So…Tuesday I get an email from LADWP that I have a possible water leak, because my meter is spinning and I have a bill currently in excess of $1,000! I call my plumber, the curmudgeonly but wonderful Richard of Chicago Plumbing (exhibiting his stubborn nature by insisting on continuing to call it that even though it’s in Sunland, California), he comes to check it out, and discovers that I have a leak under the house and another one in the line running from the house out to the irrigation “station” in the middle of my back yard.

He also tells me (which we both already knew) that I have waited almost past the point of no return to get the repiping of my house done; my pipes are the original galvanized ones from 1948, and are filled with rust and sludge and minerals and are probably leaking stuff into my water that I don’t need to be drinking. The result of this discussion was an eye-watering quote to repipe the entire house with copper, followed by some steps to ensure nothing keeps leaking while we are waiting for the holiday weekend to be over, because of course this happened two days before Thanksgiving!

Richard and his helpers come back on Wednesday for half a day, cap off the leaks, drill some holes and drop some pipe in preparation for the main job, which starts Monday, and then go to the pipe and supply house to order a delivery for Friday of all the materials they will need. Because of the caps, the bathroom sink has no water, but the tub is right there, the toilet is functional (after they snake the line and check again for leaks), and the water in the kitchen works, so it’s all good. Richard says, “Maybe don’t do too many dishes or run the washing machine this weekend, just in case.” Okay!

Oh, and P.S., Richard says, you have a small gas leak under the house. We can fix that, too, if you want…. Yes, I want!

So…Thursday morning (Thanksgiving Day), I receive a call from my neighbor, Phil, who says “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news” and tells me to go look out my kitchen window. What I see is that the electrical cables that connect my house to the pole have descended and are hanging at about my head height (5.5 feet) from the ground. What I can’t see from my viewpoint but what Phil is looking at from his back yard is that the two-by-four that was nailed to the garage roof, to which all the electrical lines were bolted, has pulled loose from the roof and is now dangling in midair, attached to the house only by the wires themselves.

LADWP fortunately has emergency crews 24/7, so I call them and describe the problem, and within half an hour one of their hard-hat guys is at my front door to fix the problem. Except, well, they don’t actually fix it; what they do is tie it off so it’s safe for a couple of days, and then I get to find and hire an electrician or a handyman, to whom I hand a two-page flyer with specs on it for how to build the anchoring base on the roof; once that is done I get to call LADWP back and they send out another cocky young person to re-attach all the wires properly to the anchor.

And all of this, of course, has to happen on a holiday weekend, because it is decreed that no disaster shall take place unless it is Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or another assorted three-day jamboree. Just like back when I was a working person, the client always had an emergency project that they brought to me on the Friday afternoon before…. Sigh.

Maybe this is also the time to mention that my oven has been condemned (though the stove still works fine) by the Gas Company due to carbon monoxide traces when it’s on; that my floor furnace hasn’t worked for several years because the electrical connection from the thermostat has broken down (Richard says he might be able to fix this, too, and if not I have an electrician coming!); and that the bearings in my clothes dryer are metal on metal, so I’m not using it lest it burn the house down. And the final “disaster” is that this morning Facebook shut me down for unspecified questionable content (I think it’s a photo I posted in 2013 that came up as a “memory”), and I’m not allowed to post, message, or even react to the posts of others for three days!

So yeah, wondering about ole Mercury. Also pondering…wouldn’t it be ironic if the crap I’ve been drinking in my water as filtered through the galvanized pipes has been the cause of all my inflammation, and the copper piping changed things for the better?

My mother always said that procrastination was my middle name…perhaps it has also been my nemesis.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’m off to the cousins’ house, hoping nothing else breaks down while I’m gone for six hours.