Just Bumps In The Road

It has been a week of household calamities. 

Last week I had an electrician come in to make sure things were up to code with the pond. And add some outlets to the pavilion. With that came the discovery that the pond filter was defective. 

Which could be why my dogs have had Montezuma's Revenge (what you can get from drinking water in Mexico that you're unaccustomed to) the past couple of weeks. Poor Charlie was sick all over my car one day. (Naturally his vet was out of town at a conference.) They'd been drinking, as pets will, from the pond. Though of course I keep fresh water outside for them. 

So that meant we'd have to do something about the filter. Which led me to discover there may be a leak in the pond. Which further led to figuring out there may be some hefty work to be done there. Recently cemented layers of stone to be lifted. Groan.

Oh, and Friday evening at 8:30, our sewer line became clogged, and we rushed to find a plumber willing to come out before morning. It was backing up into the tub. 

That's what the proliferation of greenery growing in East Texas will bring you. Roots that tear into your plumbing with astonishing regularity. As a gardener, I love it. As a homeowner, I groan and bear it. Cha-ching!

Thus I found myself helping a plumber, bless him, to spend much time trying to find the clean-out in front that had mistakenly been covered in mulch.  And then remedying the situation. At an hour when I'd normally be tucked away into bed. 

Oh, but it gets even better. We needed a heater put into the guest bath, where I shower. But the hole in the ceiling where the fan had been placed was too big, the electrician tells me. So I will have to hunt down a carpenter to be there when they actually put one up. Or I'll have insulation falling to the bathroom floor.

People in and out of my house all week and yesterday. Which does not make my fretful dogs happy campers. I carry them around, one in each arm, as Abi yaps continuously because strangers dare to enter her home. And my back aches. 

The church down the block has had their parking lot torn up and they're laying a new one. Which means I listen to beep-beep-beep from morning till night as the machines move about, doing what massive machines do. After a week of that annoying sound that I cannot mask with television or sound machine, I am really on edge.

No, nothing earth-shattering. Just little nit-picky things that mount up into nerves up-ended. So much I'd planned to get done in the past week, and not much of anything to actually show for it but a diminished bank account.

Oh, but today I'm meeting my dear friend Nola, who I met through blogging, at Blue Moon Nursery. I have been up since 4 a.m., looking forward to escaping the sounds of the city and driving into the countryside. 

We will have lunch in Edom, close by, and then stroll the grounds of Blue Moon. As she lives a few hours from me, we do this about three times a year. And enjoy ourselves immensely. Her birthday was last week, but things got in the way of our actually celebrating it together. And my delivering her gift.

So if I haven't been around to visit you, now you know why. Life does indeed get in the way. And conundrums over pond safety, and noises of the city that pound away at your nerves. Little things that don't amount to much. But still tap-tap-tap at your composure until you're snappish. 

Dear pets that get sick and look to you to make it right. Toilets that back up at the beginning of a weekend, as they always seem to. 

Just things that gnaw away at you and take up time you hoped would be allotted to other things. Oh, but life itself is precious. And these little blots of irritation are just bumps in the proverbial road, aren't they?