A plumbing work of art!

I think his favorite phrase sometimes is, "I can fix that."

Most of the time, he can. Once in awhile he can't. But even when he can fix it he tends to puts off fixing it as long as he can. It's a trait that drives me crazy.

We came home last Saturday evening to water dripping from the door frame of our bedroom. Not a good sign when water is dripping from somewhere other than a faucet. There's only one thing in our house that could cause that to happen and that's the air conditioner in the attic. So after a fourteen hour day and six hours of driving, he climbed into the attic to "fix" it because water from your ceiling is not something that can be put off.

As it turned out, a drain line was clogged causing a catch-pan to overflow and drip into the attic. So over the next couple of hours, he tried to un-clog it. One other thing you have to understand is that my husband "hates" plumbing. Give him a construction project, floor, tile, shelves, deck, or an electrical problem and he's all over it, but plumbing… not his forte. He was unable to unclog the line. "Too many elbows," he said. (That's not all he said, but the rest is unprintable.)

He was finally able to stop the water flow temporarily and we were able to use the AC Saturday night, but on Sunday, the "permanent" repair also did not go well and he ended up breaking the PVC drain lines. Result: no AC on Sunday night and a trip to Lowes on Monday to buy the replacement parts.

Last night he came home with nine dollars worth of plastic PVC parts and rebuilt the series of elbows, tees and adapters into something that looked like a part in the space shuttle fuel system. To his credit, it looked pretty much like the part he had broken. But being who he is, he had to "improve" it some. So he added a couple of tees with caps where there were elbows before so he could get a pipe snake into the line if it clogged again. Of course, it probably never will.

I really do appreciate my husband, the "fixer." I've been the beneficiary of his talents and efforts on a number of occasions. But I've also learned in our marriage that my timetable for fixing is not necessarily his timetable for fixing it; and all things take planning and thought. "Measure twice and cut once," he likes to say. "You've got to pace yourself," he likes to say.

So that's what he's doing in front of the TV set and the computer instead of fixing. He's "measuring" and "pacing."

Now if I could just get him working on the twenty-five other projects he says need fixing…

Maybe tomorrow.