Thursday, August 9, 2012

Spontaneous Repairs


In 2008 when houses had recovered a bit from their owner’s delusions of grandeur and prices had regained a modicum of sanity - and before the crash -  I bought a house. I re-habbed the 760 sq. ft. baked-adobe Mission Revival house I bought when I was a waitress and  had been living in for about 30 years.  I wanted a bit more space – a place for visiting friends to stay over, a place for a dining room table so more than four people could eat together, and something that wasn’t across from what had turned into a quasi-industrial vibe (it used to be more like a park, before the county decided to cut down all the trees and recess the ball fields to make a retention basin for the 100 year flood – but that is another story).

Anyway, yesterday I got up with what is becoming the usual no-plan. Phone rang. It was my renter. I always have teensy panic when I see the phone number on the caller ID. I’m thinking: “Uh-oh, I’m going to have to think...and do something”. There was a small water drip starting under the kitchen sink. Whew. I have great renters – they call at the first sign rather than wait for it to become an emergency. “Sure, no-problem. I’ll call my handy man” thinking he can fix that and few things I’ve had on a list over here at my house for, oh, I don’t know, six months? But that was enough thinking. Spent the rest of the day mostly reading.

Today I wake expecting that  I’m going to have another day of no-thinking, but maybe I can at least rally enough to make the call. I do. He can to it – today, now. One call to renters to check that out and the repair is done an hour later. Over here, after two trips to Home Depot, done also. While my guy did his stuff I repaired the arm on a vintage chair that just came off (with just a small assist from his higher-quality drill). There was no swearing involved.

So, a lot got accomplished today. In spite of myself.

Before, when my time was more limited, this would have taken a number of calls, phone messages, planning, communicating…and perhaps a week to get scheduled and accomplished. And been an added stress.

Maybe life is going to be more like this now. I’ll have to recalibrate the home repair/timeline/frustration quotient.

1 comment:

  1. sounds like our Nahum was available for you? hope so....he is a treasure.

    ReplyDelete