It’s Monday MEOWsings, and I gotta tell you life can just frankly be a BITCH. and we need to get  in control or it’ll take control of us.

Now, I just love Fall. Living in New England, we have bright orange and red foliage greet us as we drive down the street or walk out the back door. The nights are cool, and the sky is bright blue – except this year, which has been remarkably rainy and dreary.

Add to that gloom -Life’s inconveniences and major catastrophes….. What’s going to break next? When my D70 Nikon broke the end of July, I thought it was enough to put me over the top…It was too expensive to fix, so I bit the bullet and upgraded to a better and more expensive model. I thought maybe I should replace it with the same model on E-Bay, but what if the seller was a shyster, and I got ripped off…. A lot of people have success with used online purchases, but with my luck……

OK, so a few weeks later my car started blowing smoke out the tail pipe, and seemed to have no power when going up steep hills. Well, let’s say, five times into the garage (once was for a tire blow-out that a left me walking two miles with flashlight in hand to get home – there wasn’t  any cell service, a problem for rural New England.) After two months of hit or miss diagnoses with the problem getting worse, I said slow down, you’ve got to do something different. I called a person that worked on cars. No, he didn’t have the equipment to diagnose the problem, but here’s something that I hear is very good. That guy said I’ll recommend …… who diagnoses some of the computer problems on cars I work on…..That next call, yes, we do alot of diagnostic work, but it’s a $75 flat fee whether it takes five minutes or two hours. Then we charge .. by the hour… I think I know what your problem might be… So Wednesday early morning, I trundle off to another garage… You have a sensor gone that’s regulating the oxygen intake on your engine. I’ll bet you’re not getting very good gas mileage… And by the way, you need about $1,000 of repairs to get your car inspected.

I’d planned to have a new bay window put in the old farmhouse. Being able to open the windows in the summer would be great. Plus, I could take some photos of the beautiful birds out back. I’ve wanted some since I sold the old house in New Hampshire in 1995. This was going to be the year. I talked with the contractor in June… It was September before he came to size the window, and another three weeks for it to come in. But when he came to cut the hole for the window – Tuesday – it rained for the next three days, leaving a double piece of plastic covering a gaping 10 x 12 foot hole. The weather did not cooperate, and it took another three weeks to complete that project. I just painted the window yesterday….

That job wasn’t complete when a few weeks ago, the bathtub started draining very slowly, like over an hour after taking a shower. The sink had been gurgling, and I was hoping that the trees I’d had cut beside the house would cut back on possible septic system problems. That thought stuck till I flushed the toilet Friday evening to find it coming up through the bathtub drain….. Yikes, and to top it off, how do you  deal with that and four cats that like to hang out in the bathroom… covering the bathtub so they can’t hang out, just in case, it does this again.

I immediately called someone to pump out the septic system, well expecting the worst of a system that was installed close to 50 years ago. He said to call a guy to have him shovel off the cover. When a plumber showed early the next morning, we couldn’t find the tank, and I was expecting the worst. He kept shoveling and shoveling, following the pipes he found. He suggested renting a small excavator and pointed out he could do a replacement for less cost than larger contractors. This certainly was worth considering, but…

•  Could I trust him to do a good job?
•  Did he know what he was doing?
• Would I be sorry I made this choice?

With the excavator, we found the cover, well that is about half of it. Water was pouring in around it from the springs that run all through the hill upon which I live… Oh no, water problems, mud problems.. I put in an order on Saturday  morning for a new septic tank.

Well, 20 loads of gravel later, and a whole host of digging, I now have indoor plumbing once again with the help of one of the top plumbing companies in Portland. Little do we know how we can’t live without it. I remember the days of an old out house some 50 years ago. That’s when this system was put in. It could have been worse, but I have to admit, it’s been a Fall From Hell.

They say when it rains, it pours…and it sure has this fall, or perhaps all year.  The expense is bad enough, but the stress and the time is another. Waiting for returned phone calls, waiting for someone to show up, making sure you catch them before they leave so you know what to do that night or the next day, ordering materials, making sure the work was done the way you wanted it done. I came home to find a kitchen pipe moved, but I couldn’t open the top kitchen cabinet…..just one more thing…I felt like my head was spinning out of control, and I was ready to very thick head of hair completely out.

At least me and the kitties have been healthy (knock on wood). And we say thanks for what is right, or getting through what went wrong every day….

If you have a story to share, please share.

Till next time, when it’s back to Cats around the World Wednesday…. Gotta run to get that car inspected..