Of Plumbing and Self Abuse

Before you jump to conclusions, hear me out. Over the last couple of weeks I've found myself doing a lot of plumbing. This hasn't been a conscious decision, truthfully I just can't see myself waking up and thinking "today is a good day to replace faucets!", but as is often the case, it comes about of necessity. Over the six years of our residency here, every bathroom drain had become sluggish. Drain cleaning liquids didn't work and it got to the point where having a shower in the upstairs bathroom resulted in water pooling up to one's ankles.

Kathleen had some trepidation about me tackling the issue as I don't have a proven track record of fixing things. Nonetheless, I was determined. I'll spare you the gory details, but cleaning out six years of buildup was really gross. Ugh, I'm suffering flashbacks right now. The upside was that two summers of my youth spent working for a pool company gave me enough knowledge to pull pipes apart and put them back together again. Plus it only cost five dollars worth of tools, so I consider it a job well done.

A week later our kitchen faucet became harder and harder to turn off and eventually culminated in a bubbling spring welling out of the base of the tap.  As our kitchen counters flooded and water spilled over the floor, I - deliberately calm - walked all over the house trying to figure out how to turn the water off. This isn't something I'd contemplated before, so there was a lot of gazing in to corners of the garage and poking my head in to the back of closets. With the help of the the guy painting the house next door I managed to turn off the water to the entire condo (all four units) . I went back inside to inform Kat of my victory; she wasn't impressed and pointed out the two taps under the sink that she had used to stop the flow to the sink. I kindly went outside and let the rest of the condo have their water back, I don't think anybody noticed.

With the water turned off, and Kat trying to finish making biscuits for dinner, I disassembled the tap and cleaned it of accumulated crap (I'm getting good at that it seems). All the gaskets looked fine so I couldn't see why it had decided to let all the water through. As is standard in this world, things come apart far more easily then they go back together. Off I went to the Internet to find how to put the tap back together. Here is a little note for people who are thinking of uploading videos to YouTube regarding fixing taps: videotaping your hand pointing at the tap while you talk about how you fixed it is useless. I don't care how excitedly you gesticulate at the tap, if you don't take it apart and put it back together on video, it makes me question whether you ever successfully completed the task in the first place.

I got it back together using basic reasoning, and it works just like new. Kat was duly impressed. Whether she was impressed by me fixing it, or by me not making it worse I'm unsure, I'll assume the best. Oh yes, I changed the oil in my motorcycle this weekend as well, I'm going to be ruining my soft IT hands if this keeps up.

I pride myself on treating my body well and keeping in shape. I listen to my body, which is why I don't smoke (I can feel the smoke settle in my lungs, yuck), I didn't gain weight when I stopped being a bicycle courier (if the body isn't hungry, don't eat just out of habit) and no longer get hiccups (I figured out how to relax diaphragm and stop it from spasming). This makes it all the more frustrating when my body insists on a guerilla campaign against me. It waits until I am not in conscious control of my body before taking over and trying to kill me. Okay, that is a little over the top, it isn't trying to kill me, more like maim and cripple me.

It started with the snoring. Other than ruining a good nights sleep and annoying Kat it isn't that bad. It is frustrating that I can't seem to do anything about it.

Then, about ten years ago, my brain decided that a full set of teeth is conducive to good health so they had to go. I started to grind my teeth while asleep. This led to wearing down and chipping my teeth as well as throwing my jaw out of alignment from too much clenching and causing nasty headaches in the morning. I am now on my third night guard, or my 'chew toy' as I like to call it. I chewed through one of them, which obviously inspired the dog because he pulled my second off the nightstand and chewed it to pieces. From the looks of my third I'm soon due for another. The dentist loves this problem. I don't.

Having stymied my brain's attempt to make me eat only soft food, the brain is fighting back by attempting to cripple me. Kat has informed me that I now have the habit, while asleep of course, of flexing my feet constantly. Kat thinks this is at least part of the reason I suffer very tight calf muscles and sore achilles, and I agree that it makes a sad sort of sense. Now every morning I limp out of bed feeling like I just climbed 50 flights of stairs.

Kathleen's massage teachers think the foot flexing is a way for the body to rid itself of excess stress, which is what I also heard about the teeth grinding. There has to be a better way of getting rid of stress that doesn't include making me a toothless cripple. I'm still trying to figure out how to avoid this destructive behaviour, perhaps I'll have to get a treadmill and run myself to exhaustion every night. Of course since the behaviour is done at night how do I keep track of whether the grinding/flexing is decreasing? I don't think Kathleen is willing to stay up all night to monitor the situation for science or love. It's a conundrum.

I just checked my phone and it looks like Kat has finished giving a massage so it is safe for me to head home. Ooh, look, Stephen Thaddam (friend of some other Phillip Dean whose email I apparently share)  is online. I never did get back to him about whether "Explain the role of Guru Gobind Singh in founding the Khalsa community, and the importance of the five K’s for its members?" was a good entrance question.