Just so you’ll know I’m writing this on Sunday the 15th and
the report on my Wednesday party will be published on Saturday,
but I will tell you that the Evil Overlord of Party Planners got me again. It
wasn’t enough to give me an easy-fix electrical problem and an
impossible-to-fix ice storm that had me rescheduling my party, this morning I
hopped in the shower to discover that I didn’t have any hot water. We had some wind but I’ve never lost a pilot light on the hot water
heater in the 15 years of living here, like some people do on windy days. I did, however, have the faucet control mixer on
the shower break once so that's a possibility it did again.
Calling a plumber on a weekend costs double their
rate---even if they’d come out in an ice storm for a non-emergency. I’m hoping
if I call early Monday I can get them out the same day. I don’t have a choice
but to wait and in the meantime, I’ll try to figure out if it's the pilot or
the mixer. The water in the kitchen seemed a little tepid or is it my
imagination working overtime? And, drats, I’d have to lie on my stomach on the
basement floor to look at the pilot! Scratch that off the list of
possibilities. If I did that, I’d have to call 911 to get back up. The last time I lost a hot water heater---the bottom blew out---was the morning of my mom's funeral. It was one of those infamous things that happens when you have to ask myself, "Is this an inconvenience or a disaster" to put it in perspective.
At any other time but during an ice storm, I could ask the son-I-wish-I-had to come over to check the pilot light but he just buried his father a few days ago after spending two weeks doing a day and night vigil at his dad’s Hospice bedside. I just can't do that to him because I know he’d come, if I asked. To answer my blogger friend, Judy, before she asks why I don't call the gas company, I took that option off the table years ago when we had rental property. I don’t like dealing with them when I have other options.
At any other time but during an ice storm, I could ask the son-I-wish-I-had to come over to check the pilot light but he just buried his father a few days ago after spending two weeks doing a day and night vigil at his dad’s Hospice bedside. I just can't do that to him because I know he’d come, if I asked. To answer my blogger friend, Judy, before she asks why I don't call the gas company, I took that option off the table years ago when we had rental property. I don’t like dealing with them when I have other options.
Monday Update: 7:30. I just got off the phone with the
plumbing company. Mind you, this company has 160 trucks on the road---a very large and well established business---and they couldn’t get out today. The only choices
for scheduling were: 1) smack dab in the middle of my bi-annual doctor’s
appointment with my internist on Tuesday which would have been just a quick
check of the pilot light with no repairs, if it’s something more serious; 2)
smack dab in the middle of my party for a check, repair and/or replacement; or 3) smack
dab in the middle of my dentist appointment on Thursday. I picked door number three
and I will reschedule the dentist. After talking with the plumping company, I’m probably
just going to go ahead and replace the hot water heater, which I planned on doing this summer anyway. A 15 year old unit isn’t worth putting any money into
repairing it and he said that if I've never lost the pilot light before, it’s
likely not a simple fix like relighting it.
It’s going to be quite a week and if nothing else, it’s
proving that I’m still one of the lucky ones. Why? Because as many things as
the Evil Overlord of Party Planners threw at me, I’m still standing and I can find
the humor in the never ending process of revising my party game plan---did
I mention I had to add shoveling snow to my schedule today and salting on Tuesday to help the ice melt as the temperature gets above freezing? More
importantly I am lucky because I live in a part of the world that has running
water and electricity and I’m not a refugee seeking a new life away from
unending wars, bombs and chemical attacks. And if I've learned anything in my twenty
years of servicing weddings in the floral business it’s that no one cares about
the challenges the vendors go through as long as the end results turns out
great on the big day. ©
Note: While I was searching for a photo for the top of this
blog I ran into an article titled, How to Burn Fat with Cold Showers proving
that for every negative thing life throws at us there is always an upside. LOL
