A Spooky Month

"It Never Rains But it Pours"

To say that October has been challenging for our family would be an understatement. The breakages, outages and brokenness began with an episode during Rob's business trip to Ohio. Sitting alone (with three sleeping children) in the dark house at about 8:30pm, I watched a leak from the master bath pour through the entryway ceiling in three places. Panicked, I called Rob, and several plumbers on my mad dash through the house to turn off the house water and the hot water heater water. Fast forward to 11:15pm when the kind 24-hour-plumber fixed the leak, determined that our hot water heater was so far on its last legs it teetered on toenails, and recommended that I call a restoration company to dry out all of the damage to the ceiling, and you see just the beginning of our trials.

We got a new water heater, discovered that the master shut-off valve in the house was broken, which led to our discovery that our shut-off valve at the street was "missing." After a week which included several visits from plumbers, multiple estimates, and several other small breakages, we dug up the driveway to find that shut off valve, then replaced it and three others in the house. The same night the work was completed we broke the upstairs toilet. During this time period we broke and fixed the garage door and discovered that the gas fireplace was on the fritz. For me, the most serious insult was destroying my ankle while running in the dark, requiring an Urgent Care visit, an air cast and a referral for Physical Therapy. Apparently I will continue to have a front-row seat to all of our repairs while I sit on my derriere and refrain from serious exercise for another six weeks.

Why am I telling you all this? To vent, perhaps, but also to laugh at the craziness of it all. To own anything is to borrow trouble. Possessions (especially a house, apartment, or other kind of shelter) are necessary, I suppose, but the fancier or bigger they are the more trouble they are. I wonder if we could simplify our lives and de-emphasize our possessions, if the situation would be easier to tolerate. In addition, this month has made me very aware of our greatest blessing - our basic good health and the steady growth of the children. Granted, I am temporarily a bit of a physical mess, and it has depressed me and made me a bit self-absorbed, but hopefully this will pass and become a memory. Certainly I am more empathetic to those who are in pain, who suffer from injury, and who continually come to bat against misfortunes that are no fault of their own. And if anyone in the neighborhood needs a good plumber, excavation company, restoration specialist, or garage door repairman . . . I know who to call.