This is not a story

 

If it were a story it would have a beginning, middle, and end.  I’ve got a beginning and middle, but don’t know the end yet.

 

We have a whole-house filter installed under the house that takes out any sediment and runs the water through charcoal to improve the taste.

 

The water here in The Valley has a high concentration of dissolved minerals that leave their own special “flavor”.  The filter works.  It doesn’t make our water taste like Colorado water, but it makes it better.

 

The filter needs to be changed every few months though.  That is not normally a problem, I’ve done it many times, but this time I can’t get the cartridge unscrewed.  There is a wrench to use to remove it, but even with that leverage I can’t get it to budge.

 

The top is mounted firmly against the wood frame above it, so I can pull kind of hard, but there are limits to how much torque I’m supposed to put on my torso right now.  Thinking it might be my own limits holding back the effort, I recruited a younger stronger guy, but he couldn’t get it to budge either.  (Just for the record, I did turn off the water valves and released the pressure in the system before trying to unscrew the filter.)  I tried tapping the top with a small hammer while I pulled on the wrench.  The whole thing is plastic, so I probably don’t want to try heating up the top with a torch to make it expand while I try to turn the bottom.

 

I’ve run out of ideas…