I had one of those where I eventually called in a plumber. Didn’t want to destroy the sinks, because they were top-mount and damaging even one even a smidgen would have grown a two-faucet update into a two-faucet, two-sink, and long granite countertop update. Ouch.
He ended up spending a couple hours on each of the sinks carefully drilling and sawzall-ing out all the metal without damaging the sinks. Of course these were 3-hole fixtures, so he had do 6 of these to ream out. Better him than me.
Followers of my endlessly fascinating rants may recall that back in June I engaged in a battle with ants, who had built two mounds in the back yard that the kid’s lawnmower had to go around. If it was me I’d just have mowed right over them, which would have flattened them out, but this child says it would dull his lawnmower blade so he went over the areas with a trimmer. So then I took a pick axe and spade to the mounds, and sprayed them with permethrin, and they seemed to fade away for a while.
Today I noticed him avoiding certain areas again. When I asked about it, the youngster cheerfully replied, “You used to have two ant-hills. Now you have three!” My theory is that the child has some sort of emotional problem and gets a big kick out of delivering bad news to his betters in order to watch their reactions.
So I’m repeating the process and can only hope that the winter kills off the ants. I never had a problem like this before this summer. If they return again, I may have to get the whole lawn professionally treated.
I also have many other stories under the heading of “The Joys of Home Ownership”.
Sounds similar (speaking of The Joys of Home Ownership) to a faucet I had in the basement bathroom of the old house. It gradually developed a feature where, when you turned it on, some of the water would come out of the faucet spout but the rest of it would pour on the floor. I did eventually replace it, but I seem to have developed a protective mental block that prevents me from remembering the horrifying details of the ordeal, but I do recall it being a Herculean task because a lot of stuff seemed to have become welded by rust. There is no way, no how, that I would attempt such a task today in the combination of more advanced age and very much reduced patience.
Well, except that the thought of a plumber spending multiple hours on a job is truly frightening, as it conjures up images of a bill that is greater than the entire GDP of a small country!
That’s 10 years of constant vibrations, that could have at least loosened it so that it wouldn’t take much to knock it out.
Kind of like how computer components get unseated due to “chip creep” (though that’s due to heat causing components to expand and contract, not vibrations).
That makes sense, since there are certainly vibrations at the back of a speaker enclosure. Which just reinforces my belief that Nature is out to get us, or, in the words of some guy named Murphy, anything that can go wrong, will.
I’m getting pretty tired of being laid up. Asthmatic coughing persists now to day 20 (though I’m in the green for peak flow). I’m beginning to suspect bronchitis.
One of the only things I enjoy these days is throwing out clutter. I can’t even do that right now because of my asthma. I can get through the daily required tasks but I don’t have much stamina beyond that.
A side benefit here is that by not decluttering now you are avoiding stirring up dust and mites and other minuscule detritus that would only aggravate the asthma. Save that for when your breathing is all better.
My ants are pretty mundane and small, certainly not fire ants, and their mounds are much smaller than the one pictured.
Still, the story of the intrepid Wolfpup versus the Ants continues, undoubtedly with more chapters to come, but winter at least will bring a respite to both ant-hills and lawnmowing, and if we have a nice cold one, may even kill them off! Otherwise I’ll farm the job off to a professional to do a whole-lawn treatment.
Remember, dear esteemed pup, that that which does not kill them makes them stronger. And more riled up. When it comes to dealing with infestations of hideous aliens, go big or be eaten.
We had ants coming through gaps in the bricks on the front porch. Poison was a temporary fix. I put out a few bait traps to get to the queen, and that seemed to solve the problem permanently.
Went through a version of this last year. The plumber had to use everything but acetylene torches to get rusted fixtures loose from my bathroom sink. After finishing an exhausting job, he packed up and left. The next morning I discovered the hot/cold were hooked up backwards for the new faucets. I decided since it was “my” sink, I’d fix it in software, rather than have him pull it all apart again. My brain automatically reverses things for that sink now.
It’s 9/11. Yes, I knew someone on one of the towers. Yes he died. I’ve mourned for him … more than once. Its sucks but dammit I’m all mourned out. I can’t keep dredging that up year after year. I’ve let it go. That barrel of emotion is dry now. I just want to move on.
I was really really irritated with my husband this past weekend. He got a wild hair up his ass and decided that, this weekend was THE weekend he was going to make a toddler bed for our son. He started by cleaning out the area of our bedroom as soon as he got home from work on Saturday. Didn’t really talk to me about his plan. Just went and did it. I am supportive and it needed to be done anyway so I helped him and wrangled the children even more than I had been while he did that. I also went through all of our son’s clothes (which were stored in the area he was cleaning out). Then, on Sunday, he started his project.
Now, originally, we were going to spend about $50 on Amazon and buy a toddler bed. But my husband looked in the shed and felt he had all the parts from our daughter’s toddler bed to cobble together something for our son. Spoiler alert, he did not. On Sunday, after I cooked us all breakfast, he went out to the shed to start his project. He spent HOURS out there, while I cleaned the house, did ALL the laundry, and, again, wrangled the children on my own, only to find he did not have all the parts he needed. So he went to Menards and spent $100 to get the rest of the stuff he needed. Now he was making a head board and stuff, just generally making a whole bed for our son. Meanwhile, I was trying to fold laundry while children climbed all over me and our daughter had a meltdown because we wouldn’t let her do dangerous things on the big-wheel tricycle.
By the end of the day, I had all the laundry clean but not quite all folded and put away, the house not clean anymore because children, and no toddler bed because our original plan to buy a $50, plastic, would-work-for-the-years-its-needed bed and turned into a whole $100 project. Hopefully just $100. He’ll probably need to go to Menards again before this is over.
