Mr. Fix It

You have to know something about me.  My house feels like its a disaster most of the time.  The one thing I really enjoy cleaning, is the kitchen.  I really go kind of crazy if my kitchen sink is full of dishes and if the counter has stuff all over it.  I have learned over the years that the dirtier the kitchen is, the less patience I have.  Last night (a Sunday night) at about 9:30pm my kitchen faucet died.  Or rather, it leaked water all over under the sink and floor. It has been dying slowly, but of course it really died on a Sunday. Because it was close to 10pm by the time Keith called the death of my kitchen faucet, he wasn't able to do anything with it to fix it.  Keith has worked one week out of the last 4 at his day job.  As a family, we have decided we enjoy paychecks. Keith HAD to return to work this morning. Unfortunately, he had to leave the kitchen looking like this:

 Disgusting faucet guts were left on my kitchen counter.

 Keith promised to fix it as soon as he could get home from work. I knew that would be another 12 hours. Today was the first day I would be alone with 5 kids. I knew that my patience level could not tolerate a kitchen looking like this.  For the safety of all the children, I knew had to do something.  Oh, forget I said that. I ment to say: Because I love my husband, and I know he works so hard for our family, I wanted to do something to ease his burden.  I decided that Jakob and I could take on this task.  I figured all we needed to know could be found on you tube.  We went to Lowes and got a new faucet.  Jakob and I make a pretty good team. I read instructions, and Jakob does what I tell him.  We only had one problem.  I was  using words like "thingy" and he did not understand what I was talking about. He was using words like "gasket" and "nut".  I did not understand what he was talking about.  Once we worked out the communications kinks (by pointing to the pretty pictures on the instructions), we did pretty good.  Look at my boy!

We (ok, mostly Jakob) did it!!  Check it out!  I have a new beautiful faucet.  It doesn't leak ANYWHERE!

It even works.  The hot water makes hot water. The cold water makes cold water. It works!!  Corrine doubted our abilities and was rather worried about this home improvement project.  She was afraid that we were making things worse and Keith would have to come home and re-do the entire thing. I'll admit, we were flying without a net.  I will also admit that Keith has not come home from work yet to inspect the project. I do not know what his reaction will be. Hopefully he will be glad we fixed it, he doesn't have to, and that we did it right. But, to prove to you..... here is a picture with actual water coming out of the faucet from the place water is supposed to come out of. There was no water leaking anywhere else.

My patience level has returned.... a little anyway. I can now make dinner with out feeling grossed out by having dead faucet guts laying around.  Jakob learned an important lesson.  I wish I could say that I had planned this lesson and that it was one of my main motives.  It wasn't.  Sadly, it was just a side effect.  But, its an awesome side effect.  While Jakob was crawling under the sink, fighting with tools, and having water drip down on him, he had a realization.  Jakob said that he did not want to do "this kind of work for the rest of his life".   Jakob learned that it is probably better to find a job that allows him to use his brains and not his back as his primary source of income.  I apologize to any plumbers out there.  But, admit it... if you could have a nice desk job instead of sticking your hand in toilets or dealing with faucet guts.... you probably would take it. Im just glad my son learned that lesson at 14.  If he starts to forget, I've got all kind of disgusting manual labor jobs I can have him do.  Thank you Jakob for fixing my sink for me. You have no idea how many warm fuzzies I have right now.