Excerpt:

There are household jobs I genuinely love. Carpentry, for instance: you take a plank, measure twice, cut once, sand it smooth, fit everything together, and suddenly you’ve got a piece of furniture that smells of fresh shavings and quiet triumph.

That’s beauty, my friend.

Electricity’s all right too. Swap a bulb, install a switch, tidy a cable. Clean, orderly things. You touch a wire and (click) let there be light. There I stand, hands on hips, half Tesla, half neighborhood oracle.

Even mowing the lawn still does it for me, even if my back now files an official complaint like a retiree at a condo meeting. It’s honest pain. When it’s done I look at the neat stripes and think, “Damn, that looks good, old man.”

That gives me peace.

But plumbing…

Plumbing is something else entirely.

It’s Satan wearing overalls.

The black sheep of the toolbox.

I cannot fathom how anyone enjoys it.

What’s remotely pleasurable about folding yourself into the foetal position under a sink that smells like 1986’s dampest nightmare, flashlight clenched between your teeth while water chooses that exact moment to shoot straight into your ear?

Everything about plumbing forces you to bend, crouch, and contort your skull into positions that mock both anatomy and common sense. The mere word “leak” is enough for your lower back to start drafting a formal protest.

It is my own private domestic Vietnam.

I can hang a shelf, assemble flat-pack furniture, rewire a lamp; no problem.

But the second someone says, “Hey, the bathroom faucet’s dripping,” a cold shiver runs down my spine whispering: Abort mission, soldier. The rubber-washer war awaits.

And off I go, the clumsy hero, toolbox in hand, already knowing that in five minutes I’ll be cursing in dead languages, shirt soaked, dignity pooling on the floor like the leak I can’t find.

Carpentry ennobles the soul.
Electricity dazzles.
The garden brings joy.

Plumbing simply reminds you that we are fragile, mortal, and that water (gentle, innocent water) always wins.

And today, of course, it was my turn again.

It all started with a tiny washer.

A nothing.

A microscopic piece of rubber.

Except it was ⅜", silicone, the unicorn of plumbing supplies.

The kind you can only buy in those ancient water-and-gas shops where the guy behind the counter can tell your thread type just by looking at your face.

And today? Every single one closed. As if they’d held a secret meeting to ruin my life.

So I improvised.

I found a scrap of rubber and MacGyvered my own washer, like a battlefield surgeon knitting an artery out of an old sweater.

And the craziest part? It sort of worked.

At least nothing exploded and the cabinet isn’t raining indoors.

For me, that already counts as victory.

But we’re replacing the vanity, and that’s when the sucker punch landed: the trap was now a few treacherous centimetres too short.

The kind of short that quietly wrecks your entire day.

Cue the ordeal.

I tried a thousand impossible combinations. Twisted, crouched, flashlight in teeth again. At one point I wasn’t sure if I was plumbing or performing advanced yoga without a mat.

The trap refused to yield...

... "

--Continue reading in its original Castilian language at fictograma.com , an open source Spanish community of writers--