my battle with Calypso

Last night I fixed the kitchen faucet. Yes, that's right. I did it.

It's not like I haven't fixed things around the house before. I've even made plumbing repairs before this. To understand the particular pride I take in this particular repair, I have to tell you what it was like to live with this dysfunctional kitchen faucet for so many dreadful years.

It all started back in '99 when we moved into this house. Ah, we were so young, so naive. 'Naif' as they would say in French. The house seemed so warm, so welcoming. The first few hours were joyous indeed. The kitchen faucet even worked deceptively well. It was when we first used the sprayer that we got a hint of something wrong. There was a thunk and vibration, and the sprayer emmitted a pitifully small stream. It took quite a while to rinse off the larger cookware, like the cookie sheets, but we were so happy with the house and with each other it hardly seemed to matter. Little did we know that it was just the beginning.

Incrementally, with an insidious and steady slowness the sprayer's trickle dwindled. Thinking hard water deposits were the culprit, I changed out the spray head. Then the tubing. All to no avail. One day the trickle dwindled to nothing. The brand-new sprayer head sat in the sink receptacle to the right of the faucet, mysteriously defunct. Its quiet presence reminded us of something disturbingly awry - something unguessed at, unknown. We went about our daily dishwashing and food preparation as if everything were normal, but deep down we knew. For years we continued in this state.

Then the unthinkable happened. One day my wife turned the faucet water on - a hideous, strained shriek of ear-splitting aqua-demon fury was unleashed on us. The faucet yielded little life-giving water while the shriek persisted. "Turn it off, turn it off," I cried desperately to my poor wife. She, with her hands to her ears, stood before the sink looking down with horror, too shocked to react. Finally I stepped quickly behind her, reached forward and pushed the cam faucet's single handle down and off, and the shrieking stopped. We looked at each other - helpless, dumfounded. "You've got to fix that thing or we've got to get a new faucet," she said. I nodded in solemn agreement.

Through careful experimentation we discovered that we could still use the faucet as long as we didn't turn it on too quickly or too far. Nevertheless it continued to worsen. It got to the point that we could hardly use it at all.

Finally I remembered to pick up the faucet parts at the hardware store yesterday. The problem was what is called a 'spray diverter' that is located below the ball mechanism. Now the parts are all changed, even the sprayer works again! Hooray for me!