Plumb Crazy

I hate plumbing.

Let me rephrase that: I hate fixing plumbing.

As soon as you start to fix whatever is wrong with your plumbing, you’ll find something else that needs fixing because as soon as you touch one thing, another thing breaks. That’s because the way plumbing is designed is that all pieces are connected. It’s nonsensical if you ask me, and we all know who designed this crap, right?

…

…

No, I’m waiting for you to say it. 

Look, you know I’ll say it, I’m just waiting to see if you’ll say it. 

Men.

I think they must’ve designed pipes and plumbing around what they think a woman’s reproductive system looks like, without ever having actually seen it except for maybe in pictures at the doctor’s office. It must all be very confusing to the novice male to learn this about women, so maybe one of them decided they would try to decode it by attempting to recreate it in the plumbing system, then get as many young men to serve an apprenticeship as possible. You know, to prepare them for what lay ahead. 

Laying pipe.

Anyway, I had to replace the stopper in my bathroom sink, but before I could do that, I had to figure out what the stupid thing was called, and to my surprise, it wasn’t “stupid thing”, it was “stopper”. Look, if you want me to know this shit, you’ll have to pay me $150 bucks an hour, which is what a plumber makes.

I learned a couple things in the process of changing my bathroom sink stopper. One: You always bring the old part with you to the hardware store so you don’t have to make two trips, and two: I hate fixing plumbing, it’s friggin’ retarded. 

I watched a video on how to do it, but it’s never as easy as they portray it to be. Once you touch one simple thing, like for instance, the cap of a pivot rod, it unleashes a whole series of unexpected things, like say, a leak from a goddamn a pipe I didn’t even touch! Plus, I had to learn what a “pivot rod” really was when all this time I thought it had to do with the male reproductive system.

Taking apart the workings under your sink involves being willing to go to a very dark place. I’m talking really dark, like, darker than your worst nightmare… or like, murderous thoughts. Have you ever smelled the pipes of your bathroom sink? Okay, well you need to try it in order to really appreciate how bad it is. 

I nearly barfed when I undid the pipe and a long strand of some gooey foreign material came streaming out, along with a foul smell of rotting corpses. If you ever want to know what death smells like, smell your plumbing. If you ever want to know what murder feels like, try fixing it.

On top of the insult of knowing I was responsible for the foreign matter clogging my pipes, when I got up to the register at the hardware store, the checkout lady had to point out the cold sore on my lip. Yeah, I got a huge fucking cold sore on my lip for the weekend, how was yours? It’s so big and painful, it has its own heartbeat. Believe me, no one needs to mention it because it’s pointing out the obvious. 

And this woman points it out, like, literally points at it with her finger and makes a comment about how big it was. She happened to be Indian and had a strong accent, so when she said my cold sore was very big, it came out like “werry big”, and I’m thinking to myself “Lady, you have some nerve pointing out my cold sore when you can’t even pronounce the English language.”  

Now, if I had to criticize her appearance, it would be that she was short. Furthermore, I would go on to say that she shouldn’t be pointing out cold sores on others when I’d be more worried about the fact that it’s a lot worse wearing an awful hardware store t-shirt in a hideous color that doesn’t look good on you, okay?… and, and… you’re an immigrant!

ahem

I took on this whole project because I didn’t want to bother my landlord, seeing as how he had to replace my toilet over the summer due to an unfortunate accident. It’s not what you think. What happened was, I placed one too many objects on the shelf that sat above the toilet tank and it couldn’t hold the weight and came crashing down, splitting the tank in two and causing a minor flood. That was something else I learned. Look, if I wanted to be a builder, or a plumber when I grew up, I would have, but I didn’t. 

Anyway, you’re probably wondering if I got the pipe to stop leaking after all that hassle. You bet your sweet ass I didn’t!