I'm telling you stories...

6:15pm, Saturday. My wife is in the shower, having just gotten home from work. The potatoes are half-done baking, the salmon is thawed, 40 oz. of mushrooms are ready for the skillets, my son and his wife are on their way from Lawrence for dinner, and I'm mixing the Italian marinade for the salmon while the grill heats.

"thump Bang-CLANG!!!"

"Honey, are you all right?"

"No" was her reply. Since she had a hip replaced at 47 from arthritis, falls are worrisome. Drop everything, run to the bathroom and find her holding the tub spout, standing outside the tub. She's OK...

The tub spout is sheared off cleanly, right at the wall.

"How in the world did you do that?"

"The Tilex slipped as I put it back on the shelf."

When I redid the plumbing 12 or 15 years ago, I used plastic instead of the original galvanized. Easier to work, not supposed to calcify and clog up like metal...I never thought you could snap it clean off the wall. Of course, since the kitchen got redone after the bathroom, I lost my access to the other side of that wall when the new cabinets went in...

Finish cooking dinner, eat, and leave the kids watching "Stargate: Atlantis" from tape while we slip off to Lowe's before they close to try to cobble something together that I can glue over the piece in the wall. It's not just a piece of pipe, it's the union I originally used to attach the tub spout, and without tearing the wall out, I can't cut it off to attach another union.

An hour in Lowe's going from one plumbing aisle to another, gather enough pieces to try 3 different things and then out the door for less than $9.

A "union" for a much larger "sanitary side" fitting that isn't intended for hot/cold, but since it's not actually going to have water in it, but be glued to the piece in the wall and have another union glued inside it, turns out to be the one that works, the reattach the tub spout, and by 10 it's fixed. The only thing was that the purple primer for the glue ran down the white tub enclosure and stained it...off to the garage for polishing compound and Meguiars, and it's good as new.

When we replaced the old kitchen cabinets with new, they turned out to be about 2" "shallower" so all along the face of them there was a 2" gap between them and the "acoustic texture" that my Dad had had sprayed on the ceilings in the late 70's. Too big a gap to hide with trim, so I spent part of last week before work trying to spread texture onto the ceiling with a putty knife, as you can't roll it with the cabinet face there. I think I had as much on me as the ceiling! After cleaning off the countertops, the sink, the cabinet faces, and then myself, I wasn't about to try to paint the ceiling with covering everything!

I had spent part of my day Saturday hanging drop cloths in the kitchen (leaving them so I could still cook) so I could paint the ceiling that night, but after the plumbing emergency, and needing to let the glue dry for a while before the shower ran again, the painting got put off until Sunday.

Since I've lost 90 pounds and almost 24" in the last year, I've replaced some of my wardrobe, and the things I have that fit I can't really spare for painting in; of the old clothes, none will stay up when my arms go over my head...

So that's how you end up painting the kitchen ceiling in your underwear!

The shower worked fine the next day (and still is working fine); the ceiling I'm not so happy with, but I'm not sure anyone but me would notice it; one of those "I know it's there" things, where it jumps out at me.

And now, after a nine hour shift and another 500 cars out the door, it's time for a shower and some sleep!


alan