Take Your Drip-System Job and Shove It

by Sharon Kayne

A few weeks back, I blogged about taking a break from all of the indie-author tasks that had frustrated me right into a state of clinical depression. On the blog I mentioned the home improvement projects I was going to take up instead. And I may have even threatened to write about them in the future.

Well, the future is now and I’m here to tell you that when everybody says installing a drip system for your garden is “not hard,” what they actually mean is, it’s “not complicated.” Yeah, the physics of it isn’t hard: you shove this tube into that valve. (Seriously, that’s it.) What is far from “not hard” is the amount of hand and upper-body strength you will need to do said shoving. Even in my youth, this would not have been a “not hard” job for me.

Let’s start with my hands: they are small. They are, in fact, the most (and only) dainty aspect of my person. Small hands are simply not very strong. Also, I used to have much more upper-body strength than I do now. That was when I was in my thirties and was renovating an old house I’d purchased. Then I married a guy with much larger—and significantly stronger—hands. So why bother struggling with the lid of that peanut butter jar? Why bust your ass hauling the really heavy bags of groceries into the house? And so, you weaken. And weaken. Year after year. Before you know it, he’s hauling your luggage up the hotel staircase for you. And while you’re telling him not to bother, you’re secretly glad.

So, yeah, the whole “you probably don’t have enough hand and upper-body strength” issue is on me. I should have known. Despite my weaknesses, I did manage to get the whole system up and running. By the way, it waters three flower beds from three separate hose bibs, so, yeah, it was a big-ish job. This brings me to the other aspect of why the “installing a drip system is not hard” line is so very wrong. That is: pressure. The entire job is under pressure. Significant pressure.

I’m talking about water pressure, of course, and the really great thing about that is if you manage to fail in the whole shoving segment of this job, the water will let you know instantly. Yep, I sprang a bunch of leaks. I had two endcaps shoot off completely. I had one elbow blow, which managed to flood our screened-in porch. And I launched several spritzers of varying size and volume that would have made a cupid peeing into a fountain jealous. Happily, not all of these leaks sprang up at the same time. Sadly, though, I had to enlist my husband to pressure-proof some of the shoved bits.

This was the major disappointment. It may seem silly, but I really wanted to finish this project all on my own. Partly because, when something is advertised as “not hard,” and you’re a reasonably intelligent person, you think you should be able to handle it on your own. Also, you might not want to bother your husband about it because he might be in the middle of his third round of radiation, so he’s feeling tired lately. (However, third time’s the charm, right? I mean, surely they’re going to kill all the fucking cancer cells this time around, aren’t they?) Also, I was taking this home improvement break partly to lick my wounds as a failed indie author, so failing at the very first DIY project kinda sucked.

I haven’t started a new home improvement project since I finished the drip system, and I’m not even certain what I’ll do next. At least all of the other projects on my DIY list are things I’ve done before, so I know how hard they are and how much muscle they’ll require. Meaning that whatever goes wrong next will have to be something completely different.

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Buy my historical romances, This Restless Sea, The Green Silk Gown, and Variations on a Romance, at Amazon.