Let’s hear it for the plumbers!

Saturday, January 31, 2026

We are apparently not very good at having our kid have a problem. I had Benjamin moving home and Keith woke up at 4:30am thinking about the busted pipe. Then he started worrying about the fact that the shut off valves for our outdoor spigots are sheetrocked over. He got up at 5:30 and started moving furniture and refrigerators (okay, there is only one refrigerator, but furniture and refrigerator didn’t sound right) to get into places to see above the basement ceiling to try to figure things out. He was able to locate and touch one valve, but it is green with patina and stuck. There is a plan to unstuck it. The other valve wasn’t located. The basement was really a mess, but it is a double mess now.

Once daytime actually started, he started telling Benjin what to do. Benjin watched YouTube and listened to Keith and successfully fixed his broken pipe. HUZZAH! Here’s a picture of the repair. [Keith note: This was done with a Sharkbite coupling after removing about an inch of pipe. Sharkbite fittings are awesomely easy to use, requiring no soldering, but they’re also controversial with some people not trusting them, despite being rated for in-wall use, even in walls like this that have freeze potential. It’s important to install them correctly and many people aren’t as detail-oriented as they need to be to correctly use them. To feel completely confident, I may suggest that Benjin have a plumber replace the Sharkbite fitting. Most plumbers these days use ProPress instead of old-fashioned soldered fittings, which is faster, easier, and better, so even plumbers don’t use solder and torch much anymore. In any case, Benjin will double-insulate the pipes to prevent freezing problems in the future by using both pipe insulation and fiberglass batting.]

Keith had a rehearsal this morning and I was doing laundry. The washing machine at this house is a nightmare. Sometimes it makes black clothes much dirtier than when they went in. Today was such a day. I did a load of black. They all came out looking like this. AAAUUUGGHHH

I washed them again without soap, since it appears to be soap residue all over. They did not improve. Keith came home and said last time it happened he ran the cleaning cycle with bleach. We did that. We ran the rinse cycle to make sure the bleach was gone. We washed the black clothes again with soap. They still look AWFUL. I just scrubbed one T-shirt with a clean, wet washcloth and made it look better. It’s in the dryer, testing to see if it comes out looking okay. Everything is waiting, because scrubbing it all off is A LOT and it is A DRAG. I assume it is leaving the same residue on not black clothes (which were not washed today), but you just can’t see it because of lack of contrast.

What the actual hell?

[Keith note: I decided that enough was enough with this stupid washer. I used my Microsoft alumni network deals to get a great deal on a new washer and dryer (bundling saves and this dryer here isn’t great either). They are coming on Friday and are Consumer’s Reports’ top-rated models (despite being very reasonably priced).]

We visited the kitties this afternoon, because Alexander is out of town. We were there for a while because a life-long friend (literally met her when I came home from the hospital from being born) called to check on us Minnesotans and to talk about how awful the attack and siege of Minnesota is. I was glad to hear that other parts of the country are hearing about all the awful things that are happening here and we talked a long time about it. We did do family check-ins and had some positive talk, too.

Tonight was Cabaret Night at the Phipps. The theme tonight was songs from movies, and it could not have been a better night for it. It’s amazing how a song from a movie from long ago can take you right back to that time and those feelings. What a delightful time I had. I never take time to watch old movies anymore – I think I could find great enjoyment in doing so. Tonight, I will rewatch an episode of Schitt’s Creek in honor of Catherine O’Hara. I guess it is not uncommon to feel like you knew someone from seeing them on screen, but I am surprised to feel like someone I know died yesterday.