Details...

Yesterday, we had new garage doors installed. Our old wooden ones had to go. I was sick and tired of prying up the bottom of the door in winter when it was freezing cold. The wooden doors actually froze to the garage floor. I would then stick a shovel underneath and jump on the handle to break the ice and pop the door open. Enough is enough! Time for some new ones.

Details - do you notice details? Well I don't. I never noticed that the doors did not have handles on the outside. Hmmm. One of our garage doors has the automatic door opener, so you don't need an outside handle to open it up.

Our other garage door opens manually. Much better for the oxygen delivery man (we just leave it unlocked and he picks up the empty cylinders and brings us full ones), and much better if I want to take my bike out for a ride. We're down to one car, since hubby doesn't drive any more, so the second garage is for storage. I keep my bicycle in there, as well as gardening stuff, mops and buckets, garbage can, recycling bin, you get the picture. It's much easier to manually open this door, instead of using an electric door opener. I'd have to walk around the garden (or ride my bike) with the opener in my pocket, or I wouldn't get back in.

Doors were installed. Technicians (that's what the salesman called them), were almost ready to leave, when one of them said:

"You realize Ma'am that there is no handle on this door."

Well I'll be! I hadn't noticed. Now do I ask the most obvious question?

I did.

"How am I going to open it?"

"We can put a handle on it for you."

Oh, am I supposed to be impressed? Or did they think I really didn't want to open this brand new door?

They screwed on a suitable handle, which worked like it should.

"How do you like it, Ma'am?"

"Very nice, thank you."

Now really, it's just a door handle. You'd think this guy had given birth to it!!!

Curious, I went for a walk down our street. Sure enough, there were only 1 or 2 houses with crummy old wooden garage doors - with outside handles. The rest had new (or newer) garage doors with no outside handles. That meant only one thing - almost our whole street used automatic garage door openers. I never noticed.

We had a new bathroom shower installed last year. The old one was leaking and looking gross. I had tried caulking it, waiting 24 hours, using the hairdryer to dry it, ripping it out, caulking it all over again, waiting 36 hours, blow-drying it, changing the caulking material - all to no avail. It kept on leaking. Finally I'd had enough. I am certainly no handiman - or handiwoman for that matter. Not even close.

So I went to our local Home Hardware store. Picked out a reasonably priced shower stall and fixtures. I don't like these stores. Too intimidating. Too many nuts and bolts. Too much "guy stuff" (read: stuff I don't understand, and don't really want to).

A week or so later, our shower arrived along with the "technician". He spent all day installing it. It looked fine. I was asked not to use it for 24 hours. That was alright with me, as I really really wanted that caulking to stick.

I waited 48 hours just to be sure. Turned the handle to the proper water temperature. Then pushed it in towards the wall, so I wouldn't get a deluge on my head. I don't like a full stream of water. Usually about half strength is fine with me. It didn't budge. I pushed as hard as I could. It still didn't move. So, I twisted and turned. Pulled and pushed. Nothing. Gave up and had a full-throttle shower. What happened to water conservation? Don't they now make flush toilets using only a fraction of the usual amount of water to avoid wasting our precious resources?

The next morning I tried again. Still could not slow that shower down! So back to Home Hardware I went. I checked out all the "newer" shower hardware and found that you could not adjust any of them. One setting. That's it. Period.

Now I ask you - when you go to buy a tap or a faucet, do you ask if you can adjust the water flow? And when you order garage doors, do you ask if they come with a handle so you can open them?

Either I shop at the wrong places, or our world is getting crazier!