Wednesday, July 20, 2011

The Harpers and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days

Hello, blog friends. How I have missed you. Are you still there?

I have much catching up to do with our summer adventures and so forth, but we have had a couple of days from you know where. Before posting fun photos and cute stories, I had to take a few minutes to document the fact that we have survived these last few days, without totally clearing out our emergency savings fund.

Sunday started out well enough. We woke up and ate a lovely breakfast of toast (with various toppings--Nutella for me, jam for Olivia, cinnamon and sugar with butter for Coleman, bites of all kinds for Sophia) and rushed off to our Sunday meetings.  Sophia has been a bit under the weather (just some conjunctivitis, bulging gums where two molars are coming in, and oh, double ear infections that her mama failed to recognize until her well child check a few days ago) but has been on antibiotics and Tylenol for long enough that she is neither contagious nor totally miserable. We got to church though, and she was totally miserable. And loud.  So I took her out. I realized we had not given her medicine to her, so we ran home to get it. She was still loud.  Did I mention she was loud? Particularly during the lovely group musical number that I was supposed to sing in... we made it back just in time. It was cute as she clapped out loud and yelled "Mommy!" at the top of her lungs. Sort of. We survived church, since that is what you mostly do when you have a busy, tired, 15 month old. We spent the rest of the afternoon tag teaming because of other meetings and appointments.

In the late afternoon, I started complaining about being hot. I am usually hot or cold, but rarely just right. Probably because my comfortable temperature range is 68 to 72. Ryan's comfort zone is whatever is cheapest.  But I digress.  I really felt hot, and sweaty, and sticky. And Ryan did too. And our thermostat clearly indicated that there was a problem with our air conditioner. Ryan walked outside to check it, and the air conditioner indicated that there was a problem too. It wasn't running. Ugh.

We called the repair place and left a message. Olivia took it upon herself to spray us all with her water bottle (or dump it on Coleman if she felt the need) and we ran all the ceiling fans to try to keep cool.  First thing Monday morning the glorious repair person called and arrived within the hour! We had tried to mentally prepare ourselves for the worst... after all, the AC unit is probably as old as our house, which means it has lived a good life and has functioned well for a lot of years. Estimates online showed that a new unit was anywhere from $2,000 to $15,000!  Imagine our relief and giddiness when he came to the door with a small, bulging part that he said had overheated. Only $179.32 to fix!!! I quickly told him to hook up the new one, shut the door, and did a happy dance. My kids laughed at me and thought I was weird. He came back so I could pay and they told him that I did the happy dance. Then he thought I was weird too, but it didn't matter, because it only cost $179.32 to fix! Hooray! We didn't have to move to the pool or our neighbor's house for the day, because our house was cool.

We also had our van in the shop yesterday. The check engine light kept coming on and then going off but always coming on again. Some gasket or other was broken and there was a leak in the oil pan.  Repairs there were under $500. Another hooray!

I secretly thought to myself (but did not dare say out loud for fear of jinxing myself) that something else was bound to happen, because don't all bad things supposedly come in threes?  Anyway, we ended the day believing all was well in our household again.

This morning we awoke to find a large puddle of water in front of the fridge... and water gushing from underneath the fridge.  We went downstairs to discover that water was coming out of the vents in the bathroom and office, out of the light in the hall, and out of one of the smoke detectors.  Ryan figured out the problem and shut off the water to the fridge, which stopped the gushing and slowed the leaking. Meanwhile, he wanted a sponge to soak up the water in the drip pan, but I don't believe in sponges. They are bacteria magnets and are really just gross. So we didn't have a single sponge in the house. Just after Ryan left to purchase some bacteria magnets, our smoke detectors began beeping and loudly saying, "Fire, fire!" You know how those work, too, right? When one goes off, they all go off? Apparently water in a smoke detector indicates that something is wrong. So, I went through the house pulling them all down and unplugging them.

Ry got home and soaked up all the water and determined that our problem was our water filter. Apparently, when the store that you bought your fridge from sends you a friendly reminder every six months to replace your water filter, it's not just a ploy to get your money. If you ignore those reminders for several years because you don't want to spend $44.36 on a new water filter, you just might end up with a whole lot of unfiltered water in a whole lot of places you don't want it. Good news is that Ryan fixed it all and we can mostly laugh about it. Mostly. Everything seems to be drying out nicely. Phew.

We both agreed that tomorrow HAS to be better.

3 comments:

The Scherbel Family said...

Wow, when it rains it pours. For your sake (and sanity), I really hope today has been fantastic for you.

Fame said...

haha I've had a string of those weird things, too! What happens when your emergency fund is on emergency?!

Ria said...

What a week! You seemed so calm and collected at book club. I hope you have fun at camp this week, you deserve a break!