Why don’t they teach useful subjects at school such as how to fix things around the house like leaking shower heads? I’m sure that in my lifetime I will fix a leak more often than I’ll need to use calculus or trigonometry (unless I start doing more actionscripting of course which I’ve spent the day looking at.. but let me generalise).
I’ve spent the evening standing in puddles in my bathtub staring up at the shower head, water leaking down my arms and pondering. TV shows always mention replacing washers for leaks so I bought a little pack on the weekend and tonight tried to figure out where all the darn things went. There were about 14 pieces in the pack but I could only find 6 washers to replace, 2 of which weren’t of a size available in the pack. They didn’t appear particularly worn so I decided to leave them in place.
I’m thankful for my dextrous pick-up-things-toes when I was tiptoed up trying to screw the shower back in to the wall and dropped one of the nuts to the bottom of the bath. I didn’t want to let go of the pieces I’d managed to plug together in the wall above my head so twisted my toes around the metal and lifted it up to where I could reach it with my hand. Thankfully the nut hadn’t fallen down the plug hole as a few days ago I lost a screw in the kitchen sink and only earlier this evening had to fish a chain out of the bathroom sink.
So four out of perhaps six washers replaced, everything screwed back in to place, and the thing still drips. This is a moment when I miss having housemates to call out to and assist in the pondering.