Some days life is rather odd. It is a mixture of highs and lows and moments that make you just want to shout, cuss, and be in a foul mood. Today between 8 and 10 am, and then 6 to 10 pm was one of those days.
My parents who live three hours away were planning on driving to see my family and attend church with us today but cancelled when the weather report suggested sever thunderstorms. We even to be safe cancelled church. The kicker was it was for the most part a beautiful day other than some mostly mild rain.
Thankfully my wife and daughter got me in a better mood and then things were okay till about 5. It was while cooking that I had to go to the pantry to get some alfredo sauce. As I was reaching into the closet I first noticed that my ceiling was leaking. Even though I shouldn’t have I used several choice adjectives at that point voicing my frustration. If you had been God at the moment you would have most certainly heard a guy trying to convince himself that his house was falling apart and he and Job could now more readily discuss the problem of evil and how the righteous suffer unjustly. Now after several hours of hindsight I can readily say that there was way to much drama. In the grand scheme I was being a bit over dramatic. A bit the size of say Toledo.
I tried to put things in perspective and that’s when things started calming down. I finished cooking dinner for my wife and I because I wanted to treat her to a nice home made dinner since it is her first mother’s day. I also cooked spaghetti for lunch after forgetting to do breakfast for my wife. I finished cooking the shrimp and then got dressed so I could go up into the attic. I was still having a bit of a mock Job-complex as I went up there. “Why Lord, why does my ceiling leak?” I went up there I was expecting to find a hole in the roof but there wasn’t one. Yet my eyes noticed that the AC unit condensation pan was over flowing. I remember going oh-no and trying to figure out what was going on.
For those not versed in AC (air conditioners) unit construction. In most AC units the part in the attic is called the air handler. It takes the air and pulls moisture out of the air to cool it and the condensation is suppose go go down drain lines that lead outside the house. My upstairs unit has two pipes that are the drainage lines for the unit. The main pipe coming from the air handler unit had not been properly sealed. Two pipes that were suppose to be linked by a cheap two dollar fitting had instead been duct- taped together. This cheap tap over began to leak profusely around the taped joint for a unknown amount of time. It must have been leaking for over a week period because when i checked my pantry it was a bit wet at the bottom. Behind the pantry is the living room closet and it was really bad. The closet became the real problem because we quickly discovered that it had a foul smell coming from it. Think gym socks from high school times a 100. Apparently it had been molding and mildewing for at least a week plus. On the disgustingly interesting side I got to see yellow and orange mold along with the standard black for the first time. At least it was colorful while cleaning.
The real disappoint for me was that it had ruined some keepsakes we had stored in there. Now a friend of mine asked wouldn’t this be the fault of whoever worked on the AC unit last? That friend was right but the last thing done on the whole AC unit was replacing it. We had to replace it because our old unit died a week before our daughter was due. The person replacing it was myself, my dad, and my brother. My brother instead of getting a 2 buck coupling just taped pipe together that eventually became my leaking pipe that put me in the stinky predicament. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem but the secondary drain pipe must have had a clog somewhere in the line since it was originally put in. Since it wasn’t draining it just let the water rise and overflow the drain pan thus flowing unbeknownst to us first into the living room closet then today (Sunday) into the kitchen ceiling and pantry.
Today I had to rip up rotted base board and carpet from the closet and then Clorox the sheet rock and door which will have to be painted.Fixing the ac unit pipe upstairs right was really easy. It was like two minutes for a quick proper fix. I still can’t believe that neither I nor the code inspectors caught that when I had the job inspected by the state per county regulations. My tax dollars hard at work.
So what’s the moral to all of this? Well perspective. Even though it was time consuming and I complained way to much in reality I was still pretty blessed. The damage and cleanup was/is minimal. For all my complaining things weren’t that bad at all. It will cost me a couple hundred bucks when it is all said and done but it could have been much worse. Perhaps when life stinks (figuratively and literally) perhaps we should focus on all the blessing we have and how much worse things could have been. We miss opportunities to see God blessing us through the messes of life. I know I did at first.
Possibly related posts:
- signs of a bad couple of weeks
- Saturday says it all
- Organizing my life
- life reflections on my spiritual journey
- The Church is my mother, and sister, and brother