Friday, August 13, 2010

Last Day of Vacation

It always comes, the last day. DbR and I leave Maine tomorrow in the morning early enough to pick up Pickles by 5 pm.

This week has been full of middle class summer adventures including some rental unit problems. We find that there is only one real bed in this place with a bed frame, etc and Husbear found himself on that. I took the kids' room across the hall which had two twins and his parents took the loft, also with two twins. Early in the week when Jim got up and sat on the edge of his bed to put on his shoes and socks he fell past the mattress into the depths of the wooden box which was supposed to hold up his mattress. That was humorous and seemingly a mild silliness.

A day or two later I was lying on one of the beds in my room when I beckoned to DbR to come lay on top of me. He complied and the bed collapsed underneath us. We picked up the thin mattress and saw that the mattress-shaped wooden board underneath had dropped into the wooden frame. We saw that the slat or horizontal twobyfours were thin, just extra wooden pieces and nailed together with, not wood screws or anything sensible, but just common nails. It seemed absurd. Poor motherinlaw fretted for days about calling the landlady about this and we had to coach her on what to say. When she did finally call, she left messages on four different phone lines and when we got home that night the repair had been done with screws.


The thing is, that very night I was eager, very eager for a hot shower and there was nothing but lukewarm water. I suffered through and complained to DbR about how cold I was. He started to look at the breakers and the hot water heater's thermostat and fooled around with it for a long time to no avail. He went to bed without a shower.
This morning we tried the hot water and it came on readily.

What's next, I wonder, before we leave?

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