digitalBush

Tonight I set out to fix a drain in the front bathroom.  This was one of the things on my todo list since we moved into our new home over a month ago.  This tub is where we've been giving Hudson his baths and the lever style drain stopper wasn't completely plugging the drain.  Hudson likes his time in the tub, so naturally the water draining out slowly was a problem.

With me being the person that I am, I went to the hardware store and bought one of those push style drains to replace it.  I installed one on the old house, so I knew this wouldn't be an issue.  I never even investigated why the old one leaked, I just knew I was going to tear the old one out and put in a shiny new one.  I removed the two screws holding the overflow plate (the plate with the lever in the middle) and pulled out the linkage and stopper.

I'm about to start removing the drain plate when it hit me: there is a threaded rod on that linkage I just threw in the garbage. That would let me move the stopper up and down and adjust how deep it goes into the pipe.  So, for shits and grins I turned the threaded rod out a few turns and stuck it back in. Amazingly it worked. No more leaky drain.

I could have punched myself. I moved the rod maybe an eighth of an inch to fix the problem. That's it, 1/8 of one inch. I had spent $20 on the replacement. I drove a few miles to the hardware store and burned a little gas. I wasted half an hour going to pick up the parts.  I did all of that to solve a problem that was only an eighth of an inch long.

So many times my solution is to find the biggest hammer and beat until the problem goes away. Tonight I was reminded that sometimes I just need to take a moment to see what I have in front of me. The best solution isn't always to rip something out and replace it. Sometimes a little tweak is all that is needed. 

While tonight I am talking about plumbing, this really applies to life in general.  How much of your life have you tried to replace when all you needed to do was make a slight adjustment?  Even worse, how much of your life has made you unhappy and you've just let it happen without a second thought? Maybe a small tweak is all you need to restore a little bit of your sanity.  Think about it.

Photo Courtesy of Brymo

I have a huge number of ideas swirling around in my head, but lately I've been struggling to find time for anything.  Work has been madness and I'm not sure why.  We're in the middle of a growth phase and it feels like I'm taking the brunt of it.  Normally we're slow Decemeber and January, but we've had no breaks, no time to take a step back and clean up some things.  It has just been go go go, forward forward forward.

Decemeber is a my time to reflect.  It's cold outside (not today though!) and everything around me is usually moving slow.  I do the same, gain a few pounds, and just look around me.  I need some time to evaluate what I'm doing, where I'm going, and figure out where I want to go.  I need down time.  I guess that's life for ya.