The little things

that make me feel good…and the usurpers and forgetters

Feb 24^th 2007

There are things in my life that make me feel really good about myself. They’re probably meaningless but I don’t think so. Maybe everyone else does them but I don’t care. They are the little things that that fill me with pleasure when I see them or think of them.

The most recent thing was repairing a cracked pipe at my mother’s house. I look at it and it looks beautiful because everything lines up and the toilets work a lot better. The tanks fill up really fast now and stop instead of taking a really long time to fill and then never quite shutting off and dripping constantly since one of the valves was bad.

It’s kind of a long story, (which by the way I learnt a number of years ago usually means “I don’t want to tell you”, but that isn’t the case here) but the long and short (what an expression, not the short but the long and short, how weird?) of it is that I probably broke the valve a while ago while trying to make it so that the toilet would flush everything in one go rather than sometimes taking a couple of flushes.

Since I fixed everything I realized that there was probably a water pressure fault in one toilet’s plumbing caused by using too large a pipe. That wasn’t my fault. I came and met it like that but after years of problems that go back as far as I can remember it’s actually fixed and better yet, I did it by myself without a plumber or anyone else. I feel so proud of myself, I’m giddy especially considering how hard and frustrating it was from start to finish.

The two toilets use the same pipe to let water in and that pipe is actually cemented into the floor in one spot so there’s no room for error at all there. The pipe comes up from the floor and branches into the first toilet A, then goes through the wall to the other toilet B where a deformed, Frankenstein’s monster, piece of plumbing eventually leads into the second toilet. I’ve always wanted to do some kind of “ectomy” on that horrible piece of work but honestly I didn’t have to cojones to even think of seriously starting it.

Enter me, with a valve I bought about a month and a half ago. The old valve in toilet B never turns off completely so a pipeline takes the water that overflows from the tank into the bathroom in toilet B. The drips were starting to stain the tiles pretty badly so I was just going to replace the valve and keep on enduring all the bad flushes that Frankenstein’s monster plumbing would keep dishing out. However Franken-monk wasn’t having it, the standard pipe wouldn’t fit.

Let’s leave out going back to the store shall we, it was a very unpleasant experience which I will include in a bad business section. Suffice to say the lady recognized her own handwriting on the receipt but refused to exchange the device since “it didn’t look like hers.” So I bought the part I was sure would fit from another store. That time I encountered just a smidgen of bad business, my God the world reeks of it though. You know how they say “If everywhere you goes smells bad maybe it’s you?” actually that’s from an episode of “Martin”, maybe it’s me? Nah!! Many a time when the tables are turned I’ve gone completely out of my way to try to help people. Besides when I told other people what happened they didn’t seem to be surprised when I mentioned who it was.

Any-who, what a wonderful moment it was when I realized that Franken-monk was also refusing to bond with this new part. There I was completely out of all alternatives, I had heard a bit of a crack and Franken-monk seemed a bit too maneuverable but I put it out of my mind and decided to give up and put everything back how I found it. But Frankie had other ideas. No sooner had I turned back on the water than I discovered Frankie’s secret crack. It took a second deluge to pinpoint that the location was in the second most challenging place it could be, inside of the wall itself.

Ah that sinking feeling that things weren’t going very well, refreshing and depressing. So the water to the house would have to be turned off until I either got a plumber to fix it or I went out and bought more parts to fix it myself. And on a Carnival Friday to boot, if I played my cards right we could be without water for 4 ½ days yippee!!

Then to make things worse, as well they should be, my uncle returned home and made evident his special displeasure at being personally put out by the situation. I mean it wasn’t as though anyone else who had to endure the same circumstances including myself really mattered, the fact that he had to share in the discomfort was the most important think.

 Heaven forbid that he should actually check to see what was actually wrong or if he could help or anything useful. The point was that he was put out and not taking it quietly. Soon, due to the domino effect of righteous indignation my mother in her quiet and motherly way, NOT! , sought a reason for the disaster and enquire as to when the situation was on purpose, as in if I had created the situation knowing full well the result of having to turn off the water of if it was an accident. Well it led to a lecture when I answered sarcastically that I planned it then an argument.

To end my story, since I want to watch some telly, I bought the proper parts the next day, I ended up having to use the part the stupid lady wouldn’t take back and aside from everything running a lot better, and coming out great, the Frankenstein’s monster is no more!

I look at the plumbing every time I go in the bathroom and listen every time it flushes and I feel so good (wow that’s pretty gay.) I did that. Like the title suggests this isn’t the first time I’ve done stuff like this. I’ve changed plumbing valves before, I’ve fixed my car, changed my brakes pad and shoes and oil and wheel bearings, and hooked up a water tank to our house and cut down trees and lots of stuff, usually with breaks in between where I do my regular stuff which is I.T. but it’s really the little things that I’ve never done before that really make me feel great and proud because I just read about them or think about them and do it usually without help from anyone.

Oh yeah and about the usurpers and forgetters, every time I do something challenging my family always reacts the same way, as if it were the first time I’ve done something or worse that I’m always doing stuff and messing it up. Afterward when its done everyone forgets who’s idea it was or how much they “naysayed”. There might be a brief thanks that hardly makes up for all the doubt and then the next time it’s the same as before.

Apparently sometimes they even think that they did some of the stuff. My other uncle was telling me how he put up this mirror with my sister and when I called my sister she thinks she might have put it up with her ex-boyfriend. The funny thing is she broke up with her ex years before I got yelled at for taking down the medicine cabinet full of junk that used to be where the mirror now is. Plus I bought the drill that we needed to put up the mirror and I distinctly remember getting the idea to put up this mirror that was lying around since I needed one.