I replaced 2 sprinkler heads in our yard today. One took 10 minutes, the other took over an hour.

And not even in the way you might think. If the first repair took an hour, but I learned something that made the second repair take only 10 minutes, well, I would feel good about that.

But the first repair took 10 minutes, and the second took an hour. The really frustrating thing is, the repairs were identical. They both were simple: dig up the broken sprinkler head, unscrew it from the pipe, and screw in the new one. But the second one didn’t want to screw in. I tried over and over, with no luck. Of course, I couldn’t see what I was doing too well — the hole I dug to reach the pipe was full of muddy water — so eventually I emptied out all the water, getting the last bits with a turkey baster! Still it wouldn’t screw on.

And there was no trick to it. It didn’t work for an hour, and then, suddenly, it worked. The trick was just to keep trying relentlessly. I think this may be the trick to a lot of home repairs, so maybe that’s the skill I need to be working on most!