Happy Leap Day! (And a plumbing tale)

So that’s why there’s a frog on the Google homepage. I had to see a mention somewhere else of it being leap day today before I figured that one out.

I celebrated Leap Day early by having all the plumbing fixtures in my house replaced. Long story short medium: we started getting sediment clogging our taps a couple of weeks ago (yes, this was in the midst of all our very preoccupying health issue stuff,) and, one evening after having had to take apart the end of the faucet and get all the little bits of stuff out of it about 10 times just to get enough water to brush my teeth and wash my face, I decided it was time to call a plumber. Mind you that there were lots of non-urgent (but annoying) plumbing issues throughout our house that I’d been meaning to call a plumber about for, like, ages. In getting the sediments-in-the-taps problem diagnosed, we first had a detour that took a couple weeks, since we’d thought the sediment must be resin escaping from our water softener, and a part was going to have to be ordered for that repair, but eventually the soft water people helped us figure out the sediment must be from (if you like technical terms) the magnesium anode rod in our hot water heater. The soft water guy just said that the rod needed replacing, but, when he came to look at it yesterday, my plumber took one look at our hot water heater and said it had basically been junk since day one, and we should replace the whole thing. (Our plumber is a very thrifty guy who will try to talk us out of any unnecessary expenditures, so I trusted him about that.) I told him I had some other things I’d been wanting done, and he asked me to show him all of them. I’d assumed that they were enough projects to require him to make several trips back to our house on different days. Not so — in fact, he would have finished everything yesterday, if he hadn’t run into several glitches (most of the glitches were caused by the original fixtures having been cheap and badly installed, and one glitch was a from Dean having damaged something in trying to repair it, and another glitch was from the plumber’s assistant accidentally breaking the tank on one of the new toilets.) The plumber’s coming back today (and I’m optimistic that it can all be done by this evening, although I’m not counting on it,) and by the time he’s done, we will have: a new hot water heater (already done,) new kitchen faucet (done,) new toilets in all three bathrooms (two are done, the other is waiting for the new tank — and it turns out there are currently no more like it in the county,) new taps, handles, and drain plugs in the baths of all three bathrooms, and new sinks and faucets in all three bathrooms. And the new fixtures will all be good quality, installed well.

I’m really grateful it all has gone relatively quickly — and I’m really eager to have it completely finished, since right now the one sink we can’t use is in the same bathroom with the one shower and toilet we can use. Also, I would like to have my house back to myself; I feel like I’ve just been through one of the longest and most eventful weeks of my life, and I would love to crawl in bed and stay there — for a week or two.

So, if you’re not getting new toilets, how are you planning to celebrate Leap Day?

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(I was about to promise that I’ll only write boring posts once every four years, but, I’m afraid it’s pretty likely that I won’t be able to resist expounding on many, many more boring topics between now and the next February 29th.)

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2 PM Update: As of an hour ago, all the plumbing work is done! Yay!

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