In today’s installment of “The Many Ways Deb Attempts to ‘Do-It-Herself’ or Why Her Children Want to Kill Her Today”: Deb begins replacing the kitchen faucet, which has finally, irrevocably, given up the ghost. (Fun/dark fact — “giving up the ghost” can be found as early as 1600s versions of the King James bible in reference to Jesus’ death.) 

Anyway, back to the faucet — what’s the first thing you should do when replacing a kitchen faucet? Turn off the water. That’s easy enough. There are shut-off valves under the sink. Ta da. Nailed it. Except that the shut off valves don’t work. 

No worries. Thanks, Google and YouTube, for the advice about locating the basement shut-off valves. Those were great videos of housing built in the 90’s — the 1990s, that is, only 100 years after our house was built. That’s right. There’s no easily identifiable valve to turn off the water in this wonderful, old house.

So, of course, the very first task stumped us. We pressed on — yes, we actually did — by trying to fix the shut-off valves under the sink. We managed to get the water off (YAY) until we started pulling out the old faucet. Then … yes, I’m about to say it … our shut-off valve “fix” unfixed itself and water came gushing out of the hoses. Wow. We have never worked so fast to find buckets and re-attach hoses mid-gush. With hindsight, it was pretty funny but at the time, with water spraying everywhere, my son and I agreed that it was a good time for swearing. And we did some. More than some. We did a lot of swearing. 

We’re not done yet — swearing or fixing the faucet. Tuesday afternoon, we’re following all the visible water pipes to their conclusion. There has to be a water shut-off valve somewhere in the vicinity of our house … right? Of course, right.

All of this blog entry’s pictures are from an adventure last Friday when I tagged along with my daughter and a friend on their trip to Schwirian Farm’s Sunflower Festival. Although hotter than Satan’s birthday party, it was as delightful as you could imagine. My only regret is that we didn’t have time to pick-our-own sunflowers because *some* of us had “hot girl summer” plans. (Another fun fact: we can thank Megan Thee Stallion for that body-positive term, hot girl summer. Thank you, Queen.) 

This (literally) hot girl spent the evening cooling off on the porch and working on her novel while the other hot girls in the group did whatever vaccinated twenty-somethings do in the 2020s. All I know is that it involved cute sundresses and sandals and meeting up with other vaccinated hot girls. 

It might be time for a yoga pose — sun salutation feels particularly right today.

Much love.