hangin' at the Depot

So I'm the one wearing the butch pants in the house today: I replaced our bathroom faucet, which had been leaking from the base for probably 8 months. The final straw was that one of the plastic handles cracked, making it inoperable. So it was time to do something. And I think I succeeded: no leaks so far. It's actually not that difficult, if your house is pretty modern and things were put in correctly the first time. Neither is true of our house, so it did require a couple extra trips to Home Depot (only six minutes away, another good thing about our neighborhood!). (also replaced the drain/pop-up assembly and the P-trap-- which before today I didn't know what it was).

The internet has increasingly become for me the handy parent I never had -- neither one of my parents ever fixed anything in our house, that I can remember, except for torn book pages, and the occasional hem. Nothing mechanical. But you can learn how to do almost any home repair online. Which at least gives me enough to go on when I go to the HD. I'd much rather ask the guy "I need a basin wrench, right?" than just have to blankly ask "how on earth do I do that?" I don't have any idea what the working conditions are like at a place like HD, but I hope it's satisfying to at least some of these people who work there who know a heck of a lot about their particular area. People come in, you help them, they get what they need and learn something too.

Now if only there was an Article Depot for my now overdue writing project:

"Well, you see, I have these two ideas that have to fit together -- yeah, I've got about 20 pages of space."

"You just need this idea connector. Comes in plastic, brass, or surgical steel. How long you want this thing to last?"

"Well, up until now, it's been held together with sentences, but some of them are kind of fraying around the edges...I don't know if they're strong enough for the pressure of publication."

"Oh, you got an antique style article? You want to use sentences? That's more work. But you do get a nice effect when you're done. I can show you some adverbs over here..."

Clearly, I need to get back to work.