Them’s coffee beans, folks
September was a sucky month for me. Even suckier than the previous five months during this horrible pandemic. Allow me to enumerate why:
- I threw my back out the tail end of August. While I can normally twist myself this way and that to get something to pop back into place, I couldn’t get it to realign by myself. Whatever I did, the chiropractor said my spine was almost ‘S’ shaped. It took two or three visits a week for the entire month to get me able to move (more-or-less) freely again.
- My eyesight was deteriorating even discounting the film still over my right eye, so I went to the eye doctor on September 1st. Turns out my cataracts are finally ripe enough for surgery but she can still correct me to 20/20, so I’m holding off for now. (Deductibles and co-pays, don’tcha know.) Today, a month later, my lenses still aren’t in. I made four calls to the office but finally, was told this morning the lenses should be here tomorrow…or Monday. How bad is it? My regular glasses aren’t quite the right prescription to work on the computer. Can you say eye strain?
- Since the end of July, our hot water heater (a “flash” type that heats the water on demand instead of holding it hot in a tank – it has an electronic controller instead of just a temperature gauge) has been going wonky. I’d get most of the way through my shower then all of a sudden, the water got cold. (Trust me, well water is freezing, even mid-summer.) Husband, naturally, didn’t seem to care because after re-setting the controller during my shower, his was fine. After over a month, I screamed, which finally prompted him to call the gas company. Two trips by the repairman later, it was (fingers crossed) fixed on September 25th.
- Last week, the dishwasher quit in the middle of a cycle. No power anywhere, even with an ‘on’ breaker, which probably meant a fuse in the machine itself. I had to hand-wash dishes for a week. Not that it’s an onerous job with only two of us, but I no longer own a dish drainer and over the years, have gotten used to a clean kitchen. The fuse was finally delivered yesterday so the husband replaced the fuse this morning. Hallelujah! It works again!
- The pièce de résistance? Last December, we had the igniter on the oven replaced…over $300. And we got a whopper of a 90-day warranty on the part. Last month, the oven wasn’t heating properly and finally, last week, it stopped lighting altogether. So, I heaved a sigh and ordered a new range. It took a week to get it delivered instead of the usual 2-3 days. I knew they wouldn’t completely install it because we have liquid propane instead of natural gas, but thought I’d at least get rid of the old one. We’d told the gas repairman while he was here last week we were getting a new range delivered yesterday. He said they’d had problems in the past with those wonderful “delivery windows” so to call when it was here & he’d be out in a few hours to hook it up. Wrong on both parts! The deliverymen don’t even disconnect LP ranges because, “they’re not gas guys.” (Natural gas isn’t a gas?) “But call when the old one is ready to be hauled away.” I called the gas company. Because of the “cold snap” (haha, cold, lows in the 50s F), they’re booked solid. The earliest they can get here to hook up the new range is October 12th. So now, I not only do not have a working oven (thankfully, the cooktop still works) but there’s a new range sitting in my living room.
All our appliances (with the exception of the washer & dryer, which had moved with us & were replaced about six years ago, and the microwave we replaced 3 months ago) are as old as the house. That is to say, 17 years. I knew appliances usually started failing around the fifteen-year mark but nearly all at once? I’ve told the refrigerator to be nice to me for a few more months, at least.
On the bright side, that new story I mentioned the end of August? I’ve had enough quiet time (thanks to the weather & my back, making it nearly impossible for me to work outside) to write. I honestly should give up trying to plot anything. I wrote a plot, started writing, and about four chapters in, the characters changed the plot on me. C’ést la vie d’une auteure!
Good Riddance to September and Happy October!