My countdown timer says Ironman Coeur d'Alene is 5 days 15 hours 6 minutes away. I wouldn't say I am nervous, but the fear vomit has started to rise up and push on at least one sphincter. I am thinking about running away and joining the circus, becoming a Walmart greeter or a porn star for the AARP crowd. I hear there is good money in at least one of those occupations.
I leave Wednesday morning and I have a five hour drive from here to CDA. At least it will give me something to do besides worry.
At this point, I don't want to do too much. I am working out 30-45 minutes per day, at an easy pace. Yesterday, I swam. I spent 50 minutes in the pool. I spent 30 minutes swimming and another 20 staring off into space. When I was actually swimming, I was trying to find out how far I could swim underwater, or how hard I could bump into Duane before he pushed me underwater. We are just some old guys playing grab-ass. Wearing a speedo. I feel weird talking about it.
So one of the things you want to do now in prep for Ironman is sleep. I read that somewhere. I have some real talent sleeping, so you would think I would be a lock for this part of the training. Ya, right. Yesterday, we were fixing dinner, sort of. Patty was cooking, I was doing some online shopping, looking for some hand carved chinese lawn ornaments. So far so good. Then after dinner, Patty was working at the sink, wasting time washing dishes. I had moved on from lawn ornament shopping to looking up the weight of a water bottle, without the water. I just wanted to know what the bottle weighed. That took twenty minutes to find out how many grams a plastic bottle weighs.
Anyway, Patty asks me where all the water pressure went in the sink. I looked and the water was just trickling out of the faucet. I helpfully suggested she learn to use the faucet. About thirty seconds later, she asked why her shoes were all wet. I ignored her. I mean, I didn't completely ignore her, I just wasn't dashing over to help. I ignored the leaking faucet.
So later that night, at 11:45 in fact, I was on my back, lying in a cold puddle of sink water, with my mouth holding a flashlight and my arms up under the sink, trying to fix what Patty broke using a screwdriver and a fork. It was touch and go for a while, but the sink eventually won out. If you don't know, there is no way to work on a kitchen sink without throwing a lumbar disk out of whack. I gave up a little after 1:00am.
Today, I got home from work with a big pair of pliers from Home Depot and a new plan. I think the pliers are big enough to fix a firetruck. I tried to snake them up onto the leaky faucet from under the sink, but they were too big to get a good grip. Crap. So I stood over the sink, chomped down on the faucet, put a leg up on the counter and pulled like I was trying to yank a calf out of the cow back on the farm. Everybody should pull a calf once in their life. You hook these chains onto the furry paws of the calf, then you sit your ass down in a cowpie and brace your feet on the hips of the cow, who should be laying down. Grab the ends of the chain, lean back and pull hard enough to pull your shoulder out of joint. If the calf comes out, fine, if not, call the vet and claim ignorance. He might ask who the hell was trying to use some chains the wrong way on a perfectly healthy calf. Deny it. I told him that I was at school and he should ask my Mom. She was the only one home and looks guilty as hell.
Back to my faucet. I clamped my new huge pliers on the top part of the faucet and twisted like I was trying to pull my shoulder out of joint. No joy. The faucet is still sitting there, defying me, judging me, conspiring with my mother-in-law to count my failures.
I tried to get ahold of Ric Holm. He has a home remodel business. He doesn't know it yet, but he is going to fix my faucet and remodel my house. If he asks who the hell was reefing on a perfectly healthy faucet with a new pair of pliers, I am going to claim I was at work and Patty was home. He should talk to her. She looks guilty.
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