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Seven years bad luck

Early last week, I broke a mirror.

Well, I did not personally go over to the mirror and then punch it (that’s a thing, right?). I was very calmly minding my own business when I heard this loud crash in the hallway. Yaris did not appreciate this loud crash. She let me know immediately that she did not appreciate this loud crash in the hallway. Her hallways are supposed to be crash-free.

Anyway, when I went over there to look, I saw that the mirror that hangs off my old bedroom door finally grew tired of hanging and decided to fall off the door.  Or perhaps, it just finally got so hot (it’s been very hot) that the adhesive I was using to keep the mirror stuck to the door melted and the mirror came crashing down.

Anyway, I broke a mirror last week.  And you know what they say about breaking mirrors.

AND THEN, what happens on Thursday that same week?  My aunt calls me at work (Clib) and tells me that my house is drowning.  She had stopped by to pick fruit and whatnot, because I am not inclined to eat all the fruit in my backyard by myself, and she noticed that there was a small waterfall coming down my front steps.  There was a water leak somewhere in the house.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have the keys and so she couldn’t get into the house to see what was going on.  The best she could do was shut off the water to the house.  And then she went home.  Because what else was she going to do?  Go kayaking in the river that was forming in my yard?  She had gone to my house from work.  She was obviously not dressed for kayaking.

Welp, when I finally got home, fought through the current of the river that was my front walkway, and opened the door, I heard the sound of rushing water right away.  Apparently turning the water off to the house did not immediately solve the problem.  There was still a lot of water pressure in the house.  And the leak was still leaking.

I waded through my living room to see where the sound was coming from and saw that my kitchen was now a swimming pool.  And there was a small waterfall coming out from the cabinet under the kitchen sink.  Sugh.

At least it wasn’t the kitchen sink that was leaking.  That would have been much worse.  It was actually one of the drinking water filters that had sprung a sizeable leak.  And at least, that means that it’s easy to isolate that one leak and turn the water back on to the house.  Which means right now, even though my house is quite waterlogged, at least I still have water.  Hot and cold water.  Because the last time this happened (a leak in general, not the filters leaking specifically), I didn’t have hot water for months.  MONTHS.

Sugh.  So, here we go again with the wall replacement (the house is old and there’s asbestos in the walls), floor replacement, air movers everywhere, dehumidifiers, insurance adjuster wrangling.  Yay.  And since this is the most extensive water damage ever, EVAR, this will probably go on for seven years.

Shakes fist at mirror.  (Btw, my beloved watch also broke last week and my Fitbit refused to charge for awhile.)

Incidentally, the mirror broke some more when the “sanitation engineers” came by to pick up the trash.  Do you think they share the seven years of bad luck with me because it’s the same mirror that’s breaking again, or do they get their own seven years of bad luck each?  And if we’re sharing, how is the bad luck spread out between us all?  I mean, if enough people break the same mirror, does the bad luck dilute itself so much that it’s really not discernible anymore?  Is there like a quota of bad luck and once we all collectively meet the quota, we don’t have anymore bad luck even though the seven years aren’t up yet?  Or maybe there’s a quota per day so that the bad luck is indeed spread out over the seven years, but not everyone experiences bad luck each day because other people are filling the quota before the bad luck gets to you.  These are all very important questions.  Someone should research this.

Oh, and if you’re wondering if Yaris had drowned or something while I was work, she hadn’t.  Yaris has a very active social life and was visiting friends when this happened.  And then when she found out that I was going to be bailing water out of the house all night, she opted to spend the night at her friends’ house instead of helping me.  Granted, her paws aren’t really capable of holding a giant squeegee.  And I wasn’t terribly keen on her drinking any of the water.

There’s a killer on the road

His brain is squirming like a toad…

Um…ok, so I’m not actually going to write about The Doors or Riders on the Storm.  I AM going to write about road hazards.  In particular, nails on the road.

WHY ARE PEOPLE LITTERING OUR ROADS WITH NAILS?!

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…

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Thank you.

Ok, so that wasn’t it.  But anyway, if you came by at noon to look for a post, you’ll note that there wasn’t a new one.  That’s because I was dealing with various things.  One of them was…a nail in my tire.  In fact, it’s the second nail I’ve picked up driving to and from Clib.  I am THE ANNOYED.  Even now, when everything has been fixed already.  I am still THE ANNOYED.

The first nail I picked up was driving to and from Clib, as I implied before, but when I noticed something was amiss, I was in bumper to bumper traffic on a stretch of the freeway that was under construction.  I do not blame the construction on the freeway for the nails.  You generally don’t use nails when constructing freeways.  A lot of concrete though.

Anyway, I mention the construction zone because it took away the shoulders of the freeway.  That meant that there wasn’t any place to pull over and put the spare on.  It’s also hard to do when you’re in the left lane and people in LA drive like they own the road and are mortally offended when you signal that you want to get into their lane.  So, this boils down to, I had to drive on that tire.  And in doing so, I ruined the sidewall.  Which means I couldn’t patch the tire, even though the nail was very clearly punctured the middle of the tread and would have been very patchable.  Except that I ruined the sidewall.

Moral: Do not run on a flat tire because you’ll ruin the sidewall and then you can’t patch the tire even if it were patchable to begin with.  Then you will have to buy a new tire and it will be very annoying because your dealer won’t actually have it in stock and you’ll have to order it and it will cost a lot and you haven’t even had the car for two months.

Today’s nail in the tire actually occurred several months ago.  I noticed that I had a slow leak in one of my tires.  I looked around to see if I could see a nail or something, but I couldn’t find anything.  I felt around the tire for stray breezes too.  But it was a slow leak and it wasn’t something I could feel.  So…I drove on it.

Now then, you might be surprised that I drove on this tire that had a leak in it especially after my last experience.  The difference was here was that it was a slow leak and I could keep ahead of the leak.  I was putting air into that tire every 3-4 weeks and every time I did that, I would look for the nail.  I finally found it the last time I put air into the tire a week or so ago.  It was very small.  It was right in the groove in the tread.  It looked like a small pebble or something that had lodged itself into the groove.  But it wasn’t.  It was a nail.  And it was nary 0.25″ away from the sidewall.

Why do I mention that last part?  Because a hole nary 0.25″ away from the sidewall is not patchable.  You can try plugging it, and actually, that’s what the nail was doing, but you can’t patch it.  And a plug is not as reliable as a patch.  So I had to buy yet another tire.  And I was annoyed.

But since I knew my dealer wouldn’t have the tire in stock, I called ahead and asked them to put one on order for me.  Actually, I drove by too to show them this nail so precariously close to the sidewall.  My service person immediately agreed with me that the tire was not patchable and put a tire on order for me.

Yay.  I hadn’t even put 20k miles on these tires yet.  And I’ve had to replace two of them.  Yay.

STOP THROWING NAILS ON THE ROADS!  Gosh.