Saint Kerry to the rescue

I had a few little irritating household tasks that I just couldn’t deal with myself:

i)   a blown light globe in a ceiling fixture (that had also tripped the circuit breakers, one dark and stormy night, but that’s a whole different story),

ii)  a leaking mixer tap at my kitchen sink, and

iii) a pretty heavy mirror in my bathroom that was threatening to lose its grip, not only on reality, but on the wall.

Ponder, ponder, what to do?? Aha!! light globe moment! 

Of course, call Kerry, he’ll knock off those jobs in a few minutes. Famous last words.

Task one: the light globe

Kerry briskly climbed the ladder I had thoughtfully provided for him, probably thinking, but not saying,  “Women, eh? Can’t change a light globe.” Ten minutes later, with his little apprentice (that would be me) running back and forth for various tools, switching off the circuit breaker, mopping his fevered brow, etc., etc., the little blighter (the globe) still hadn’t succumbed to his muscles nor his charm. Finally, after using A REALLY BIG TOOL, he got the remnants of the ceramic base of that flippin’ globe out of the socket. I forgave him for his unkind thoughts about womanhood.

Task two: the leaking faucet

After a little pause, during which I proffered a cup of restorative tea, Kerry plunged on to the next easy task. This involved getting the right sized hexagonal headed thing-o into a tiny-weeny hole, that sits in the darkest, most difficult to access portion of the tap. They must scour the world for particularly sadistic designers, I think.

I hovered, with a zipper on my lips, ready to spring to his demands. Turn off the water. Yessir. Hold the flashlight. Yessir. And so on. After about 15 minutes of this (so easy) job, I timidly said “I can go and get a whole new fixture, it might be faster and easier to just replace the flippin’ thing.”

I think Kerry had been hoping I might break my silence with those very words, he agreed in about a milli-second. So, I hopped into Cedric the Sissy Car, and went to one of the local hardware stores, leaving Kerry to get on with the 3rd task, putting more long screws through the frame of the mirror, into the very hard, hardwood studs.

He was looking right smug when I returned, the mirror job had gone very quickly, very smoothly. Yay, Kerry!

OK, back to that kitchen sink. As always, the piping is put in a place where you would need to be the size of a baby jockey, to work easily on it.

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As we gathered all of the many tools Kerry had resorted to, to achieve the great results, Kerry drily said “Five minute jobs, eh?” 

After he has had time to forget our jolly home maintenance romp together, I might ask him about the irritating leak around the wood stove chimney, during rainstorms.