August 1, 2001 ~ He was here
this morning. The plumber. As soon as he left, I was tempted to race out the door and go to Joe's for a cheeseburger... make that two cheeseburgers. And some Texas Toothpicks (fried strips of jalapeno and onion). And maybe a half dozen candy bars or so. Talk about STRESS. But I can deal with this, I know I can. Really.
He was a nice enough guy (as was his son), and he is rumored to be the best around, but I cannot begin to tell you how traumatized I am by the very fact that he was here. If I were a drinking woman, I'd have a few drinks about now. Or I would lie down, if I thought that would help, but I'm too keyed up to get any rest.
They DID scary things to our plumbing, many, many things, and I am of the opinion that no matter how bad our problems are now, they can always get worse. Sometimes, the very act of trying to fix something seems to cause about ten other things to go wrong. It's as if the house is watching, waiting, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting repairmen... or worse, on us. Maybe the pipes will wait until the plumbers are long gone, and then sometime around midnight, a pipe will do something bad -- like leak, or burst, or leak or burst inside a wall.
The guys are coming back tomorrow or the next day, so this isn't done yet. AND they may come back in a week or two, to fix the leaking shower stall, if I can get brave enough to allow that. They would have to bring a jackhammer-type thing, and cut away some concrete, and replace this and that, but it's the cutting concrete that strikes terror in my heart. It doesn't seem like you should be doing that, it seems like the concrete should be left well enough alone. But Mr. Plumber assures me that it is OKAY, that this is how it's done, that it's the only way it's done, and that it will work when it's finished. That it won't leak. I, of course, have a hard time buying any of this. Not that I don't believe him, and not that I don't trust him, but a house has a mind of its own. It can DO things that it shouldn't be able to do. And just because something SHOULDN'T leak after it's fixed, doesn't mean that it can't.
Ah. Of the three drippy faucets that were fixed, one of them still has a drip. Which means I must call the plumber back, at the risk of becoming a PROBLEM customer (and I sure don't want that), so I am walking a very fine line here.
Sigh...
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