Plumber Butt Blues

So we're alive, but now we know why plumbers make so much money.

We also know how to install a new kitchen faucet. Which is so easy peasy we didn't even need our hurtin' neighbour to walk us through it. What we needed our hurtin' neighbour for was to remove a mother fucker of a rusty bolt from the old kitchen faucet, under the sink, in a small obstructed space that even itty bitty me found a challenge to work in - upside down and inside out as one must.

That upside down and inside out effort actually had me feeling nauseous at one point and I had to lie on the cool kitchen floor for several minutes while it passed. Too soon after lunch to do the plumber's limbo.

I will never titter about plumber's crack again.

I am not a delicate human, either, if that's what you're thinking.

Anyway, we tried, My Blond Companion and I, but what that mother fucker of a rusty bolt needed was a combination of brute strength, delicate touch, and former car mechanic intuition/experience that we've come to rely on in our neighbour, who, as I've said, is hurtin'.

Or WD40, which we do not currently have.

Alarmingly, when I finally threw in the towel (which was under the sink as directed in the out of date repair book we were using), and went next door to get some WD40, my hurtin' neighbour didn't have any, either.

Now, it's actually a little odd for non-handy us not to have any WD40, but for our neighbour not to have any WD40 is, "hm... okay... what fresh hell is this..." territory. And it's terrible but, WD40-less and hurtin' or not, I decided to stand my ground in his house until he volunteered to come over and fix mine.

And he did, using tools that, had we used them instead of persevering with a particular wrench that wasn't cutting it, we maybe could have done, too. But then he hung around because he wanted to and walked us through the installation of the new kitchen faucet - as I knew he would - and we now have a non-leaking brand new kitchen faucet installed.

So now, and this is terrible of me, I know, but now I'm looking around to see what else will need repair/replacement soon. Because that not having any WD40 thing is very disturbing. We're already trying to step it up re snow removal in our shared walkway, etc, because he's not able to do it.

And it's not like he doesn't want to do it. In fact, he's dyin' to do it. The problem is, he can't do it.

Anyway, it all made me think about the people we meet along the way and how our circumstances change over time, so that no matter how independently we think we've been living so far in our lives, we are eventually, inevitably, dependent on others to help us through.

And then this morning I came across the article below in Slate that someone had posted on Facebook and it pretty much sums it up (for me) what our mutual and collective problem really is when it comes to politics these days.

Childish masculinity and the women who love it.

Childish Masculinity Running the World