Flower Power

I think I’m going to need bigger flowers for more power. Flowers always help, but these are just not up to the task. Today wasn’t a good day so stop reading if you’re happy.

First of all, I hurt my neck and can’t turn to the right which presents all kinds of problems when driving, so I don’t.

Second, the major plumbing problems in our house are not getting solved and in fact, are getting worse. I’ve had plumbers taking fixtures off the wall and floor (guess which one), poking things down drains, running heavy machinery in my bathroom, heavy machinery which was dragged through the living room to get there. Mind you, I live in a 500 square foot basement apartment. There is no room for heavy machinery.

Plumbing company #1, left such a mess that it took me several hours just to clean the bathroom after they left. I won’t even go into what they did to my living room carpet but it’s going to have to be addressed by a HASMAT team.

It appeared for a few hours that the situation had improved, but then in one sloppy gurgle from the depths the problem returned tenfold. Since plumbing company #1 had been here twice this week we all wisely decided to try plumbing company #2. They went through the same process today and discovered a broken snake in the sewer line which appears to be reasonably new so the suspicion is that it was left by plumbing company #1. At least plumbing company #2 did a really nice job of cleaning up after themselves, for which I thanked them profusely.

If you’ve read this far, I commend you for your fortitude. This is really not that interesting, but I am venting.

The absolute worst thing was that apparently plumbing company #1 broke, or took, a small ceramic figurine of a whale which was in my bathroom, actually in an out of the way spot too. I cannot imagine anyone taking a ceramic whale, so I’m going to assume it got broken and they just didn’t say anything, perhaps thinking I wouldn’t notice. Wrong. The blue whale with the silly grin and the childish fingerprints was made by my son about 41 years ago and it was one of those things that a parent treasures.

I’ve kicked myself a dozen times because I thought of putting it somewhere out of harm’s way, but it didn’t seem like it was in the line of fire, so I didn’t. I’m not going to expect much but I’ll call plumbing company #1 Monday morning and see if “anyone might recall seeing the little whale” – I’ll figure out some way to phrase it diplomatically.

If diplomacy doesn’t work, I’ll tell them that the size 2XX guy that left the very nice Seahawks sweatshirt behind can have it back if I get my whale back. If not, I’m going to wash the life out of it and donate it to the Salvation Army. And then I’ll ask my son if he’ll make me another whale. He needs a hobby anyway.