Mama said there'll be days like this…

OK, so here’s how the plans for the past two days were meant to go:
Monday: Public holiday for the rest of the worky types, work day for the freelancer types. Alex to work on his download video feature, write some short form reviews for a few other publications and get in some free play time on Oblivion.
Tuesday: Play outside with the kids, more work on video feature, perhaps some painting of the deck rails. More Oblivion.
However — and you’ve probably guessed this by now — that wasn’t how things turned out. Oh no. Instead, what we got was:
Monday: Alex walks upstairs to the laundry to put back some tools, and realises he’s standing in an inch of water. This is because the hot water heater has ruptured, spilling gallons of water all over the laundry. Mad dash to turn the water off, followed by much mopping. Naturally, the hot water heater isn’t covered in the insurance (somebody remind me — why do we have home AND contents insurance when so much of the home and the contents aren’t covered?), although it later transpires that I didn’t catch all of the water, and it may have soaked down into the beams.
All this occurs, naturally enough, on a public holiday, when the services of a plumber are roughly price-equivalent to the GDP of, say, Japan.
Discover that for impercetible reasons, I can’t do a major part of the video feature, and the vendor involved can’t even tell me WHY. Stuck.
So, we decide to tough it out with lots of boiled kettles and some patience until…
Tuesday: Instead of writing or testing products, head out to price new hot water systems, including solar. Except that the woman at the Gas/Electric place looks at me like I’ve just bitten off her left arm, and the people at the solar place aren’t actually in. Head in for lunch and to pick up a new blender (as the old one’s died too — perhaps it went out in sympathy with the boiler).. only to find that the appliance store has lost the box for the only blender we liked. Along with the extra bits and bobs. And the warranty. Decide that perhaps isn’t blender-buying day.
So, we head back home, to relax for a while and have a simple dinner. We even manage to get someone to come out and quote on electric and solar options for the heater, and things vaguely start to look “up”. Until Di starts going into contractions again.
Sigh. We’ve been down this road before — she only got out of hospital with her previous set last Wednesday in fact. So it’s off to the hospital to drop her off, then back home with the kids for something on toast for dinner, kids off to the in-laws for the night so I can head back to the hospital. She’s now been admitted to the ward, and is essentially stable, thank God.
Now, can anyone tell me where I went wrong and lost the plot on the original plan?

1 thought on “Mama said there'll be days like this…”

  1. After extensive research, a couple of fact-finding missions to the Bahamas, submissions to the Cole inquiry and the examination of several sets of chicken entrails, I’ve determined where things went wrong.
    You got up.
    Rule #1, never, ever get up. Bad things happen when “up”. Stay in bed, pull the covers over your head and sing very loudly to yourself. That way nothing ever happens. That you notice.
    That’ll be $120, plus GST.
    CJ

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