Accidental plumber

My housemate was up for just a few days and had requested, if possible, a trip to the sushi place as well as to our favourite Indian restaurant.

As I love both, I was happy to oblige, little knowing the adventure that was waiting in store.  Meals duly bought we had just settled ourselves in on the bench for a real treat when my left eye started watering – something had gotten into my eye and anyone who wears contacts will know the feeling: one hopes that the eye will water and wash itself, but after a few seconds, one also knows when that isn’t going to happen.

Off I went to the restroom to remove said contact – being very careful, of course. Rinsed it and put it back into my eye and went to leave the washroom, thinking as I went: well it’s normal that tap water would make it a bit blurry… until I realized that no, this was more than just a bit blurry: my contact wasn’t in my eye! 

Now I had only taken three steps at the most, had had a paper towel partially in the sink and everything: I froze and started looking. Another client came in whilst I was in the process of doing that, and bless her heart helped me search: nowhere to be found. I finally let her wash her hands then when she duly disappeared out into the “world of the blessed and sighted” I continued. Still nothing. By that time I thought that perhaps I should let my housemate know what had happened (I mean I don’t usually just disappear for 10 minutes when I have sushi awaiting me).

She returned with me (and this isn’t a large restroom either) and feeling the benefit of the extra sympathy, I proceeded to unscrew the drain underneath the sink (luckily they must have had problems at some point and whoever had re-fixed it hadn’t tightened it a lot and I was able to unscrew the elements with my hands) and try and sort the contents.

One wonders how I know how to do that? Hmmm…. Maybe this has happened before?

(I do unscrew my bathroom and kitchen drains at least once a year to clean out the accumulated gunk).  That produced nothing, but in retrospect their drain wasn’t in too

shoddy of a state.  I finally gave up – bathroom 1, me 0.

Over the 40+ years that I have worn contacts I have only lost one definitively once before, but this one was only 8 months old so I was not well pleased.  Also somewhat of a challenge to make the return drive, but I had the housemate to rely upon should I have needed her and I did know that it is legal to drive with one eye (having had other eye problems over the years, I am well versed in what one can or can’t do) and fortunately it had been the contact from the “bad” eye.

On the plus side: one restaurant in town now has not only a clean drain, but also a freshly mopped floor (obviously working with no pan or pail meant that what little water I did let through ended up on the floor – they were minus several paper towels).

PCS

It seems to me that some days ago – I am currently living my life instead of just blogging it – I mentioned PCS would follow WPS the next day: well if the activities did, the recounting of them didn’t!

PCS = Plumbing Cleaning and Sorting

The first involved looking for a wrench (a specific one, which seems to have disappeared into that wide world known as sons), then not finding said item, buying a new one.

Then it was turn off the water mains, which led to showing my housemate where they were and how to turn them off, just in case it were ever necessary (she’s only shared my house part-time for 8 years now, but it’s never too late to learn the essentials).

Finally I could get down to business, i.e. taking apart the water faucet up in the attic to see why the hot water was not coming in properly: couldn’t find anything, but did learn that if one turned it on full force – and only towards the hot – that it actually was plenty warm for a bath – now to communicate that to all visitors.

Cleaning, kind of didn’t get very far: does one shelf and one drawer in the kitchen count?

Sorting, more or less the same as cleaning although I have a great system. When I feel like I am drowning in paper and “things”, I get out a piece of white paper and write on it several columns: 20 pieces of paper to be thrown out; 10 pieces of paper to be filed; 5 objects to sort, toss or put away; a twenty-minute walk; 5 documents, newspaper articles, etc. to be scanned.  If I do that every day for a week it actually does make a difference and sometimes I even do more than the required.

Do I still need to have a real plumber look at the bathtub? Do I still have a ton of things to clean and sort? Yes, but just writing about them may motivate me to do them…

Then again, tomorrow is another day so think I'll go take that walk instead!

Swans on Lac Leman