Discover The Hidden Value Of Your Purchases By Reading The Instructions

When Eddie and I moved into this house, there was a list of things I wanted to change.  Notice I didn't type, "...we wanted to change."  I believe this is a fundamental difference between most of the men I know and most of the women I know.  Eddie is generally thankful to have a place to lay his head.  He needs very little.  For him, a comfortable bed and a fan in a room with pink walls provides a relaxing sanctuary for a night of good sleep.  The same bed and fan and walls for me is a pink prison that must be changed.  Immediately.  I will dwell on the pinkness of the pink and how it ugli-fies my comfortable bed until I paint it.  Eddie will pass the walls and only see cool pillows and soft sheets.  It astounds me that happiness can exist with so much less work than I seem to have to put into it.  (In our previous house, the master bedroom was PINK when we moved in.  Not pink when we moved out.)      

We began the changes in this house by ripping out the carpet in a majority of the rooms and replacing it with wood.  This was priority one for me.  Notice I typed, "We began the changes..." because it took more than one of us to pay for it.

Next on the list of affordable improvements was the sink/faucet combo in the kitchen.  After many trips to the local home improvement store, we (I) decided on exactly what would replace our way-too-small, hard-to-turn-on-and-off sink and faucet.  We bought and brought home to install.  We loved everything about them.  

Except one thing.

Our faucet would only run as a sprayer.  When we would do dishes or get a drink of water, more of the spray would bounce off of a dish or the bottom of the sink to DRENCH us EVERY TIME we used it.  But it was pretty and it was what I wanted, so I didn't want to complain.  I didn't want to complain to Eddie about the rather expensive faucet that I picked out.  Dangerous territory.

So we lived with it.  For about seven months.  

Last week, I've gotten another grand idea for more organization in the house and am cataloguing and storing all of our instruction manuals we've collected over the years.  I'm discarding those that are no longer necessary and perusing those that are still applicable when I stop at the one with pictures of our faucet on the front and I started to read.

There it was.  Right under the heading: YES, YOU ARE A MORON.  YOU SHOULD HAVE READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS WHEN YOU GOT THE FAUCET TO AVOID GETTING WET EVERY TIME YOU USE IT. 

The key to removing the barrier to my almost-perfect faucet's perfection was before me:  The instructions for switching the spray on the nozzle.  There were even diagrams.  I swear an untouched light bulb turned on somewhere in the house at that very moment.

It took 1 second to change from get-me-wet spray to flowing-stream-of-lovely-dryness.  

I ran to show Eddie my genius.  I left the water running.  

It wasn't going to drench the counter (and the floor and the rug) this time. 

Next:  The counters.