Walking Backwards

I am not really a "handy" person. Sure, I pretend to be, but I usually can refrain from getting myself into trouble by expertly averting any real work. There are times when it is more difficult to avoid working and I just take care of this by fleeing the scene. Sadly, my husband is not a handy person either, so when anything goes wrong in the house and it is up to one of us to fix it, something will go horribly wrong because I am unable to flee and neither of us have any skills. Today, it seems my house chose to make a point of this.

This morning the new ceiling fan we put in a couple of months ago decided that it had had enough of holding up the pull-chain and just ditched the damn thing. At the base of it, too. I looked at it and Joe looked at it. We tried twisting it with our hands and we banged on it a little with our palms, but the thing that normally holds the chain would not budge. We couldn't put the chain back in with these techniques and, as they exhausted our skills repertoire, we gave up. My son will now play in the dark.

And this was only the beginning in our lesson in ineptitude. The house decided to throw in a plumbing problem because it knew that there is nothing funnier that two idiots with wrenches trying to solve an inexplicable problem in rising water. The only thing that we can figure it is, is a problem with the shut-off dangly-thing in the inside of the toilet. So, we took it apart . . . and made it worse somehow. Then we banged on it and that just made it angry. Finally, we shut off the water and closed the door deciding that we didn't need that bathroom anyway. The other bathroom will be finished with its construction in a year or so and having a functioning bathroom is just greedy.

As if that were not enough. Our sink has lost water pressure (before the bathroom incident). The sprayer works just fine, but the faucet just isn't putting out. After the rest of the day, though, Joe and I are just happy that it's not cascading water all over the walls, the counter-top, and the floor. We shall happily put down our duct-tape and screwdrivers and hammers and just thank God that we are still able to wash dishes . . . even if we end up having to do them in the dark by the end of the night.