Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Ronnie the Plumber

Last Monday our family was just finishing up dinner and Kyle was clearing off the table so we could have FHE.  Kyle was rinsing the dishes when all of a sudden Ronnie looked up to see a stream of water coming toward him.  Unfortunately he used is cat like reflexes and dodged it.  It might have made it more fun if it actually hit him.  Anyway, we were all stunned and still processing what just happened when Kyle turn the water on again and again a stream of water came rushing towards the kitchen table.  The kitchen faucet broke.  After shopping at two different stores we found a replacement faucet and returned home where the real fun began.   I tried to stay far away form the faucet changing process but I ended up getting sucked in.  When it was my turn under the sink all I could think of was this spider leg I had found under there last summer.  It was probably an inch and a half long and even though I sprayed bug spray under there I knew that most bug sprays don’t kill spiders.  I just knew that spider leg was there because a bigger spider ate the rest of him ( I know spiders don’t eat, they suck the blood, I never said I was a rational person) and the bigger spider had babies that were just waiting to hatch at any moment.  Yeah, I kind of have a thing about spiders.  Anyway, I was able to help minimally in the changing of the faucet that took over 3 hours and flooded our kitchen at least 3 times. 

I guess a good thing did come out of the faucet experience…Ronnie gained some plumbing skills.  On Wednesday he thought he would tackle the sprinkler system from H_LL.  It really is the sprinkler system from H_LL, because every year we have some major issue with it and it costs a lot to fix it because the company that all the parts are from went commercial and now charges 4 times the normal amount.  I think it’s about as old as I am too, which isn’t that bad if you’re me but really bad if you’re a bunch of PVC held together by glue and exposed to harsh desert heat.  Just look at, it’s looking old and it was a decroded piece of crap:

03 04 09_0504

I had an idea to take a picture of it and take it to Plant World and see if they could help us.  I just love Plant World, they are always so nice and will take the time to try to help you out.  I’ve gotten to know the guy in the sprinkler part pretty well since they are the only ones on our side of town that carry our sprinkler parts.  So Ronnie went to talk to sprinkler man and Lana and I went to visit the birds…they have really cool talking birds among the plants, it’s better than our Zoo and it’s free.  The sprinkler guy hooked Ronnie up and sent us on our way.  A few hours later Ronnie had done this:

03 04 09_0517

Much prettier!  Turns out we didn’t even need one of those value thingies.  Unfortunately, Ronnie’s favorite cell phone died in the process, a moment of silence please…

 

 

Our sprinkler box is right next to the car port so Ronnie set his phone down on the hood of the Jeep while he was working.  I had to leave to pick kids up from school so I just hopped in the car and went on my marry little way.  Picked up the kids from school and was heading home when I saw something fly right across my hood and smash on the street.  I knew what it was, but I still called Ronnie anyway to see if by chance I was wrong.  I wasn’t.  I pulled over by Bonanza High School where some boys were playing lacrosse and hopped I didn’t get hit in the head by a stray ball.  Then I saw pieces of his phone scattered on the street.   I gathered what I could and went home to tell Ronnie the bad news.  It was no surprise to him, because he needed to make a call and realized where he put his phone down at, but it did surprise him that I made it that far with phone still on the hood.  What gets me is no one said hey lady, you have a phone on your hood.  Oh well, he had two replacement phones he can mess around with so it’s not a horrible tragedy. 

4 comments:

Smart Helm said...

Good job on the plumbing experience. You know, those plummers make lots of money... Just sayin :-)

And that is very sad about the phone. I lost mine and was so sad for many days... until I bought a new better one.

Nutty Hamster Chick said...

Oh mylanta, wow. Sorry about the phone, glad about the plumbing and the sprinkler system.

Ronnie Lutes said...

Thank goodness there were no plumbers crack pics.

Eliza said...

Russell is always working on our old decreped sprinkler system too. Ours looks pretty like yours now, but we've had to work on all the pipes in the yard (still working on them....)

Isn't it great to have a handy man at home?

Sorry about the phone, that totally sucks, but its kinda funny.