Wifeof strikes again.

Jun 3, 2025, 10:21 AM

Let me say right off the bat, I love my wife. But, it was already evident long before we married that she is one of the least mechanically inclined people on Gods Planet Earth. And, she has defended that title many times, in many ingenious ways over the years. But, yesterday, she came up with a new one.

I yam sitting in my recliner cruising the interwebs yesterday around lunchtime, while she was aboard our John Deere lawn tractor cutting the grass. Suddenly, my calm was disrupted by her coming in the door saying she had run over the garden hose on the right side of our house and gotten it wrapped around the lawn mower blades.

That was bad, but the next words out of her mouth made it much worse. "Water is spewing out, and I can't get it to stop!" Upon donning my sneakers and going outside, it became painfully, quickly apparent why this was the case. The cutoff valve for the water was still attached to the garden hose, up under the lawn tractor, but was NOT still attached to the house. The blue PEX hose was barely protruding from the masonry, spewing water at warp speed.

I could not get the cutoff valve for the water supply to my house to close, it being a gate valve down in a PVC pipe hole that was barely big enough for my meat paw to reach into. The hole next to the streat where the water meter was, was completely full of rainwater when I opened up the cover. It took me about twenty minutes to sop up enough water with a towel out of that hole to be able to see a cutoff valve that could be closed, and another few minutes to finagle it closed with a couple of crescent wrenches.

I, with the help of my best friend, whom I had frantically called for help, finally was able to square off the end of the PEX pipe, and reinstall the valve with a hose clamp. Thankfully the plumber that redid my house had left enough slack to be able to pull the pipe outboard long enough to reinstall the valve and make a plate to hold it in place.

It then took another thirty minutes, and removing all the blades from the lawn tractor, and a crowbar, to be able to get all the remnants of the garden hose out from under the deck of the mower. Aftewards I informed Wifeof that forever forward, she was not to EVER buy and install another hose at that location. There was no need anyway. The spigot on the other side of the house has a hose that is long enough to reach all the way to the end of our driveway, which could wash any car we want. (This is why she said she put a hose on the OTHER side of the house, don't ask me why, because I don't know.)

Needless to say, in my dilapidated physical condition, my legs and back are hurting me so bad from this unexpected exertion yesterday that I can barely frigging MOVE this morning. And that is WITH the help of my little Hydrocodone friends. So, the moral of the story is, beware of devilish garden hoses lying in the weeds, I guess. They should have been left in the store from whence they cameth.

OUCH!