Last Saturday I went to rinse my coffee cup and stepped in a big puddle of water on the floor by the sink. It took me a minute to realize that nobody had actually spilled water on the floor- the water was coming from under the sink.

I opened the cupboard, and sho' 'nuff, one of the hoses was spraying water. Everything in that cupboard was either soaking wet or filled with water. I turned off the water supply and called the bearded eye-roller to take a look.

He assured me that it was no big deal- he'd just go to the hardware store and pick up another hose.

He was gone for a good three hours and came home empty handed. Turns out that this particular hose came with the faucet and was a different size than anything in the four hardware stores he visited.

I started to get a little nervous at this point. He immediately went online and found that there was a distributer of these faucets only 15 minutes from the house, so called them. Turns out that they're not open on the weekend.

WHHHAAAATTTTT?

BER said, "I'll just pick one up on Monday and fix it then."

This is when I turned into panic mode.

Me: Are you telling me that this can't be fixed until Monday?
BER: Yes, but that's only two days away.

I started thinking about the fact that I couldn't do dishes, clean my kitchen or any of the other things that absolutely MUST be done before I can relax. My kitchen needs to be spotless at.all.times.

In my panic (truly, I was kind of panicked at the idea), I said "Can't we just call a plumber? I'm sure they could fix it TODAY". BER replied that it would probably cost a lot of money to have a plumber do this, when it's something he could probably fix for less than 15.00.

I told him that I'd pay for a plumber out of my own allowance if he was concerned about the money. I NEEDED my kitchen sink!

So, he called a plumber to appease me. The plumbing service said that it would be $50.00 just for the service call. If they couldn't fix it that day- it would still be $50.00. He started to tell them 'no thank you' but I said, "it's worth it- please have them come fix my sink". I'm sure by then I had that desperate look on my face because he just shrugged his shoulders and asked the plumber when they'd be here.

Monday.

He told them never-mind and hung up.

I came up with all kinds of solutions.

• Isn't there some kind of temporary tape we can put on the hose?


• Can't we put a different bolt on a new hose?


• How about we get a new faucet?

It was THEN that he said, "Honey- you can still use the sink. There just won't be any hot water to the faucet and the dishwasher STILL has hot water going in to it."

That statement was almost like giving me a huge dose of valium. Why the heck couldn't he have told me this in the first place? All that angst for nothing.

I just couldn't stomach the thought of having dirty dishes in my sink.

Even though we didn't have a fight over this, we apologized to each other for being impatient with each other. I think he learned a big lesson here. As long as he can assure me that I can maintain a neat house, I won't wig out on him.