Oh, Lordy

Yet another couple of hours of potential productivity dissipated this afternoon; somehow time flies by and today what it has brought is high wind and perhaps the start of rains.  This means, among other things, that we have to scurry around and get more wood before everything turns to freezing mud.

I was talking to an old friend who remarked that parsing ideas was becoming ever more difficult.  BOY HOWDY, I said.  Sometimes you find yourself simply unable to respond to things.  Anyway, it being Sunday we’re listening to Harry Shearer again.  Monsanto!  Mitt Romney!  UGH!   Not to mention all the local excitements of dwelling here in the land the BiPolar Express visited once and then forgot.  As in, restraining orders being tacked onto neighborhood bulletin boards with warnings scrawled thereon in lipstick.  But who’s counting?  The entire world seems to be more than a bit excitable.

And so time moved on and found us here at Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, erstwhile holiday.  I had actually thought about writing about that today until I found that we were unexpectedly  back at the part of the film titled “FUN WITH PLUMBING”.  The Partner had noticed a growing leak at the pumphouse (of the relatively recently replaced well, another fun time) which this morning culminated in:

The landlady’s husband turning off the water without telling anyone, then leaving.  He does things like that.

The landlady calling and saying they were BOTH leaving, she’d turned the water back on, and if anything happened THEY DIDN’T DO IT.   This was fun.   In addition, The Partner responds especially well to stimulus of this sort.  The water was indeed on, which also meant that it took some time for it to get back to a point where it would come out of our faucet.  This did finally happen, accompanied by huge spurts and sprays, green water (just like before!), muck, nothing, spurts…I decided to bite the bullet and wash dishes.  While I could, sort of thing.

While engaged in this attempt at productivity, I found my inner voice going: WTF! Am I the worst person on the planet or what? Why me??? Screw the easy button! That’s not good enough any more!  I can’t take any more of this (spurt, spray, glob, wild temperature fluctuation, rinse and repeat).  I NEED A NEW LIFE RIGHT NOW.  Then as if in some sort of dizzying technical display, I saw every plumbing fiasco I’ve ever experienced flash before my eyes.  There was the festive house where the original owner had used the wrong kind of materials when building the bathroom with the following results:

1) There was a constant ring of slugs around the base of the toilet until it eventually fell through the floor.  This was resolved by calling a plumbing company run and exclusively staffed by the Hell’s Angels.  Oh, yes.  During this time the sewer line from the street backed up into the bathtub also.  Tree roots, don’t you know.

2) Shortly after the toilet and floor and whatnot was…er…fixed, the shower wall/back outer wall of house, collapsed in due to…well, see toilet bowl above.    This repair took MONTHS.  Then the landlord’s son knocked up his girlfriend and I got shown the door.  Isn’t that always the way?  You just get things the way you want them, viz basic amenities, and then, whammo!  So.  Ultimately after looking at a variety of lodgings that made me cry,  I moved to another seemingly fine house in another adjacent town, where this happened:

Every drain in the place spewed straight up and then an air lock descended and nothing would move.  THIS TIME, I missed the Hell’s Angels.  This time, I got the Persian Plumber who, after thwacking, hemming and hawing, saying things along the lines of women should never go near plumbing, got up on the roof to clear out the roof vents.  Barefoot.  With his roto rooter thing, which smashed into, yes you guessed it! the kitchen window I had just replaced because it had gotten shaken loose in the earthquake and…..

This, in short, is how things Usually Go In My Life.  Apparently I am still delusionally attempting to pretend that I have a NORMAL LIFE.  Normal, schnormal.  Now I’m just working on telling myself that, uh, that……surely there’s something I can do today that will at least lend this Punch and Judy show the air of having a plot.  Meanwhile, the landlady’s back, perhaps with piping.  We’ll see what happens.   If we dare………..

 

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