Very Unsettled

Carol and I have had to evacuate the condo.  We knew this was coming.  As reported here we have had three plumbing problems—two major—over the last three years and we were not the only ones.  In fact, the company who insures the condo complex said they would no longer do so unless the plumbing was fixed.  So now it is being fixed.  And we have to vacate—four days and 5 nights while the work is done.

They will come in, knock holes in our walls, replace the pipe, and direct the flow over all down from the attic rather than up through the slab.  What a mess.  Then after the new pipe is put in—some plastic stuff from Germany, very high tech—we will be allowed back in (the water will be on again); and then for two weeks or so more we will have to put up with people coming and going as they patch up the walls.

Then we will have to get it painted, or do it ourselves.

Damn!

I am grading final papers.  One of my far from favorite things, and then this evacuation.  We had to empty a bunch of books shelves and closets and cabinets so the plumbers could get to the walls to do their work.  The place is now a complete mess, with books and other assorted crap stacked all over the place.  True, it was a mess before but at least the mess was familiar.  So we will move back in to an unfamiliar mess that we will have to clean up.

We took the kitty-kat with us.  No way we were going to lock her in a bedroom and let her get scared to death with all the banging and other racket.  She’s an old cat now, at least 14, and like all older beings does not adjust well to changes in her surroundings.  So she is now in a motel with us and not adjusting well to that.  Six of one, half a dozen of another.  But she seems to take some comfort in our being about.  Though when I went out for a cup of coffee and came back, to grade more papers, I couldn’t find her anywhere for a half an hour.

I will be glad to get back to our little condo.  Though, as it turns out, our excellent neighbors have put their condo on the market.  They want to buy a house, and I will have to go through paranoid anxiety worrying about whether crazy people will move in next door.

Things feel unsettled.  Very.