Week 6: Topic “Keep the Fires Burning”

 Week 6: 

Keep the Fires Burning

 

I love my house. I honestly do, but every holiday that rolls around means something breaks; every holiday involving the gathering of humans who come to eat and stay a while. The humans aren’t the ones breaking stuff. Stuff just randomly breaks. 

(Last year was the only exception which, I suppose, was a silver lining of COVID-19 because we didn’t host anything.) These incidents typically run us anywhere between $200-$2000, in repairs or replacements, depending.

 

I’ve had a running joke with my plumber that we should just set a place at the table for him going forward. We’ve used the same guy for over 30 years.  He’s scary looking; kinda resembles Charles Manson actually, but he’s not afraid of hard work, he doesn’t charge extra for weekends or holidays and he knows his shit.  Literally, since he fixes toilets for a living, among his other talents. Oh, and Plumber Guy’s/Charles Manson’s actual name is ‘John’!

Yeah, typically it’s a “breakage” of some household thing involving the bathroom or water, so we end up seeing John about 2 times a year.

 

Once on Easter we detected lots of smoke in our basement and had to call the firefighters.  It was a failed and smoldering light ballast. We had an almost fire on Bunny Day. 

 

Two days before Christmas in 2018  that nasty, burning, electrical odor wafted from the laundry area…Washer died mid-spin. It was an older model and not worth it to repair, so Lowe’s got our money. 

 

Our stove/oven passed away on Labor Day in 2015. Once again it was Lowe’s to the rescue. 

 

We also had a disposal go south before my daughter’s wedding in 2016, so this items breaking thing isn’t exclusive to holidays really…it’s when people will be spending the night and or eating large meals with us. 

 

This year on Thanksgiving it was a hall light fixture that went kaput. Minor compared to major appliances and the essential crapper, but if the hall goes dark and kitties are lurking about, someone’s gonna trip and fall, so…We need hallway lighting. 

 

It occurred to my husband that since we had to pay for a service call regardless, why not have the dude do a couple of other odd jobs while he was here, like he could check out the one pesky recessed light that often flickers, blinks and might give a guest the impression that we have active paranormal energy happening in our dining area. Also, Electrician Guy could fix a light in the home office. Yesterday Nick from Apollo Electric stopped by to either repair or replace the lights with issues. 

It turned out to be a thousand-dollar-day. Electrician services are not cheap, some things are impossible to restore to working order, and we are not good do-it-yourselfers. 

 

Aaahhh…joys of owning a home and keeping it going. 

Merry Christmas to our house.