I love my plumber!

Its True. I do!

My plumber wears his pants on his hips- and does not show his crack. That's rare in itself.
My plumber always answers my calls immediately, and shows up at the door within the hour .
My plumber does not demand that I put my dog outside.
My plumber has never failed me, his work is always complete and thorough.
My plumber does not bill me !

why?? Because I'm married to him.
Ok, I admit, because its his own business, if I have to call him for work at home, I do get something of a bill, for the cost of the parts.

It comes in more handy than you may think.
I will say that the saying is true-people who work in a particulat line of work, will not do said services at home. the chef won't cook his own dinner, the mechanic won't wrench his own car, and yes, the plumber hates doing his own plumbing.

There have been some small jobs left to wait around the house, non- emergency things.
The bathroom fixture had only one knob for a while- that was a pain, but once I became fed up enough with it to actually CALL him and request a new one- it was fixed.
The sink faucet for some reason dripped. ... and dripped ... in the winter we have to leave the sink dripping slowly, to prevent freezing pipes, but when that dripping extends into june, he gets a call.

Those are the fun calls. " hi there, I have a sink that is dripping, my old plumber won't fix it, i need outside help. " sure thing ma'am. be there at 5. And at 5, there he is, with a shiny new fixture no less.

Yesterday I had to make a less- fun call.
I left to pick up the kids from school, and when we returned it sounded like the washer was running.
hmm. thats odd, I finished laundry today.
OH NO!
I can hear water gushing from under the house somewhere. not good at all.
Out the back door, I look at the ground, and there is a small river running out from under my house!
On the phone " hope you're not far, you need to get here NOW, theres a major pipe gusher here."
he tells me to turn off the water valve.
um.
I'm married to the plumber. That doesn't mean I know what or where this stuff is!!

he talks me through it.
"find the little door flap and theres a red handle inside. turn it."
easy enough. find the flap , which is located on the outside wall. look in and see the handle to turn.

this is where my panic attack hit.
I am terrified of spiders and anything remotely related. Therefore the sight of huge webs in the space between the door flap and the handle made me want to run for my life. webs that big only mean big spiders.
As it turns out, the handle is far enough into this area that I have to reach in to at least my elbow.
Husband is on the phone- did you get it? did the water stop? hey? you there?
oh dear God.
I get a stick and knock the webs out, cringing inside and out, anticipating the big hairy ugly arachnid thats bound to come at me..
it didn't. so now i have to reach in there and turn that handle.

somehow I did it with my eyes closed. the water stopped.

I pick up the phone and tell my husband "we need to rig a stick or somethig to that because I am NEVER reaching into that hole again!! what the heck is wrong with you?"

he's laughing like a loon, because I think reaching into that space was bad.
He's laughing because he's had to put his entire body into spaces like that, and worse, with even worse critters than wood spiders.(they aren't poisonous, just BIG) and generally also has to deal with awful stenches and messes in such small spaces.

No thanks hon, you can keep that job all for yourself. I love my plumber because he'll willingly go into dark spider zones.

He fixed the major water leak we had, with a much unwanted declaration that most of our water pipes need to be redone. Being the plumbers wife, and knowing the rule about working at home, this is a scary concept for me. Will he dive into the project all at once, or am I looking at a year's worth of "honey theres a river under the house" calls? only time will tell.

I thought to ask him, but I fear he'll actually hand me the bill.