My house – tented
There have been a whole lot of little annoyances at my place in the past two weeks. It wasn’t anything big or terrible, just a collection of inconvenient, time-consuming things that started us wondering what we had done to annoy the house/IT gods.
It started when we got back from our trip to Australia. We felt happy, relaxed, and jet-lagged. I turned the computer back on and it died – one year and nine days after we bought it. Which meant nine days after it ran out of warranty. It took two weeks and a couple of trips to the genius bar but Apple kindly honored the warranty and fixed it for us. When I got it home, nearly everything was still there on the desktop and in the files – except all of our financial information, important documents, and Alan’s voice-over software. That took another week of tech support and nervous searching. We’re nearly back to full operation but not quite.
Next, we got the house tented for termites. The little buggers were swooping low over my lunch and munching on the ceiling of my living room. Their time had come. I double-bagged all of the food and medicines and we moved out: tropical fish, dog, all of us.
Three days later, the gas company shut us down. We could move back in but there would be no hot water, no heating, no cooking, and no clothes dryer for the next week. One very expensive plumbing bill and four new holes in the wall later and we are back to hot showers and home cooked meals.
The tenting people ripped up a section of our deck and still haven’t been back to fix it. And when they do, the new boards will not be the same color as the old ones.
There were more little things – the refrigerator broke, Alan had to have minor surgery that ended up being way slower to heal than we expected, one of the people who works for us had an accident, a neighbor wanted to purchase our beloved home and knock it down so he could have a bigger yard, and the list went on. Little things, but a lot of them in a short space of time.
But as we dealt with each one, as the house warmed up, and we could wash our clothes, that first hot shower – we really appreciated each thing as it came back online. It made me realize how well we live. I never even knew how cold this house got in winter (and we’re in Southern California!). Showering using warm water from the kettle in a bucket, and a cup makes you really grateful for a proper shower.
If I could always see setbacks as mindfulness reminders, life would be much less stressful. I’m going to try!
Back home and happy
