Death By a Thousand Cuts
 

As I am working my way around my house I find it has suffered "death from a thousand cuts"; the majority of what is broken/damaged in the house is in the sub-ten dollar repair range, but the number of sub-ten problems is enormous. The aerator in the sink is missing, the rocker switch on the lights for the range hood is broken, the lights are out in the range hood, two of the refrigerator door shelves are missing, the knobs on the range are broken, multiple small (smaller than fist, bigger than finger) holes in the walls, noxious weeds over-taking all the established beds, broken window pane in the potting shed, broken mullion strip, (How the fuck do you break a mullion strip?) pull cord on the mower broken… and on and on. Then there are the more expensive repairs...
There’s cute clumsy and pathological klutziness. She is in the latter camp. None of her destruction is deliberate or consciously perpetrated, it's a part of her mental illness, same as her mother, to be surrounded by broken things, and to fuck up anything that is nice and new.

But it’s a new regime and the kids are being taught to keep things up front and touching. Taking a page from Milton Erickson’s book, I wait until they are all very comfy doing something they really like and then I summon them to the infraction in question with a loving smile and plenty of good cheer and remind them that they need to put the towel on the hook or their clothes in their hamper or the milk back in the fridge. We’ll see if they eventually learn to do things preemptively in order not to be drawn from their favorite activities.

I’ll let you know how this works out.
Anything chaos inducing, destructive, or grime creating was embraced by the old regime, not so much with the new regime.

I'll take this one at random. All of them are wtf, but I can't really understand this. Let's say a bunch of sandy grit gets in the aerator and blocks the flow a little bit. That's the only reason to remove an aerator. So she reaches for a wrench and pulls the aerator off. This is a fair amount of work. You have to go find a wrench. You have to figure out which way to turn the aerator, and it's confusing because it's upside down and you have to turn it the wrong way. After successfully going through all that trouble, the next step of cleaning the grit out of the aerator is so effortless, why would you set the aerator aside where it would get lost? A faucet without an aerator splatters water all over the place. I'd rather have restricted flow than that splatter. I just don't see how you could get into that situation and stay there.

I mean, it's only an aerator, but wtf?

So you moved back into your house? Did she move out? Are you living in that house with your kids, then? How long were you gone? She broke all that stuff in what amount of time? What's a mullion? Do I ask too many questions? Are these questions annoying you? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? What does it mean to 'chuck wood'? Can you chuck things besides wood, like a felt tip pen or something? Can you chuck a wall? Is that why there are holes in the wall?

I wait these here for answers, when time is that you have when to answer them.

(and congrats on getting your home back, though I don't understand the 'stances.)

A mullion is the thin strip of wood that separates the individual panes of glass in a window that has multiple panes of glass.

Oh, thanks. I thought it was maybe the hairstyle of the masses in the 80s.

Nope, the next step in death to the offender, bam, right in the trash. No though to, or understanding of, future consequences. Goes with the illness.

I'll admit it, when I was younger I removed and subsequently threw out an aerator. We have hard water around here, and the aerators don't get blocked with rinse-able sand, but calcium and lime buildup. They're a pain to clean if you don't have a bottle of CLR-equivalent handy. And when they're clogged, they don't just restrict flow, they cause that same splattery horribleness that an un-aerated flow does, only perhaps moreso. So I tossed it, and said to myself, "I'll go to Home Depot and get another one of those..." Except ultimately we replaced the whole faucet fixture before I managed to get around to it.

Now we have a whole-house water filter, so it doesn't happen nearly as often, and when it does I know how to use the CLR.

Oh, I just remembered, I had another one snap in my fingers as I was trying to clean it. It just got too old and brittle. But that time I got myself a replacement.

Au contraire, mon frere!

There are times, my good man, when one wishes to indulge in a certain activity, a rite, if you will, where one requires a bowl of fine herb to burned, with the resulting gasses/fumes/vapors to be inhaled, and held until one's mind is, once again, at ease, and then, exhaled.

Occasionally, the pipe needs a new screen.

:blunt:

I'm with Infi on the questions. Except mullion - I heard some friends use another word entirely today for that, began with A, can't remember what they said. And the haircut - mullet. But y'all knew that :)


Sent by thought transference

foot, sounds like she did to your house in a year or so, what my husband is capable of in a weekend.

Mullions and muntins.

Oh yeah, my husband likes to think his ineptitude is funny. I think he's finally starting to realise that I expect a real man to make more of an effort.

That sounded really cunty

Yep. I am a real bitch of a woman sometimes. I think at the moment i have admitted to myself that i am not happy, so all the things that i used to just live with just seem really fucking annoying and pathetic right now. I am hoping these feelings will pass. Till then, you will all have to put up with my bitching for a bit. Sorry.