Water, for reasons I don't fully understand, doesn't seem particularly inclined to stay in its designated water area whenever I'm in residence. Mostly, this isn't my fault. For example, when a pipe in my last apartment building burst and collapsed my ceiling, I was entirely innocent. (There was the infamous turkey brining incident of Thanksgiving '04, but we don't discuss that.)

So I wasn't as shocked as one might imagine when I wandered into my kitchen and found that a fount worthy of the Bellagio water show in Vegas was spewing out of a small silver knob in my sink that, until that very moment, I had never known the purpose of.

Said knob is now and forever known as the Almighty Knob of Destruction - or AKD for short.

Upon discovery, I did what any normal person would do. I yelled "AUSTIN!" at the top of my lungs. Probably this is only useful if your husband, like mine, is actually named Austin. Otherwise screaming out state capitols isn't likely to be helpful. But hey, you never know.

Austin, used to my ability to draw aquatic destruction, also wasn't as shocked as one might imagine. "Huh," he said.

It's worth mentioning here that Austin, being a man of Midwestern decent, is required by the pickup-truck-Pabst-Blue-Ribbon-John-Deere tribe to be able, with nothing but a Sears catalogue worth of tools, to fix absolutely anything you can drive, shoot, operate or live in. No man in the tribe has ever in recorded history called a plumber, electrician, roofer, painter or anyone else who might drive a panel van and show ass crack.

As such, the Almighty Knob of Destruction was squarely in his court.

And I, as a woman of Midwestern decent and true believer in the powers of the pickup-truck-Pabst-Blue-Ribbon-John-Deere tribe, looked at him expectantly. Probably this is how Merlin felt when asked, for the first time, to pull a rabbit out of his hat. No pressure.

He looked back at the fount. Then at me. I'm pretty sure I smiled encouragingly. "Right," he said and opened the cabinet under the sink to poke at the pipes. I considered this enormous progress.

"What's wrong with it?" I asked.

"Okay, see, the dishwasher connects up here. And...uh...see, the water it runs up here to that knobby thing. That, um, aerates the water."

"What, like for a fish tank?" I asked.

He ignored this.

"Okay, so it goes to the knobby thing, and then it's supposed to, um, go, like, through here someplace to drain. But it's not really, you know, right now."

"Riiiight," I said, rapidly losing faith in the tribe. "So how are you going to fix it?"

"Get some towels."

Hope surged. I was well accustomed to fetch and carry duties whenever tools came out. First words: Dada, Mama, flat-head screwdriver. "Right, towels. What else?"

"Phone."

Ohhhh...exciting. The MacGyver school of pipe repair. My hubby don't need no stinkin' tools, I thought.

"What are you going to do with the phone?" I asked, all a tingle with the possibilities.

"Call a plumber."