Mr. Fix-It

Today began as usual.  I dragged myself from bed (I never bounce), drank my glass of water, and got in the shower.  I noticed the water pressure getting weaker and weaker, but as I had already rinsed the shampoo from my hair, I decided to ignore it, hoping the problem would just fix itself.

Once downstairs, I rinsed a pot and noticed the pressure problem had not gone away.  I had the presence of mind to get enough water to start our oatmeal and began to suspect that ignoring the problem was not going to make it go away.

I casually mentioned our diminishing water pressure to Sidney.  Wowza!  That kid immediately lost his sleepy-eyed shuffle.  With purposeful gusto, he tested the faucet and headed out the door talking about pressure gauge-whiz-its and how he should test whats-its, but if it wasn’t that, it might be this, and if a water pipe was broken, he was pretty sure that he could repair it.

And though I debated calling my sweet husband who was working hard 2 hours away on a steep hill, I finally decided that he would want to know because he might choose to come home early so as not to have to fix the problem in the dark.

Sid said, “Check email.  I’ll send Sidney a list of things to check.”

My eldest boy had already checked this big boxy thing outside with pipes in it.  I have some vague notion of my water piping through that box before it comes into my house  But don’t quote on that. 

See, Sidney had pushed the lid back and done some inspecting.  I would have taken a picture of the interior, but I don’t really wanna know what’s in there.  I make the oatmeal.  That is my job around here.

He might have checked here too.

We have a big tank in there that holds our water.  The only reason I know that is because one day I saw two gaping holes before Sid had put the lids on.  I looked inside to see how deep and what was in there to ascertain the danger of small children falling in.

Ultimately, Sidney had to trek all the way down to our old trailer to “check” some things.  I have no idea why.  The only thing I know is that 40 minutes later, my water was running again.  So I ran outside and partway down the driveway to get a picture of my hero returning.

There’s my boy!  “Um, Sidney, what have you got there?”

“Eh, just some hubcaps.”

“What are you going to do with those hubcaps?”  I try to stifle the fear creeping up my throat, the fear of ONE MORE PROJECT brought into my house.  Do you understand how hard it is to live and maintain home organization with these inventive/project types? 

“Gloom, Despair and Agony on me, ooooooooooo . . . . ” begins to run through my head.  Some days, it is my favorite song.

“Well, I thought I might put them on your Suburban while you were making breakfast and then see how long it took you to notice them.”

Grrrrrr . . . . . . . . . .this kid . . . . . . . . . .