Job Months

Leave a comment

I’m sure you’ve had them too.  Job-like months when everything seems to happen all at once.  Your bank account grows anemic, making Quicken feel more like quicksand.  Our most recent started when the roof leaked yet again during heavy storms—I sure am glad climate change isn’t real!  Can you imagine how it’d be if we had extreme weather?  This house dates from the late nineteenth century and presumably, if such super-soakers had always been common, well, the roof would’ve been replaced down to the joists.  In any case, in our fourth call to the roofers over seven years, we faced yet another scary bill.  Then the sink began to leak.  Some minor repairs I can do myself, but this house was an either a DIY’s paradise or purgatory.  For us, mainly the latter.  

A couple years back there was a leak from the upstairs toilet tank.  Now, I’ve replaced the guts of a toilet more than once.  I bought the parts and went to work.  It was then that I discovered a previous owner had purchased a fancy-brand toilet for which toilet guts couldn’t be purchased (well, maybe from Japan or China, by slow boat).  You’ll probably agree that without an outhouse, a working toilet is more or less a necessity.  I watched YouTube and my wife and I went to Lowe’s and bought a new toilet.  I’m sure angels were laughing watching the two of use wrestle this metric-ton porcelain throne up the stairs (and demons laughed as we got the old one down).  Installing it looked straightforward.  When it started to leak, the plumber—we’re on a first-name basis now—came over.  He pointed out the faulty mounting pipe and asked if I’d installed it.  It was from the previous owner with high-class taste in toilets.  He turned to his companion and said, “This is why we’ll never go out of business.”

So a twenty-dollar toilet gut replacement turned into a $600 full toilet replacement.  This was in my mind when I had my head under the sink.  We seem to have stopped the water getting in from above, at least for the moment, but now it was clear that the base cabinet under the sink was going to need to be replaced as well.  I called Doug and he said he’d slot me in as quickly as he could.  I’m pretty sure Job didn’t have indoor plumbing.  He probably had to repair his own roof a time or two, though.  Only in his case, it happened just before God made a bet with Satan.  So the story goes.

Don’t Stare

Leave a comment

Having people just outside your window all day is a bit unnerving.  We don’t have central air and I keep my windows open when possible in the summer.  My office overlooks the porch roof but the porch was converted into two interior rooms over the years.  (The house was build about 1890.)  With the extreme weather we’ve been getting (rain storms that routinely dump three or four inches of rain in a short period, especially), leaks have developed.  As of this summer, after five years of ownership, we finally have a completely new roof—we had to have it done in parts because it’s not like we have professors’ salaries.  That meant that roofers were outside my office window all day back in August.  Now this is weird.  I was literally six feet away from some of them some of the time, sitting at my laptop, trying not to watch them instead of working.  The roofers, meanwhile, completely ignored me.  Never once when I glanced up did I see any of them looking in the window.

By the end of the day I was freaked out.  You see, as much as I like performing (as any good teacher does), I don’t like being looked at while I’m working at a desk.  I deeply dislike desk jobs and my posture throughout the day becomes, well, idiosyncratic.  Being forced to act as if I were in a sea of cubicles again was difficult.  Of course, I work longer hours now than I did as a commuter (one of the reasons, I expect, many employers don’t insist on people coming back to the office).  Knowing that someone could be watching you, even if they’re not, makes me uncomfortable.  

I considered how it must be for a zoo animal.  Yes, they’re given some privacy, but it’s often limited.  Animals don’t like to be stared at.  (Despite what materialist tell us, we all know what that  feels like and it makes us fidgety.)  When I’m out jogging I find that if I don’t look directly at them, I can get pretty close to many animals.  If you make eye contact, however, they more quickly scurry away.  Those in zoos must eventually become inured to the staring over time, or at least come to realize that nobody’s going to hurt them.  Still, given their druthers, I expect most of them would rather be in the wild where they can do what they do, no matter how boring, without being watched.  And no roofs over their heads at all.

Jacob’s Ladder

2 Comments

Jacob, it is said, was quite a dreamer.  While fleeing from his brother Esau he had a dream of a ladder, or stairway, to heaven.  Well, “Heaven” as we recognize it didn’t exist then, but you get the idea.  Angels were climbing up and down on it, I’m guessing to do roof repairs.  You see, neither my wife nor I are what you might call tall.  In fact, I’m a bit shorter than the average guy and we can’t reach the top shelf in our kitchen, let alone the ceiling.  Or, God forbid, the roof.  So when tropical storm Isaias (not to be confused with the prophet) dropped upwards of five inches of rain on us, some of it got inside.  Our roofer, vexed as I was, promised to get over the next week but there’s more rain in the forecast.  I had to get up there to do some temporary patching.  I needed a ladder.

Ours is an older house.  The roof is way higher than any ladder we have.  I have one that allows me to get as high as the ceiling, but being acrophobic I don’t use it much.  It doesn’t come halfway to the lowest roof.  The hardware stores have ladders, but delivery’s a problem.  A ladder twice as long as our car seems like a road hazard, strapped to the top.  I asked about delivery at the local Lowe’s.  It would cost a third of the price again of the ladder itself, and that’s only be if they could deliver it.  Their truck was, ironically, broken down.  Wasn’t this a DIY store?  Could nobody there fix a truck?  I put a face-mask and rubber gloves on for this?  The world isn’t easy for the vertically challenged.  I really don’t want to climb that high, but with the ceiling below already coming down I’ve got to do something.

I wonder if Jacob’s ladder is still lying about somewhere, unused.  We don’t live far from Bethlehem.  Maybe I can scoot over the Bethel and pick it up.  Then again, maybe angels deliver.  I hear they can be quite accommodating.  Of course, if they’d keep the rain off in the first place that would’ve been helpful.  I’m pretty sure that Plant and/or Page had a leaky roof.  When they went to get up there they’d found somebody had already purchased the ladder (I think they call it a stairway in England).  So I find myself with a leaky roof and no way to get to heaven.