The Queen's Rambles

It has been a crazy couple of days around here. My new “home alone with two children” status was put to the test and if I can survive the past couple of days I guess I can survive anything. It helps that the baby sleeps all the time.

Yesterday I tried to turn the shower off, as normal people do, but it was a no go. The hot water kept flooding out despite my best efforts to turn the knob really hard. It wasn’t a knob issue. It was a plumbing issue.

I knew I had to turn the water off, but I also knew that I didn’t want my water off all day. I had the brilliant idea to just turn off the hot water, so I went to look for a knob or something and could only find one.

It’s really fun to try to solve plumbing dilemmas while you’re panicked, barely wearing a towel and milk is dripping all over the place from your mongo boobies.

Thankfully my dad is a plumber, so I called him at 7 am his time and was able to get some help with turning the hot water off. He wasn’t drunk yet, so he was able to tell me that I just needed to replace the washer in the faucet and it would be good to go. It would be a ten minute job, tops.

Ha!

Ha I say!

It’s a ten minute job when you’ve been a journeyman plumber for over 40 years. It’s not a 10 minute job when you’ve never done so much as found the water main in your house before.

I couldn’t start the job right away because Erik had a class way the heck far away, so we had to drive almost an hour to his class, be at his class for a couple of hours and then drive an hour home. Holy shit. What was I thinking with this class?

Ok, I was mainly thinking that Mike could take him. It was a four part class and Mike was able to take him to the first three parts. I didn’t realize what a crappy drive it was. It sounded so simple on the map, but I didn’t realize I would mainly be taking surface streets all the way to Silver Spring ie doing big city driving.

I got lost on the way home, and that certainly didn’t help matters.

I finally got home and started the real plumbing work. Erik, of course, wanted to help me. The bathroom is tiny and he is loud and squirrelly. I was sleep deprived. It wasn’t a good scene.

I called my dad, but it was 1 pm his time so he’d already consumed at least 15 beer (sadly, I am not even exaggerating that point. He literally drinks a cube or more of beer every single day) so he was pretty lit up. He kept telling me to take the [nonsense plumbing word that I can’t remember] off the stem. I didn’t have a clue how to do, especially since I didn’t know what [nonsense plumbing word] was. Instead of helping, he just kept yelling about how to do step five when I still still stuck at step 2.

Finally my mom got on the line and walked me through it, so I got the whole thing taken apart just in time for Mike to walk in the door and go buy me a new washer.

No one realized that the washer was connected to the stem with a screw. Well. I’m sure my dad realized, but he didn’t think he needed to tell me. He is not good teacher material.

We got everything back together and the problem was even worse than before.

Mike took it apart again and found a random screw hanging out in the pipe. We didn’t know where it was supposed to go, so Mike went back to the store and bought a whole new stem. It had a screw in the right place so suddenly things made a lot more sense. The old screw and washer were crumbling into pieces, which was the problem in the first place.

Finally, finally, finally after three hours of work Mike got the thing put back together. He even bought channel locks, aka Rusty from Handy Manny. Did you know they don’t call them channel locks in Maryland? Apparently they call it a pipe wrench.

At least we’ll know what to do when the cold water faucet goes out, right?

We thought we were all happy go lucky and ready for a nice hot shower, but we were wrong. My dad neglected to mention that if you shut off pressure to the water heater the pilot light will go out.

Poor Mike took a cold shower before his 4 am maneuver. He was not a happy camper.

At least I know how to light a pilot light, even though I hate doing it. There was a humongous spider in the closet and I only had a puzzle box lid to defend myself with. I suppose I could have used the lighter, but the spider was so big it probably would have just pulled out a cig and asked for a light.

Thankfully it stayed way over in the corner while I did my work. Don’t think I wasn’t skeeved out. I wanted to smash it, but it was so big that the thought of the crunch it would make was grosser than the spider itself.

Isn’t being a home owner grand?

At least Erik’s little class is over. I was really annoyed by the other parents. No one would even say hello or chat. They were doing bubbles yesterday and the teacher had three giant bubble wands out. I made Erik share the wands, but none of the other parents made their kids give the other kids a turn. It was beyond irritating. How can you stand there and see that a little kid wants a turn and KNOW that your kid has had lots and lots of turns and not say “Ok, you get three more bubbles then it will be the next kids turn?” How??? People are so selfish.

On a positive note, we found a really cool playground afterwards. If you are ever in the Silver Spring area, go Brookside Gardens and go all the way to the nature center. The nature center itself is pretty cool and we had fun looking at turtles and snakes and honey bees. Anyway, up behind the nature center they have a small playground made out of things found in nature–just stumps and twigs and such. Erik loved it, as did the other kids. My favorite was a giant bird’s nest the kids could play in. I think Erik just loved all the stumps that he could jump around on.

Cute baby thing: If you’ve ever met me in person you’ve probably seen me raise my eyebrow. I can do it on command, but I mainly do it unconsciously when I’m excited, skeptical, or whatever. I have a very expressive face. I would make a terrible poker player. Anyway! Guess who else can raise her eyebrow? I about died when I saw her little eyebrow (or what will eventually be an eyebrow since there’s no hair there right now) shoot up.

Also, if you’ve ever met me you know I turn red when I am upset or excited. I always know when she’s pooping or about to get upset because her eyebrow ridge and eyelids turn bright red. If she’s really, really upset her whole face will turn red.

She’s not going to be able to play poker either.