Luck Or Life. I Really Don’t Know.

Do you ever think about luck? I don’t believe in luck per se. I do feel lucky that we live where we do, and more recently that my husband who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s has responded so well to the drug Aricept^®. But these things happened because of hard work and decisions at the right time on our part. These are things we pushed for. They can’t be totally considered luck. 

Lately however, I have been thinking a little more about luck because the past eight weeks have given me a whole lot to think about. Things like, does bad luck exist? Is it necessary to offset good luck? Did I piss off the Gods of Karma somehow? If there are such Gods, this could be possible. In eight weeks, we have had several things happen that could be classified as bad luck. A single event on its own wouldn’t create a ripple in this department but after list of some pretty hefty events, one does begin to wonder. 

1.  First, we had another leaky pipe. This was a penny dropping because a few years ago we had extensive damage from a leaky pipe inside the walls of our house. A couple of years ago, we replaced all the copper pipe that was accessible with Pex piping. The problem was that some pipes were not accessible because they were vertical and between back-to-back bathroom walls with tiling and one-piece tub-shower units that were put in before the house was finished, before we purchased the house. So yes, we were waiting for a penny to drop which happened the end of June. We cut a hole in the downstairs ceiling, placed a bucket under the leak and called a plumber. In order to repair this leak a large hole had to be cut into the tub-shower unit. The plumber was there for hours, at least five hours, just to fix the leak and change what he could to Pex. He was really nice and didn’t charge us nearly as much as I thought he was going to. There is supposedly a guy out there somewhere who can repair the tub, and the plumber sent him photos and was going to pass our info on to him, but he is very busy. Fortunately, I have other showers so this could have been so much worse. There are still a couple more pennies to drop before this whole adventure is over. Short of doing a full bathroom reno, which is definitely not in the budget these days, we will just wait for the pennies and hope they are manageable when they fall.

2.  Just before the pipe leak I called the repair guy for my dishwasher, which had been leaking off and on. Of course, he couldn’t make it leak on his visit but noticed that the door gasket was a little wonky. He told me to put a pan under the front of the dishwasher and let him know what happened and he would order the gasket. Sure enough, the tray caught water that appeared to come from the bottom of the door when I used the dishwasher. So I called and left him a message. I am still waiting for a response. I know he is busy and that parts take time; and hey, I haven’t paid a cent to the guy and the dishwasher still washes the dishes. If he never gets back to us, I am sure I can live with the pan.

3.  Then there is our mini vacation. We don’t care for Airbnb because we have had three bad experiences with them. We weren’t going to use them again except that we had booked a trip to Toronto to visit our son, and they listed a little unit for rent just two streets over from his apartment. The price was great. Imagine how excited we were to see this. Ha! A few weeks later the rental was cancelled due to a licensing issue. We had to scramble to find a place to stay as the flights and other things were booked and paid for. Accommodations in Toronto are very expensive and not easy to come by. We ended up in a downtown hotel, nowhere near our son, paying at least twice as much and not having the ability to cook our own breakfast etc. Not ideal, but we will make it work. I am so pissed at Airbnb though.

4.  Everyone knows how much I love my Kona EV, purchased two years ago, so I was pretty sad about this next event. Late in July, my husband decided to back his car into the driveway instead of coming in frontwards. Our driveway is two cars wide and has a slight curve. The Old Guy’s backing skills have degraded considerably over the past few years, and he somehow managed to back into my car on a 45 degree angle. This dented the door, scratched the paint on the door and fender and broke the light on the mirror. So yes, I was sad, not just about the car, but also about seeing my husband struggle with something that used to be so easy for him. At least he can still drive all his familiar routes, he will just need to avoid backing up.

5.  Last week our dining room mini-split heat pump, which provides cooling in the summer, greeted me with several lights flashing on and off at different speeds that, according to the manual, required a service technician. I recently discovered that the company who installed this unit went out of business so I needed a new technician. This was one of the easiest problems to solve lately because last fall we had our attic insulated by an excellent company called Greenfoot that also does heat pumps and anything else that can save energy. I called them. They remembered me. The technician is coming tomorrow. Other than their time, everything else is under warrantee. Yay!

6. Our latest adventure involves our well, which testing recently revealed was contaminated with total coliforms. This meant it had to be shocked. Shocking requires copious amounts of industrial-strength chlorine be dumped into the well and run through the pipes until you can smell it at each tap. Then it needs to sit for 24 hours. To do this, a whole lot of water had to be run out of the well in the middle of our drought conditions. We were prepared for 24 hours without water. You know, jugs of purchased drinking water. A filled tub to flush the john. But when we started flushing out the chlorine the next day, the well drained dry. Oftentimes, the well will replenish on it’s own so we gave it some time and tried again. No matter what we did, we couldn’t get a prime on the pump to give us water pressure. This is usually indicative of a dry well. This was also Friday afternoon, so we hunkered down with hopes that the well would replenish itself overnight. No such luck. We still couldn’t get any water pressure.

At this point I started calling water delivery companies, many too busy to even answer their phones. I finally found someone who could help us and he actually squeezed us into his schedule on Saturday. He was amazing, a friendly caring guy who liked to help people. However, the well turned out to have loads of water so we didn’t need his. Just a little embarrassing. Stunned, we paid him for his time and kept his info for future reference. We still couldn’t get the well primed. It is a finicky lever that you have to turn upwards until it clicks in to indicate water pressure. There was no effing way that lever was cooperating so we hunkered down once more, dragging water up from the lake for flushing and to boil to wash dishes. Pump guys do not work weekends. They don’t even have emergency numbers, which I guess I can understand because if they did, they wouldn’t have a life. On Sunday morning I went down to try the pump one more time and, low and behold, it clicked in. Ask me how much I enjoyed a shower and the sound of the toiled flushing. Believe me it really is the simple things that make you happy.

7. During the course of all these events I have been sick. Oh sure, I wandered the yard to take pics for blogs and managed a couple of paddles on days that I wasn’t as bad but mostly I was sick. The headache arrived in mid June. In the beginning, I blamed it on the humidity, until I realized I also had a fever and sore neck. Since then I have been to the doctor three times, had two rounds of antibiotics, a lime test (negative), blood and urine tests that are apparently in the normal range and have a couple of other things cued up that are actually related to something else.

My doctor is the most complacent and annoying physician that any woman ever had to deal with; but this is Nova Scotia and there are thousands of people waiting on the list for a family doctor, one can’t just jump ship and go get a second opinion. My doctor just doesn’t listen. He rarely examines anything except ears, throat and lungs. When it turned out not to be a sinus infection, he told me it was allergies, but agreed to send me for some tests. I have yet to hear of allergies giving a person a fever and chills. Now he is telling me it is a virus and I should get better on my own because antibiotics won’t work on it. Ok, but what kind of virus lasts two months? I have no idea what it is, but then again, neither does my doctor. My pharmacist suggested that I go to the ER, and I am planning on it. I just need to find 18 hours to devote to the cause because wait times are long. Unfortunately that isn’t going to be tomorrow because the technician is coming to service the heat pump.

Thank you for reading. My apologies for the length of this one. 

Photos: Jenn Stone

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