Tag: drains

Ring

I’ve written about this before, but when it comes to weight loss and the after effects of weight loss surgery, my wedding ring sort of acts as a canary in a coalmine.

The day after the wedding, while at our first honeymoon stop at a bed and breakfast in Woodstock, VT, my wedding ring fell off in the shower. I had lost a little weight since the ring fitting and my hands were soapy and pow, the ring fell to the shower floor.

For the first few months of our marriage, I would take off the ring before getting into the shower, or doing anything that involved soap and a drain. After a few months I grew into it a little and no longer needed to take it off.

By the time we get to January 2022, when I couldn’t stand the weight and the yo-yo dieting and the fluctuations and the lack of energy and the back pain and the leg pain and the general misery that my weight caused me, I really couldn’t take the ring off anymore. It wasn’t painful, but it was pretty well stuck in place.

Now, post surgery and about a hundred pounds later, it’s been slipping lately. Only when I am washing up or showering or doing something that gets me all soapy and stuff. It hasn’t fallen off yet, but it’s been close.

Close enough that when I took a shower yesterday morning, I took it off. That’s the first time since the summer of 2009. I didn’t take it off today, but only because I was in a bit of a rush and forgot to. When lunch started I went upstairs and shaved. I took it off for that. I’m reaching the point where the idea of my ring falling into a sink or shower drain is becoming real. That’s a bad thing, of course, but from a weight loss perspective it’s a good thing. It’s weird, but true.

I don’t want to resize my wedding ring. I’ll probably put a piece of tape around the back side of it to tighten it. That will work for a while at least.

Okay, kids. Lunch break and story time is over now. Get back to work.

Stranger Danger

Wanna talk about COVID-19 stress? Well… COVID-19 stress that doesn’t actually involve any COVID-19?

Two. Not one, two. Two plumbers in the house. Not even at the same time.

We knew our plumbing needed looking to. It rained in the cellar on Saturday and that’s… what’s the word… bad. So an appointment was made for today to have the kitchen sink and the dishwasher looked at, as well as to see if there was any damage to the floor that we would need to take care of.

Our appointment window was between 8:00 am and noon. The first guy showed up reasonably early but he wasn’t The Plumber, he was the manager. His deal was sewer issues so he was just checking in. Personally, given the global pandemic and the 98,000 deaths in the US alone, I would have done this over the phone. Whatever. He offered to take a look at the floor from the cellar perspective and said he thought it was okay. No structural issues, no health issues. He gave his card in case we want to fix the tiled floor down stairs, and said he’d check on the actual plumber to get an estimate of his arrival.

The actual plumber arrived a little before noon. He thought he knew what our problem was as soon as I started describing it to him. He also looked around down cellar and the more we talked the more he was sure we just had a clog in the pipe somewhere. Okay. Our sink didn’t give easy access to allow him to run a snake so he had to make some adjustments. Once that was all set he was able to snake out the drain and by 1:30 or so it was all over. At least I hope it was. We have a six month guarantee, but I hope we never have to use it.

And all was right with the kitchen again. Except…

Except that I spent some time with two strangers today. We were all wearing masks, and they were wearing gloves. Jen never came near either of them but she was wearing a mask too. They put the paperwork down on the counter, walked away, then I signed with my own pen, walked away, and they picked it up. All sorts of safe stuff like that. My gut instinct was to shake people’s hands, but I absolutely did not. I was able to suppress my lifelong learned behavior. Good boy.

So nothing bad happened, everyone followed the rules, and still I am super nervous. We made sure to do this on a day when Harry and his autoimmune diseases wasn’t in the house. I will continue the paranoia by quarantining myself for two weeks. No hugs for the kids for this guy. Ugh.

Two weeks from today means my self imposed sort of exile ends on June 9th… just in time to start again when the new dishwasher is delivered on June 16th.

Yippee. Can this be over now? Vaccine, please?