Lessons in self-sufficiency are an ongoing process for me. When you live the life that I do, you learn to count on yourself as often as possible. As much as I prefer to have things done for me, I don't always have someone around to take care of things that I would prefer not to do.
As is always a pattern in this life, Hubby is gone again. I am left on my own - to take care of the house and the furry ones and go about my day-to-day activities. I have a partner, but he can only do so much from half a world away.
In the past, we've lived in apartments. If something went wrong, I had a team of maintenance men that I could call upon. Now, we own out own home. Such responsibilities fall upon us. Or, as of late, me.
Hubby wanted to hire someone to take care of the yard maintenance while he is away. Looking at the big picture, and noting that this sacrifice that we are making has an end goal of crawling out of the pit of debt that we've found ourselves in, I said no. I would take on the yard myself and save us money in the process.
I am such a fool.
I've since discovered that I hate mowing the yard. It might not be so bad if our yard were level. But our front yard has this weird mound in the middle. Pushing our mower up this mound is quite a chore. And this is after I get the silly thing started!
I would love to weed-eat the areas of the yard that the mower won't get to. However, I am unable to get the weed-eater to start, leaving me in the awkward position of having to use scissors to cut down grass in such obvious areas as the edge of the patio and our garden border. Perhaps I'll try it again tomorrow.
I'm in the process of trimming up the shrubs in the back yard. I don't mind this so much, I just have to break the chore down into a few shrubs at a time, as I'm limited in my ability to dispose of the clippings by the capacity the yard waste bin.
I still have a couple of shrubs to crop down completely. Today, as I was pushing the lawn mower through the back yard, I bumped up against something that I thought was part of an unwanted shrub. As I pushed forward with the mower, I heard an unwelcome snapping noise.
It was a sprinkler head.
Shit.
I am such an idiot!!
After I finished mowing, I turned my attention to this new crisis laid before me. I pulled the sprinkler head right out of the ground, and could see where the pipe had broken…right where it screws into the rest of the system. And part of the pipe was still in there. Great.
Fortunately, Hubby has a plethora of tools at our disposal. I retreated to the work bench and came back with my gardening trowel and a pair of pliers. I dug around in the ground to expose the problem area, and attempted to remove the broken piece of pipe with the pliers.
No luck.
I should add here that I know nothing about sprinkler systems. This is the first one I've ever had in my life.
I sat there, on my knees in the yard, furiously wishing that Hubby were here. He would know just what to do. In fact, he has performed repairs on other areas of our sprinkler system, and I remember seeing him use pipe threaders, hack saws and special glue. How the hell am I going to perform such an intricate repair with the little bit of knowledge that I have in this area?
Sitting there, in the grass, facing this crisis, I became a little bit overwhelmed. I don't really know anyone that might be able to help me. Hubby is gone. All of my family is thousands of miles away. What am I going to do?
It took me a few minutes, but I finally collected myself. Silly girl! You can absolutely take care of this! Get off your ass and figure something out! Just as quickly as it began, my pity party was over and I was in control again.
What to do? Move it to the internet. Google is your friend. I conducted a search…praying that I could find advice for removing the trapped piece of pipe and that I wouldn't have to cut, measure, thread and glue.
Within a matter of minutes, I had found my solution and was on my way to the hardware store, broken sprinkler pipe in hand. I had learned that my problem was a broken riser (whatever that is!) and I would need a tool called a "nipple extractor." While perusing the sprinkler section, I found pre-threaded pipes in varying lengths and picked up a couple of different lengths just to be sure. I also decided that I wanted a pop-up sprinkler head instead of the stationary kind that sticks up from the ground and got me in this mess to begin with!
In no time, I was back home, in the back yard, and with my new "nipple extractor" I had the broken piece of pipe dislodged in no time! Trying out different lengths of pipe, I found the one that would leave my new sprinkler head flush with the ground and began applying Teflon tape(something I learned from watching Hubby) to keep the joints from leaking. In no time, the sprinkler was assembled and my hole in the ground was gone.
Feeling this renewed sense of accomplishment, I moved on to my remaining yard tasks for the weekend.
In the big picture, today's crisis was pretty minor. But it served to reinforce to me that I can handle whatever falls in my path. I may have to give myself a little pep talk to make it happen, but I can handle anything.
I'm achy and sore, but I've managed to accomplish quite a bit myself. It would be so much easier if I had Hubby here to do these things for me, or share the load. Living the life that we do doesn't always allow for that, so I've learned how to handle things on my own. I've learned how to make things happen, and I'm proud of myself for it. And I'm pretty sure that Hubby is proud of me, too.
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