Always Something

My mother used to say that it wasn’t one thing after another, but the same thing over and over, and the thing she had in mind was things that didn’t work, things that broke. My father was a great fixer of machines (for a living, he fixed radios, two-way communication systems, record players, and tv’s), and I think that made him somewhat more confident about having things around that were likely to stop functioning. But, like the shoemakers’ children who have no shoes, our house had shelves full of things that were waiting to get fixed. Real fixing went only to fundamental needs.

My life in that household led me, as an adult, to put very little stock in having things that were likely to break because neither I nor anyone I lived with for most of that adulthood was likely to know how to fix them when, inevitably, they ceased functioning. For me, when things break, the things need to go somewhere far away where they may or may not recover but I will not need to know about it. Or, if I have things, I am very careful with them. E.g., I have an I-Pod, but I use it sparingly so that I will not wear it out and have to attend in some way to its failure to work.

Not so Ed. He, like my dad, is a fixer of things, but he’s more likely to get around to fixing them sooner rather than later. The fundamental things get attended to right away; the leaking skylight covered with a blue tarp…somewhat later. This week, the Water Department of Point Roberts sent us our bill and a suggestion that we might have a leak, which accounted for the size of the bill. The first task was to locate the leak and pretty quickly, Ed determined that it was between the meter and the house, but not in the house or the yard hoses. The Water Department said, don’t bother to look any further; they are old pipes, they are bound to leak, replace the pipe. Which is, of course, our pipe, not the Water Department's.

So this past week, instead of drywalling, Ed has been digging a trench through the front lawn-like area: 18” deep, minimum, and about 30+ snaking feet long (Correction: Ed says it is 80 feet. I have little ability in the spacial perception aptitude area). Our soil is pretty sandy, so it can be dug with a shovel, but it is pretty rocky. That, for me, is the good part because I have a wonderful new store of large rocks to use in the gardens. Probably less wonderful for the guy on the other end of the shovel.

There are big piles of dirt in the yard (one about 24 inches tall I managed to walk into yesterday when my thoughts and my eyes were on higher things), and also a deep canyon wherein the new flexible, plastic water pipe has made its bed and will now sleep in it. About six hours of shut-off water yesterday (the worst: being without water….all it does is make me want to turn on faucets; my needs for water turn out to be non-stop when water is not available), and we have new pipes, a new pressure regulator, and a new water meter. So, for now, it is fixed, and presumably for my lifetime, since the pipes themselves are unlikely to wear out within the next 20-30 years, whereas I surely will. But I was looking suspiciously at the electricity drop line today. Isn't it a little, well, saggy?