Hello and welcome to another edition of "This Old House ... Is Trying to Kill Me."
Or, how about, "Fixer Upper ... This Part Before the Other Part Falls Apart and You Have to Fix That, Too."
I could go on. And I have the time to do so, because I'm getting to spend a lot of it waiting for the conga line of repairmen who are dropping by Renovation Project Smith, formerly known as the Casa Smith. Or the House That Dripped -- Something That's Probably Going to Need to be Fixed.
The reason I mention this is, well, I'm just kind of venting. Which is literally what I ought to be doing, since it gets pretty hot upstairs because we could probably use two air-conditioner units, except when we had the one serviced it was fine. But hey, maybe we've just been lucky up until now, which considering what else is falling apart is a little hard to believe, but then stranger things have happened, like the dead bolt deal. But more on that later.
The thing is, for no apparent reason, stuff in my house just seems to arbitrarily break.
It's like the place is haunted. But not by one of those terrible, scary, you-could-make-a-lot-of-money-off-the-move-rights ghosts. No, this is the kind that leaves shoes out for you to trip over or eats all the chips so you think it's the kids who did it, except they've gone back to school, so you're always wondering. A ghost like that is short on terrifying, long on being a jerk. The kind of ghost who likes the ruffled chips and doesn't put the clip back on, so now they're stale.
But, I digress.
That's because my mind is being buffeted by thousands of thoughts, most of them revolving around a basic concept - now, more than ever, my house is a living thing that is trying, for some reason, to do me in.
I mean, that's the only logical explanation, because anything else is just preposterous. It would mean that a series of things that never happen are happening in series.
See, the vast majority of stuff in a house just doesn't break. It goes on doing whatever job it has until the house burns down, a giant meteor comes or, well, that's about it.
Light switches don't break. They only have one job, move in only one direction (down, since electricity costs money, but then back up again when I realize it's too dark to locate the chips, except ... that ghost again) and really don't see enough action to break.
Deadbolt locks. They don't break. You turn them right in the morning, left in the evening, and literally call it a day. OK, there are moving parts, but this ain't the Super Collider here.
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, water heaters gotta heat water, refrigerators got refrigerate, roofs have to be roofs and do whatever they do. All these things have fairly simple jobs that imply the sort of reliability you can hang your hat on (as long as the hook isn't on the back of the closet door, which is starting to stick and not close all the way). And yet, at various times I would believe to be too soon, they've gone from being stalwarts of the domicile to as reliable as a Chevy Bobcat.
And the only possible explanation for this is that they're trying to kill me. They were counting on the smoke alarm with the beeping in the middle of the night, but I called in a professional and took that off the table. Now, they're trying again.
Of course, it might not be me. I mean, lots of people have things go wrong with their houses. And houses, well, they have their quirks.
For instance, I have a friend who lives in a wonderful house in one of those very nice neighborhoods you can't get into unless you live there or can distract the teenage "guard" at the gate long enough to slip in.
And, like I said, it's a nice house. Except, the garage door opener doesn't always work. No one can figure out why. It doesn't happen all the time. He hasn't gotten around to getting it replaced. He can get you into a clubhouse that looks like a cross between a French chateau and Annapolis, but he can't always get into his garage.
So, his house is trying to kill him, too. It's just taking its time.
Commentary on 01/24/2020