Friday, February 01, 2008

Another dollar, another day

Another Friday which makes it a-okay.

I had lots and lots of stuff to blog about last night. But then, I got busy. You know, watching The Soup (I thought dry heaving was supposed to be firming...guess not huh? CLASSIC!!), then watching Celebrity Apprentice (Piers is a grade A, top notch, well...you know what I'm gettin' at and it ain't complimentary) and the night wouldn't be complete without a gander at Intervention. Which, I had already seen before so I passed on that one actually.

But then, my better half got all up in it and proved once again why I think he's the best thing since sliced bread.

So. For all intents and purposes, I was raised by a single mom. Even those "fantastic" years of having a step father were generally single parenthood central because he was stationed abroad (ie, Germany, Korea) and we never went with. I know...tragic. In any event, my point...I'm getting there. My grandmother was also a single mom most of her kids' lives. And she had a lot of them (on my mama's side, I have had 8 aunts and uncles, plus *of course, "plus"* my mom and then them all up and getting married). So...in raising kids, she had a lot.

I'm really not one of those "girly girls" who runs from mice and can't lift a hammer. Well...okay. I run from mice. Sometimes. But I can lift a hammer and when left to my own devices, I'll even plunge a toilet.

For better or worse, having R around is really very handy. I mean really...ask Eric, Marc, Miranda, Liisa, Jason...ask em all about the big screen. No, not the tv, the BIG screen. Yeah. He built that. And he replaced all the nipple lights in the house with amazingly beautiful light fixtures. And he rewired half the place so we could watch the big screen without shorting everything out. And he leveled the closets so we could have sliding doors. He put in the automatic lights and the thermostats, he built the shed, refinished the entertainment center, built the delivery box...anyhow...you get my point. He's a handy dude. And for worse of that, I don't have to do a thing. If something breaks, I almost feel guilty fixing it because I know how much joy he will get out of the project. So then. When our complex heating system decided it didn't want to work properly when we got down to a really cold clip, I had to try to get him to admit that this time, we needed to call someone. And we did. And he came out and did nothing. Which became evident last night but wait for it.

So R keeps researching it and finally finds a "local" guy who's an expert at our system who tells him there are 1 of 2 problems...the motors are burnt because the builder used the system to dry the drywall (check...gotta love our builder) OR there is air in the system. Seriously, no duh, but we have hot water heating so that is actually a "big" deal (big enough to shut the system down, easy enough to fix). So R hops online, reads stuff in a foreign language, ponders it a hot second and then gets all "I think I understand it, let's go play". I am dreading messing it up even worse but hot damn if he wasn't right. We cleaned out the motors, bled the system and voila...we had HEAT! Just in time too...trying to freeze folks out and all.

So my night quickly became consumed with heater stuff and I was all "wow dude...I don't know how my mama did it" cause you know what? I'd be broker than a mug right now paying someone else to come and do what turned out to be really simple tasks. Knowledge is power. With it, you can charge upwards of $200 per hour to impart your wisdome on those who would rather just not know.

Now, I have some scrapping to do for a deadline. Creativity on demand. This should be fun.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I know how ya feel, my dh is super handy too.. and after 15 years, I'd bee completely helpless i he wasn't here! ChrisS