That’s What She Said

pipe busters leak After the drama of yesterday’s flat hair we wonder how much more Stephanie and the cowboy can take? HOW. MUCH. MORE? They have now entered their 50th hour without working indoor plumbing. FIFTY HOURS. That’s roughly 3,000 minutes suffering in the desert of their shared abode.

As the day begins, Stephanie washes her hair in the sink with a pitcher of tepid water. Ironically, what seems tepid for brushing one’s teeth translates to glacier water on the scalp, giving new meaning to the term “Brain Freeze” (cue Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice”). However, the cold water washing allows for adequate blow drying and ample hair volume, narrowly averting what could have been a tragic second Bad Hair Day.

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Meanwhile, back at the chemical plant, the cowboy takes off an hour early to go to the chiropractor for his aching back. If a supervisor calls him in for overtime this week, he will have to work the first hour at his regular hourly pay. Regular pay. But it’s a risk he has to take.

The sound of his groaning and back popping at the chiropractor’s leaves us wondering: Will the cowboy be able to bend his body into the needed position for fixing the pipes? For that matter, will he even be able to take off his steel-toed boots to put on his “crawl under the house” boots without help?

Simultaneously, Stephanie makes a crucial stop at Plumb-o-Rama. Will they have the needed parts in stock? that's what she said Will she be able to discern PVC from galvanized iron? Can she manage the right length and thickness?

(That’s what she said.)

Finally, both of them home with proper parts and proper boots, it’s back into the creepy crawl space for the cowboy. Only this time, he accesses it from the vent at the front of the house – which, although nearer the leak, is a MUCH smaller, much shallower vent than before – causing the cowboy crucial claustrophobic hesitation.

Will he be able to muster the courage to crawl?

Hesitantly, he enters the darkness headfirst, knowing the tight turnaround may totally prevent re-exit through the same vent. Once under, he calls for Stephanie. He needs her to go outside to the shut off valve and make the counter-clockwise turn to discern the exact location of the leak.

Stephanie rushes to her closet to search for the right pair of “going out to the meter” shoes and makes the 130-ft trek out to the yard. She twists the valve on. (cue “Twist & Shout”) No sooner does she turn the water on than the cowboy yells for her to turn it back off!

Frustration and confusion! Not only does he want her to turn it back off, he also wants her to wait. WAIT? Outside? She doesn’t have on “waiting” shoes, she has on “going to the meter shoes”.

What to do? What. To. Do???

Stephanie feels her upper lip beginning to glisten. Tiny drops of moisture forming on her skin. This could only mean one thing: SWEAT. The cowboy better hurry before she starts to melt. Lucky for Stephanie, the “Going to the Meter” shoes also double as appropriate front porch swing shoes, so she decides to take refuge on the swing and wait out this plumbing plight.

Back under the house, the cowboy-turned-plumber is commenting – loudly – on how tight winnie the pooh stuck the vent was to crawl into, and Stephanie may have to help him get back out. She tells him not to worry. She is certain if his middle is too round to fit, and he has to remain wedged there for several days in a great tightness, she will be certain to visit every day and feed him honey until Christopher Robin can help with the rescue effort.

The idea of being wedged in the vent was not at all humorous to the cowboy. NOT. AT. ALL. And he stated, in no uncertain terms, if he were to be “caught in a tight spot”, Stephanie had better do everything in her power, including greasing him like a pig, hooking him to a winch, (not to be confused with ‘wench’, which he might enjoy too much), and calling the National Guard and Bob’s Tow Truck to unwedge him.

Stephanie gets distracted by the word ‘wedge’ and daydreams about new shoes until the cowboy proclaims …

Stay tuned for the Season Finale of PipeBusters after this word from our sponsor.

The cowboy proclaims, ‘TURN THE WATER ON!’

Stephanie hurdles the shrubbery and dashes the 40 meters to the meter. Which, in reality, and this is a reality show, means she stepped in between the boxwoods and meandered back to the meter in a record 92 seconds.

RAYS OF LIGHT FROM HEAVEN She turns the meter on, and behold there is water, and it is good. (cue “Hallelujah Chorus”)

The cowboy begins the army crawl back to the vent. He tosses the tools out first. Contracting himself into the fetal position, he emerges from under the house. Face down, he pushes painfully through the small hole, centimeter by centimeter until he lets out a cry for fresh air. His shoulder is next, followed by the other, then the rest sliding out easily, but bringing uneasy repressed birth memories.

The job has been completed. After a mere 62 hours, and without the silliness of a professional plumber, the leak has been defeated. For now. At least the one under the house. The dripping shower is a different story

(cue “Shower the People You Love” by James Taylor).

Yes, the leaky shower faucet is a very different story. A lengthy story. A story appropriate for the next season of PipeBusters on the Reality Channel.

Thanks for joining us.

Amazon gives it 5 stars.

I know, because I read the reviews. Hundreds of satisfied customers raving about the quality of this toy – the speed, the size, the durability. Important details to know when purchasing a $300 ride-on Fisher-Price Jeep for your favorite 5-year-old.

The biggest perk in all of those reviews, is that not one of them mentioned the phrase “some assembly required”. WHOO HOO!

I say “whoo hoo” because I am not a woman with skillz. With a world population of 7.125 billion, my mechanical competency ranks near the bottom, only slightly higher than community college philosophy majors. Seriously. Just getting my lipstick to roll up and down without breaking off is a pretty big deal for me.

So when this package arrived, it was in a box. A box. And not the jumbo kind you might see on The Price is Right where they drop open one side to reveal an assembly-line-fully-manufactured 3-dimensional vehicle, but a FLAT box that could contain, oh say, a chalkboard . I felt a stabbing pain shoot down my left arm. I consoled myself, “It might not be so bad. Maybe it’s just a matter of slipping on a couple sets of wheels and popping up the roll-bar. Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.”

And with that, I drove to my daughter’s house where this little Jeep would find its new home. She met me at the garage door. When I opened the back end of the van, she mumbled something nondescript and ispy gave me that look.
You know… the one that says,
“What have you done, woman???”
We proceeded to unpack the box. Once we had all 169 parts – please don’t skip over that number – ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-NINE PARTS scattered across the garage floor, it looked like an impossible page from “I Spy Extreme”.

3952b87d8faaba39d9b9d78607b71c4c The Fisher-Price
I knew and loved
as a child
had just become
my mortal enemy.

I reached for the manual. Kacey immediately swiped it from my hands. “Oh no you don’t. We both know what happens when you try to read instructions. Just sit down and look cute.” She reconsidered. “On second thought, go to the kitchen and and get a screwdriver. You DO KNOW what a Phillips head is, don’t you??”

Do I know what a Phillips head is? It’s a crosshead screwdriver named after Henry Frank Phillips of Portland, Oregon, but actually invented by John P. Thompson who sold his self-centering screw design to Phillips in 1935. Duh. Do I know what a Phillips head is. Then I mumbled something motherly like, “I’ll Phillips your head” and went to retrieve the tools.

I unwrapped parts and handed her pieces and made up cheers as she moved through the 42-step instruction manual for the next hour. I even pre-assembled smaller parts that she would, of course, later have to disassemble. During the dashboard installation she discovered a working radio that plays songs from Disney’s “Frozen”. She mumbled curses my direction and sent me away to fetch food and coffee.

After Step 16, Kacey had a conference call for work, so I decided to try my hand at connecting the pieces. She glared at me over her reading glasses,
skepticism oozing from her eyeballs, screw (2) but I stated emphatically,
“I CAN screw things!”

“Oh…that’s what SHE said,” she grinned mischievously.

I managed the hood, doors, hinges, steering column, wheel, and even the seats before she rejoined me. I was patting myself on the back when she found a leftover pin. After backtracking the steps, seems I had neglected to install said pin in the steering wheel mount. So while she undid what I had wrong-did, I flipped ahead to the final few pages of the manual. “Hey! Don’t read ahead and spoil the ending!” she teased. I told her I found no intrigue in this tragic saga, and just wanted to see how many more pages I had to endure. With that, she threw a sheet of 44 decals at me and said, “Shu-up and put on stickers.”

jeep Three-and-a-half hours from start gun to finish line, and the 12-volt battery-powered 5-star-rated Fisher-Price Frozen Jeep Wrangler, suitable for children ages 5-8, was complete and ready for the birthday girl.