A couple of months ago, during Wimbledon, my television satellite went out after a storm, of course on a Saturday. Direct TV was nice enough to offer to send a repair person out at no charge the very next business day, but I had to decline, because I had to work that day, and there was no getting out of it. So I waited till Thursday and it was quickly repaired. Little did I know that a couple of weeks later, the black cloud would return with a vengeance.
In the past, say, month, these things have broken:
The spin cycle of my washing machine -- This was the start of the avalanche, and turns out not to have been as bad as I thought – it actually does stop when it is supposed to, just not when I lift the lid. Like the satellite – and the crocus -- I think this was just a harbinger of things to come.
The pool pump – This was my own fault; I should never have gone on vacation and left it. After 6 weeks with 2 days of rain separating it, and apparently no rain the ten days I was away, the water level was hazardously low, and the pump badly needed backwashing. It was raining when I got home, however, so I agonized over whether to turn the pump off in order to backwash, as I have a super swift electrical system that prevents the pump from starting when it's wet. This is like the overkill at the airport, you know, the body searches that prevent terrorist attacks. Anyway, to my surprise it started back up, pool got backwashed, started up again.
But the next day, after the bad weather had passed, the power in the area flickered a few times, as it tends to do on nice days, and the pump exhaled its final breath. As happens after drought followed by torrential rains, the ants came out to party in the wiring, and I'm not sure if that was the cause of the failure, or if the failure (the whine whenever I tried to turn it on) called in the ants. The cost: over $400 ($100 of which was for labor that took about 10 minutes.) In my world, this was over one week's income.
Pool water – Since my return, I have dumped at least $200 worth of chemicals in the pool, and while my blood pressure and I are thankful to still be able to swim, the amount of chlorine that seems to vanish daily is giving me agita.
My lawn mower -- An hour into my interminable lawn, the wheels stopped spinning (could this be a theme???). In the spring the wheels stopped spinning, shortly before the father and son visit, and it turned out to be a stick stuck in the works. So I made the bold move of attempting to have a look. Removing all the parts of the yard that got stuck in the wheel area didn't help, looking through the lawn mower book from the library was as successful as my attempts to learn Italian, and the You-Tube clip of how simple it was to take the thing apart and repair it was just plain scary.
When the son made a return visit, he took a look and commented snootily, "I'm not a lawn mower expert you know." Yeah, but I thought a Harvard physics undergrad might show a tad more interest in how things work.
Result was a new lawn mower, the cheapest one on the lot, cost a week's pay.
Wheelbarrow – Damned thing lost both nuts and bolts that hold the bar in place that I assume keeps the whole thing from falling apart. While these items just fell right off the wheelbarrow, my attempts to unscrew same type of item from my old, busted up wheelbarrow have been unsuccessful, as the rust appears to have welded it together pretty good.
As if it were not bad enough that things were breaking down all around me through no fault of my own, I suddenly had a rash of breaking glasses and dishware that could have been the result of my preoccupation with all the other damned things that had broken.
Car – I can't ever have a rash of things breaking down without the car demanding some attention. This time, and for the second time in the car's history, the fan continues to run when I turn off the engine. And my so-far excellent mechanic either doesn't know what's wrong or just isn't inclined to fix it. I don't know which, because the sister-in-law who sits behind the front desk won't allow customers to talk to him. Last she told me was that "all kinds of crazy things happen to cars in this heat". Except the following morning I moved the car from the front of the house to the side of the house, and it did the same thing. Since I don't want to get on the bad side of sister-in-law, as she appears to be an unmovable object in the relationship I have with my mechanic, I don't have a clue as to what to do about this.
Ants – What would a grueling hot, humid, miserable summer be without an ant infestation? Not just the outdoor pump destroying ants, but an indoor ant event. Three separate occurrences, and I'm not going to say there aren't more where that came from, but I've been ant-free for three days now.
And finally, and I say finally only because not enough time has passed to determine otherwise…
The nice folk who have in the past allowed me to use their wireless have gone and left me without internet. There is no way I can afford the exorbitant cost of internet connectivity, so until another kind soul moves into the area with a wireless connection and the willingness to share, I will just have to do without. Luckily, the library has free wireless, so on days when I venture out from this godforsaken wilderness, I will lug my laptop to the library and attempt to catch up.
And hopefully, there will be no further mishaps to report on for awhile.
