October 8, 2001
Repairs
___ I've finally come to the conclusion that there's nothing wrong with our house that a few thousand dollars wouldn't solve. All the time.
___It's not like we have major problems, you understand. It's just that there's a perpetual flow of small problems. And the longer they flow, the more they pile up.
___I think I know why some people remodel or add on. It's an easy way to get out of having to make the collection of small repairs that have accumulated through the years. It's sort of like waving a magic wand over the house and fixing everything at once. Or at least that's the way it looks to me from the bottom of my to-do list.
MARK WINGFIELD
___There's the drip under the kitchen sink that I've tried unsuccessfully to stop. There's the glass door on the front of the house that won't shut all the way any more. There's the two broken window panes, one from Garrett's baseball and the other from the dog's attempt to get at the neighbor's cat as she sauntered through the front yard.
___There's the bathroom and hallway that need to be painted. And the in-the-door ice and water dispenser on our refrigerator that freezes up because the trap door won't shut all the way. And now the motor on the ceiling fan above the patio table has burned out.
___Oh, and I almost forgot the light bulbs. We have a house that sucks the life out of light bulbs. I've never seen anything like it. They go out four or five at a time. I went to the store not long ago and bought $20 worth of light bulbs just to fix that week's outages.
___ Of course, if I'd stop replacing the light bulbs, I wouldn't be able to see all the other things that need to be repaired.
Mark Wingfield is managing editor of the Standard. Alison Wingfield is a freelance writer. The Wingfields moved to Texas from Louisville, Ky., where Mark had been editor of the Western Recorder, in which this column appeared weekly.
___It's a good thing the computer screen is bright, because the light bulb above my desk is out again. I realize I should replace it, but that would mean stopping what I'm doing, getting a step ladder out to get a new light bulb from the utility room (Mark tends to forget that I'm short and puts thin gs on the top shelves), then moving the step ladder to the office and opening up the light fixture and replacing the bulb.
ALISON WINGFIELD
___I'm exhausted just writing about it.
___As the queen of procrastinators, it takes a lot to get me to try to fix things. Notice the word "try." Perhaps I know my limits a little better than my husband. But, unfortunately, I also know the limits of our checking account, so when he says he thinks he can fix something, I'm right there cheering him on.
___The big kink in this plan is that he doesn't always say WHEN he's going to fix these little problems. Between our schedules and the boys' schedules, there hardly is time to sit down for a meal together, much less do home improvements.
___I did attempt to have the broken windowpanes replaced. When I gave the measurements of the small panels to the glass repair place, the woman on the phone prefaced the quote with "You'd be better off replacing those yourself." If I thought we'd ever get around to doing that, do you think I would have called her in the first place? But when she quoted me the price, I said, yes, perhaps she was right.
___We still have cardboard over the broken pane in the front dining room window. But it's on the list.
___ Mark is a great handyman to have around. When he's around. Unfortunately, he's also one who can't say "no" when asked to volunteer for this, that and the other. With so many irons in the fire, the only time he seems to work on projects at home is when they are on "fire"--when the sink is spewing or the toilet overflows, or we can't see our hands in front of our faces because all the light bulbs are out.
___Even if we can't see around our house, God has given us a light that can never burn out. Our salvation might overflow, but it never wears out, breaks or short-circuits.
___
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