Rant #3,158: Don't Let the Rain Fall Down On Me

When it rains it pours, and it is literally that way at my house right now.

With all the commotion going on with my mother and everything else on top of it, now we have a new challenge to deal with, and it is probably going to cost us a lot of money to conquer.

The other day, one of the women watching over my mother told me that while she was doing the laundry, she discovered that there was a leak coming down from the ceiling near the washing machine onto the floor.

I have called in two plumbers for pricing, and the leak is extensive, and they may have to take down part of the wall in my mother’s bathroom to fix it—

So we are talking about a whopper of a repair.

The house itself is probably around 70 years old, and our family has lived in the house since 1971.

Consequently, since this is an old house, my parents fixed things here and there when they needed to be fixed, and there are some relatively new pipes in the house, but just on a visual inspection, most of the plumbing in the house appears to be older than I am, and after a while, those pipes are not going to be able to do what they are supposed to do due to age.

The leak appears to be coming from the bathroom and from the sink, the bathtub and perhaps even the toilet, so whenever any of these appliances are used, yes, Houston, we have problem.

So this problem is gong to have be fixed, no matter the cost—but perhaps we can get the cost down by literary pitting one plumber against another.

So far, I have gotten a quote from one plumber, and the second plumber would not provide me with a quote without doing a thorough diagnostic of the problem, which would cost me more than $300 alone, and after doing the diagnostic, only then would he give me a quote.

Maybe that is the right way to go due to the potential costs involved, but right now, I am not paying for a diagnostic on top of what I am going to have to pay for a repair.

I am mot made out of money, but these plumbers also know that I am at the mercy oft them, because there’s no way I can possibly fix this problem myself, less a Three Stooges situation where I would muck things up even more than they already are.

With everything happening one thing on top of another, I am getting the impression that a higher being is testing me—or perhaps punishing me—but somehow, we will get through all of this an emerge victorious—

Or at least I keep telling myself this, because what else can I say, what else can I believe in at this point in time?

Yesterday, my remote work job asked me to provide them with some charts that I had created related to sales of the various entities in military resale—basically store sales—and they seemed pretty desperate to get them.

Within minutes, I sent the material to the person who asked me for them, and when he received them, he sent me back another email and described me as “You are the best!”

Perhaps that is true, but I am having a hard time living up to that accolade during this major crisis time in my family.

This past month has been probably the worst month in my life, top to bottom, and there are so many things to do that I simply cannot relax.

Even when I am supposed to be sleeping, I am not, and when I finally get to sleep, I am awaked, like I was at about 4 a.m. this morning.

We have a monitor in my mom’s bedroom that is hooked up to my bedroom upstairs, and all my mother has to go is call out and we can come and help her.

So early this morning, while I was finally in a deep sleep, she called out, and I ran out of my bed and seemingly did not touch the floor as I got to her bedroom downstairs … she had soiled her adult diaper, and needed to be cleaned and needed a new diaper put on.

I give my mother credit, as he was able to be most of the work herself, but I did help her as best I could, and when I was done, I helped her back in the bed and she went right to sleep.

I went upstairs to my bedroom, and it probably took me at least an hour to get back to sleep.

I woke up late, thus the lateness of this Rant, and even when I was ready to start to write this, my mother’s attendant came to the door and had to be let in, which is no big deal, but then I had to speak with her, she had to speak with me, so it took some time before I could actually get down and start to write, as before that, I had to send out a story to my work that I had edited.

And today, I have to take my son back and forth to work, we have at least two plumbers coming to look at the leak, we have two nurses coming to the house to talk about my mother’s further care, and we have an appraiser coming to the house to determine what its worth actually is.

And I have my work to do, too, and hopefully, my wife will continue to improve with her head injury. She has had a few tough days Sunday and yesterday, but hopefully, she will be better today.

It is raining, it is a downpour, and whatever umbrella I am trying to use to dodge the raindrops isn’t working.

But I have to be strong about this mess, even after it seemingly gets bigger each and every day.

What alternative do I have?