My Not So Handy Husband

I have to tell on the spousal unit... he wasn't what you'd call "handy" before we moved. However, since we've been out here he's taken on plenty of do it yourself projects. And, I have to admit, he's done a pretty good job with most of them. However, I've had two instances to laugh at him this week.

Rewind a bit to last fall. The Boy Scouts came around and winterized our sprinkler system. It was some sort of project for their troup, plus it was a fairly economical way to get this service done. And, since I'm typically a push over for nonprofit organizations involving kids we let them do it. Fast forward to about a week ago, and you have Andre de-winterizing the system. He tells me to pay attention to the sprinklers during the day to see if anything is acting up. Since we'd never had a system before we weren't real sure what we were doing... well, the sprinklers would pop up, but not water anything. We couldn't figure it out. We were getting ready to call someone and pay to have them look and see what "damage" the scouts had done.

Then, it hit me. Like a ton of bricks. Andre and I were taking a walk and I suddenly had a thought.
Me: "Umm... did the scouts turn off the water to the sprinklers?" Andre: "Yes. Why?" Me: "Did you turn the water back on when you reset the system?" Andre: stops walking, blank stare, odd smile creeps across his face "uh, we'll have to check that out when we get back home."

Crisis averted. Water turned back on, sprinklers working great now.

Now if only I'd been so thoughtful for the second instance. At some point during the winter, my neighbors were leaving my house and commented on how dark it was outside. Only our entrance light was working on the outside of the house. I commented that the other three bulbs had burned out and we'd replace them soon. Well, we went out to replace them and new bulbs didn't work. Since we are "garage people" meaning we are never outside after dark and always park in the garage, the idea of the lights has eluded me. Until Now. You see the warranty that came with the house is going to expire soon. We're quickly approaching the 1 year anniversary of the date we purchased this home, so the warranty we purchased will expire on that date. Since the cost of said warranty is no 3xs what we paid for it, we are not renewing. As you can imagine, I am getting my monies worth and having everything covered by the warranty repaired before it expires.

So, the lighting issue has been front and center on my mind. I got online last week and filed a claim for them to come out and fix it. Repair man comes out yesterday. He's outside 15 minutes, comes back in and says "You're all fixed up. That'll be $XX for your deductible." Me: "Umm... that was pretty quick" Repairman: "Yep. All your bulbs burnt up. And the middle one didn't have any juice runnin' to it." (Yes, I apparently had the one southern redneck repairman living out here, I felt like I was back in Arkansas.)

So, I paid my deductible and called the hubs. After a good laugh at the fact that we could have saved the deductible and probably had a nice date night with the money instead, we decided that it was worth it since neither of us would have known how to fix the "juice" without electrocuting ourselves. Bulbs on the other hand, we could have replaced fairly simply. However, that may be the last time I call out a repairman based of the hubs' info. Next time I'll probably check the bulbs myself.