This Very Bumpy Road

 

Copyright © 2021

by Ralph F. Couey

As anyone who had done it can attest, the process of buying a house is anything but soothing.  There always seems to be that last-minute demon that leaps astride what minutes before seemed to be a clear path.

Tuesday afternoon, I undertook the challenging task of cleaning out the refrigerator, that periodic journey of discovering which leftovers are edible, and which should be relegated to someone's science experiment.  It was going well, but as I piled the newly-emptied Tupperware in the sink, I noticed that the water wasn't draining.  I got out the Drano, but that had no effect.  I retrieved a newly-purchased but as yet unused plunger and went to work on the sink drains.  It was an interesting effect.  When centered squarely over the drain, there was a perfect vacuum, which meant that the drain was completely clogged.  So I did the traditional Couey male rescue.  I called a plumber.

The guy came within 90 minutes, and without delay went to work.  Oddly, he didn't snake the kitchen drain.  Instead, he went outside where the drain pipe passed through the wall and opened up an access port.  There, as you see in the picture, he discovered that the pipe was completely filled with...gunk, I guess, the accumulation of some 66 years of whatever had passed through those pipes.  He then wormed his way into the crawlspace, where the access to all the plumbing was.  There, he found that the pipe that ran from the kitchen drain to the central drain under the center of the house was similarly plugged.  At the other end, the pipe, corroded beyond resurrection, simply broke.

The crawlspace is common to all Hawai'i houses, and provides an easy way to access the house's infrastructure.  You couldn't do this in the mainland.  The pipes would never survive the winter.

Cheryl told me some stories about how she and her siblings would undertake adventures in that place.  But there are risks.  If you have rats, that's where they're going to live.  Also, roaches, spiders, centipedes and all the other critters endemic to a tropical environment like to live there.  But we had the house tented last year, and whatever was in that application is still doing its job.  The plumber reported, with great relief, that he encountered no living things while under the house. Not even kids.

He worked rapidly and diligently, and after about three hours, was able to restore things to normal.  Knowing that the bathtub drain had been running slow for some time, I asked him to take a look at that assembly, located under the opposite side of the house.  It was already dark, but in looking at the location with his flashlight, he saw some other problems, and promised to come back Thursday morning.

The next day, Wednesday, I presented myself at a vaccination site at Leeward Community College and received the first of the Moderna shots.  We had been holding out for the J&J, but the halting of the administration of that shot left us with no real alternative.  I'm not female between 18 and 49 years old, and I've never had platelet issues.  But I suppose it would have been sexist to give the shot only to men.

Thursday morning, the plumber came back, and went to work.  About 10 AM, 24 hours after getting the shot, I was truck-smacked with a wave of incredible fatigue.  I had been warned that there might be side effects of that first shot, but I was unprepared for the powerful effect.  It was good that I had taken that day off.  I don't think I would have survived the drive in.  

For most of the day, the floor resonated with power tools and sawing.  As the hours mounted, I could feel the money draining away.  As it turns out, the pipes on that side were even worse, the filling gunk having acquired the consistency of concrete.  Finally, in the middle of the afternoon, he finished, and assured me that having replaced all of the piping between the bottom of the house and where the pipes disappeared below the dirt, we should have no plumbing problems for at least another 66 years.  

We close Saturday -- OMG! TOMORROW!!! -- and we really didn't need this to happen.  But there is the relief of having taken care of one of the more expensive aspects of home ownership.  Provided there are no more disasters, we should be homeowners shortly after lunchtime tomorrow.

I hope I didn't just jinx us.

It's tough to make plans these days, because there is no "normal" against which to predict outcomes, and situations seem to change drastically from day to day, and sometimes, hour to hour.  I've always looked ahead, tried to divine whatever future lies in wait.  I've pretty much given up on that for now.  I am uncomfortable just going day to day.   A life like that lacks any kind of rhythm and more often now, results and a great deal of layered stress.  But these are the times in which we live.  There seems some hope now that the Pandemic has an eventual end, or at least a manageable point at which the masks come off, the restaurants and bars open up, and children can once again race madly around a playground.  The other day in Ewa, I saw a youth baseball team holding a practice -- well, sort of.  Still, the sight of that happening is one of those signs, like the first robin in spring (in the mainland), that better times are on the way.  There are still those who are making money out of pimping fear, but perhaps a sense of calm will silence even them.

All I know for sure is that Thursday is done, Friday is ending nicely, and I have no idea what Saturday holds in store.  But I have to keep moving forward, even if progress is measured in baby steps, in hopes of a better time.

I guess you could call that faith.  

Maybe.