On Procrastinating Home Repairs

So we have had a drip in the master bathroom sink since, I don't know, last year, maybe? I can't even tell you how long that drip. . .drip. . .drip has been driving me nuts at night. Only, recently it has become more of a dripdripdrip and we HAD TO do something about it!

I know it's been going on for several months at least, because we wanted to get it fixed last time we had a plumber over (last summer?). My husband mentioned it to him. The plumber told him it would be another $175 to fix. We were already spending something obscene like $850 to have the kitchen faucet fixed.

The man who sold us our house nine years ago had the brilliant idea of putting in impossibly expensive fixtures and appliances that we could never hope to repair so that he could flip the property and make a fortune.

Unfortunately for him and fortunately for us, that didn't happen. He sold it to us instead.

But whoever heard of a kitchen faucet costing that much to replace?!!!

Anyway, I digress. We couldn't even hope to add to that expense at that time. And then I walked around for months thinking all we needed was a new washer in the faucet. And being slightly miffed in the back of my mind (to that drip. . .drip. . .drip accompaniment) that no one ever did anything about the new washer we needed.

It was Friday that my husband divulged (at least in a way so that I heard him) that our bathroom faucet was WASHERLESS! That's what the plumber said to him last. . .year?

Anyway.

Since then, we had the dishwasher go on the blink, but not before ruining the kitchen floor. We had to replace both vehicles. We had a two or three weddings in the family--one that we were directly responsible for. And two deaths (which we were not responsible for). We had a plastic wolf dropped in the main toilet. So the bathroom faucet waited.

And waited.

Meanwhile, the water company sent me a letter that they were raising our rates, effective July 1. I lamely tried to say that my son would be moving out then and couldn't we wait and see what impact that had on our water usage before we got hasty and raised the rates? They sent an investigator to the house. The first report I got was that the water meter was not moving, meaning there was no leak. In subsequent phone calls, someone said it had been moving. Personally, I knew there was a leak. At any rate, the higher rate stuck.

"Your usage has doubled since last year," I was told.

I couldn't imagine why.

Paul said it was because we were doing dishes by hand instead of using the dishwasher. I disagreed. But, eventually, we did agree on something. The dripdripdrip woke us up, and by Friday, it had come to the top of both my husband's and my lists.

He took the faucet off the sink and knew exactly where to take it. "Your dad probably came here a lot," he commented.

"Really? He wasn't a plumber," I said, but felt comforted anyway, like maybe we would experience a visitation while we were there or something.

We walked in and sat at the counter. I imagined the place had once been a sandwich counter and fantasized briefly about ordering a double malt for us both from the muscle man standing behind the counter. But it was too tinny and dingy for that. Not chromey and vinylly like the fifties would have had it.

The quiet muscle man behind the counter smiled at our story and brought us a tiny black dob of plastic with a tiny spring. He added a jar of putty to put the sink back together with.

The cost? Five dollars, four cents.

Or did you mean the cost of the water bill?