I just finished washing the dinner dishes in cold water. I always thought having hot water was a luxury and getting stuff clean was as easy with cold as hot water. I am here to tell you it’s not a luxury. It’s much harder to wash anything without hot water. But we don’t have any hot water. Until Wednesday, we are hot-water free. Today, the hot water heater blew up. It wasn’t old. We replaced it not long ago — a few years — and it was supposed to be a super-duper fancy one which would last for twenty years. I don’t think it survived for five. It did last exactly long enough to be past its warranty date.

Why is that the way it always is?

This is not my first house. I owned two in New York. Two in Israel. This is my third in Massachusetts. And of course, I grew up in an old house that was under constant renovation from the day we moved into it when I was four, until I moved out at age seventeen.

We did quite a lot of work on this house when we moved in. We put in drains, a sump, a pump. We replaced the roof, added vinyl siding. We’ve replaced all the toilets and sinks. All the floors. Front door and back door. The well … and the well-pump twice.

All the toilets and sinks need replacing again and we could use a new bathroom.

This all reminds me I have  finally beat the depression that stalked me most of my life. With all of this stuff going on, I’m not depressed. I’m upset. Worried. Frustrated and bummed. But not depressed. That’s a major change from my younger years. Although I have to say that a sufficient amount of worry can be surprisingly similar to depression. 

Why does everything happen at the same time? Is there some kind of law about this?

My theory is that all houses are money pits. Something always needs doing. When you don’t have resources, you wait. Hope by the time whatever it is goes critical, you’ll be in better shape. Time passes and you know you must do whatever was at the top of the list — in our case, the front door.  The water heater was not on the list because we replaced it a few years ago. Surprise!

But mostly, you knew something would happen. Problems accumulate. When you don’t have money, you wait and hope a day comes when you will be able to manage it. As far as that goes, we are better off than we were five years ago and a lot better off than ten years ago. But the difference is not very large. There’s busted and not quite busted.

Garry, who never owned a house before, is freaked. I, who have owned houses, am bummed and wondering how we will do this stuff. It’s not like we have a choice, either. We need hot water. Oh to have real incomes so we could just take out a loan and be able to pay it back.

I feel kind of stunned, probably because Garry had — just a few minutes ago — asked me the fatal question.

“So … what else is going to happen”?

The hot water heater popped.

Never ask that question. It’s right up at the top of things you should never think, much less say aloud. Akin to “what could possibly go wrong?” This is an evil question that is guaranteed to bring down the wrath of the household gods.

Categories: Home, Humor

Tags: #Photography, Home, home repair, hot water heater, Household Stuff, it isn't really funny