My very special Christmas

Enjoying yoga

This year, I had a very special Christmas. Unlike the previous years, it was not spent drinking mulled wine with family and friends. Instead, this special occasion morphed into a very special working day.

Our bathroom faucet had been leaking for quite a while, and its replacement, courtesy of Amazon, arrived the day before Christmas. So, having nothing better to do, I decided to tackle the job myself. I am not a plumber but am an educated guy, so replacing a faucet should be a piece of cake, right?

Well, not exactly. Replacing a faucet requires experience and a lot of flexibility, a quality that I am now sorely lacking. Your stretchability, unless you are Jane Fonda, decreases with age, and I am at the stage of my life when putting on socks is already a bit strenuous.

So, a great part of my special Christmas day was spent, crawling and contorting in the tiny closet located under the bathroom sink.  I first tried to remove the faucet’s fastening nuts and this should not have been particularly difficult. But this damn faucet has been squatting in my house for years, and it obviously liked its surroundings. Removing those fastening nuts was a fight roughly equivalent to the bellicose attitude adopted lately by the tenant of the White House.

Every item in the faucet’s draining system was ancient and unwilling to yield. I was fortunately assisted by my wife and we took turns crawling and groaning under the sink. She is a yoga practitioner and found it much easier than me to squirm and writhe in the darkness.

By the way, I replaced the old non-descript faucet with a Moen faucet, a name I trust. The nice thing about this company is that if you go to Moen support on the Internet, it has very comprehensive videos detailing all kinds of installations.

The process was difficult because I have very little plumbing experience and it was my first attempt ever at replacing a faucet. What I learned was that if you want to practice that trade, you cannot be corpulent and that it would behoove you to practice yoga on a regular basis. To be successful, you need to easily flex every part of your body. A little bit of meditation would also help.

But to enjoy your work, you need to have a special calling for it and I don’t think that I have this. I would rather sit in front of my computer, sip a cup of whatever and save my strength for something more worthwhile… like fustigating the mindless refuseniks spurning the wearing of a protective mask during this dire situation.

But this very special Christmas had a positive side. All my going on all fours, crawling, wiggling, slithering, etc. significantly reduced my glucose level. This is a job that my doctor would approve of… but it is a little late in my career development to change course.

For the time being, I will stick to words… I am still convinced that the pen is mightier than an adjustable wrench.

Heureuse nouvelle année, et particulièrement bonne santé a tous !
Happy New Year, and particularly good health to all!

Alain

en English fr Français de Deutsch it Italiano ru Русский es Español