to see them (it helps if you pull the shower curtain all the way over to the wall), so that works out nicely for us. Denial is such a nice place to be!
Larry tried to fix that shower problem a few months back. That very day, the day he did the repairs, it was plain that it wasn't fixed. It dripped less, but still dripped. And now it's gotten much worse, and we are going to have to... (shudder) do something about it. Don't suggest calling a plumber; we've tried that. That doesn't always do the trick. You see, the good plumbers are always booked up weeks in advance, and the not-so-good ones cause more problems than they cure. I have LOTS of horror stories about that!
So I have bravely gone to the local hardware store and have asked lots of questions, have purchased a "seat" tool, which is supposed to be important, and maybe tomorrow (or maybe not, if I keep my mouth shut) Larry will try to do this plumbing thing. This is always traumatic, because our small town hardware store often doesn't have the needed plumbing stuff, and it's a long way to the next town. If you have to go back and forth a few times, it gets very, very tiresome. And scary... did I mention scary? And if he can't fix it, or if he accidentally breaks something important (I am breaking into a cold sweat, just considering this possibility), we would have to try to find a GOOD plumber on a Saturday, and it would cost about 12 million dollars, and we do not have that, not at all, and all the good plumbers are either not answering their phones or are already busy elsewhere, charging OTHER people 12 million dollars to fix their stuff.
I think I'm going outside now. This morning there was a stray bull in the woods next door, bellowing and trying to get our bull to fight, so I went after him with a stick. It was not a big stick. I wondered if I might regret this decision, as I walked up the hillside with Henry. But the other bull disappeared, and I told Henry to quit showing off and stomping and snorting, because nobody was there to be impressed... and he did. Waving my stick in his direction, I walked with him back to the herd. I don't know what happened to that stray bull, or why he left so suddenly. But I would rather face that bull than tell my husband that perhaps, maybe, possibly, we might need to consider working on that shower again. Oh, he would probably agree to do it, or maybe he would suggest that we should really think about calling a plumber. But maybe I'll just tell Larry about that stray bull, and I will not say ONE word about that faucet. Some things are just too scary to think about.
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