Got home from work the other day to find my wife in the basement telling me we had a leak. Turns out one of our old copper pipes had sprung a leak and there was water spraying onto the floor. Thankfully it was a small leak, but it was enough to cause problems. I looked at where the junction was and decided that there was too much going on with that area to want to try replacing it myself.

So the next morning I called up Roto Rooter and they came out and had it fixed before 10am. They did a good job, even though I would have liked to pay less money to get it repaired. The guy was friendly and left the area clean, which is all you really ask for in those types of situations. I’m happily washing clothes once again.

However, going without water for a night showed that there are some motor habits that are very hard to break. Flushing a toilet is one of them. We followed the “if it’s yellow let it mellow” rule so that we didn’t drain the toilet tank overnight, however, every time I went to the bathroom before bed my hand instinctively reached for the handle and flushed. We finally put tape over the handle to stop us from doing that, but not before we had to turn the water back on in the house long enough to fill up a big bucket so that we could re-fill the toilet tank.

It’s funny how it was such a motor instinct that we couldn’t change our habit until we physically blocked the handle. It makes you think about all the things you do every day that you don’t even think about. Little motions that lock your car door, or your house lock, are just automatic and we don’t even consider them. It becomes so routine that changing it becomes physically difficult. Humans are certainly creatures of habit.