musings of an engineer’s wife

I came home two nights ago from a late meeting to find my husband sitting outside the front door, hammering away at what I could only describe as a gizmo. I parked the car in the garage and went in the house while he continued to hammer. After a few moments I heard laughing.

“I can’t believe I did it! I got it out!”

“What? Got what out? What are you doing? Why were you doing it outside?”

“I’m fixing the sink. This is actually really cool. I figured out how it all works. I can show you later. I needed to get this one broken part out because Kohler didn’t send us all the parts so I have to mix the old parts and the new parts…”

His voice faded as he ran upstairs. I took my shoes off (because sometimes cultural habits die hard) and chuckled to myself. It’s really rare that the husband shows himself in this form.

Let me back up. Hurricane Ike came and went almost two months ago but its effects still linger. Many of my classmates are still displaced from their homes and some have no homes to return to. We were incredibly fortunate and did not suffer any hurricane related damages. Not a single plank in our fence or a single shingle on our roof was affected. During the hurricane, my parents evacuated from Clear Lake to stay at our house and we evacuated to stay at my brother-in-law’s house. While my parents were at our house, the sink somehow broke and the knob to turn the water on and off was stuck in the on position. The husband contacted Kohler because they have a lifetime warranty (which apparently only applies to the first owner of the house) and they sent out some of the parts.

Okay, fast forward to the present. Well, two nights ago.

Some hammering, wrenching (I don’t think this word is used correctly here), and sealing…

… the sink was fixed!

The husband is not really an engineer by personality. He doesn’t have a top of the line computer setup, he doesn’t have any engineering projects of his own, and he enjoys socializing more than I do. So it’s a lot of fun to catch him in these rare engineering moments. And it’s also really nice being married to someone who knows how to figure this stuff out because I know I would have tried to Google it and then I would have chickened out by calling Joe the plumber. Juuuuuuust kidding.

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