*So you know that phrase, when it rains it pours? That’s precisely what happened when I lost my husband.
It seemed everything just began to fall apart one after the other. More specifically, I’m referring to things in my house, broken appliances and a roof! Fun times. This is an overwhelming topic so I’m just gonna jump in. It began with the water heater in Jan. of 2022.
I’m guessing one normal day one of us girls realized that the water wasn’t getting hot. Because I’m so brilliant, I probably walked down to the basement, looked at it, and walked back up. Mainly because If I messed with it, this⬇️ was inevitable
Boiled water it is!! I promise I tried to make this work for as long as I could. Our water heater was the original so it was about 18 years old. I don’t recall ever having a problem with it. When we did have a problem with any appliance, Chris would just fix it. He could literally fix everything.
Fixing A Water Heater
So, I called my handy dandy Bob the Builder brother-in-law and he showed up, tools in hand, ready to take a look. I can’t quite recall what he did, all I know is that there was mention of a thermal coupler thingy and a thermostat. And these items lying around when he was finished.
Fortunately all that needed to happen was cleaning the thermal coupler and replacing the thermostat. After that all was well! No more boiling water and the water heater lived to heat another day. Well, it lived 8 more months and in Aug. 2022, it was off to Lowes for this:
And my Bob the Builder brother-in-law came to the rescue again. It’s nice having a Mr. Fixit appliance guy in Chris’s absence.
Hopefully we get at least 10 years out of it. We were quite grateful that our last water heater lasted as long as it did.
This same month that the water heater had to be replaced, in true STRESS ME OUT FORM, the dishwasher began to fail.
How about a closer look at the annoyance:
What am I supposed to do with this?!! Did I mention that water was all over the floor? Probably not, because I’ve tried to block it all out. This is not a “me” job!!! This is the kind of job that I watch my husband fix as I help out. Yet here I am. So what did I do, grabbed a few tools🛠️. Not sure if they’d be sufficient but it’s what I had: Two basters and a toy water suction gun.
And I began to suck the water out:
Appliance Debacle
Eventually all of the water was sucked out but I knew it was just a matter of time before it permanently failed me. Another indicator, the machine sounded like a freight train was running through the house every time I ran it. 6 months later in February 2023 this appliance no longer worked. And because I am my husbands wife, I thought to myself maybe I can figure out how to take it out. And not just me, but me and my mom who was visiting. So I grabbed the pliers and chaos happened!! Little did I know, my youngest was recording (hence the crazy dizzying footage):
But we finally got it out
And you wonder how we got it out of the house? a skateboard of course! What else would we have used a dolly??
And that job was done! Mom even checked out the skateboard for fun.
But guess what happened right after the dishwasher began to break down? Just a month later, Sept. 2022:
The garage door went kaput. You seriously cannot script this. The door had broken once before many years ago and my husband fixed it. This time, it was the hanging mechanism that pulls the door up. It had officially stopped working. We were trapped inside of our garage. I couldn’t even pull the red string and open it manually because the springs were completely broken and the door was too heavy…sigh. So after much research and a couple more financial heart attacks, I scheduled to get it fixed.
Appliance One Appliance Two. How Many More Should We Do
And the issues continued. Right before Chris, we noticed light water marks on the ceiling. And by Sept. 2022 it looked much worse, couldn’t put it off any longer. I won’t even get into the nightmare that the insurance company tried to put me through. I was grateful that my dear friend Trever with Total Restoration Services had another friend who owned D.R Exteriors and Restoration and handled this situation for me seemingly stress free.
So yeah, it literally rained and poured and I literally had numerous meltdowns. It’s one thing if you’re single and used to handling things like this solo, but when you’ve been coupled for so long and handled everything together, the weight of ALL of this bearing down on me was heavy.
So In April 2023, in addition to bringing May flowers, it also brought a new roof:
Followed by harassment of this creature running all over my roof AND inside.
Resulting in finally his capture
And this was waiting for me thereafter, a dead refrigerator. Yep shocker!! Another dead appliance.
And this new beauty:
At this point I’m celebrating the high purchases because I’m financially numb and stunted not to mention drowning in debt, so YAY ME!!!! Ok, so no I’m not drowning in debt but I am certainly learning to handle life solo the hard way, and by being methodical with every decision that I have to face. My husband did things so effortlessly, but I am not a shopper and I’m entirely frugal and as I stated in my about me page, I am absolutely being challenged😩
Now that I’ve rehashed the appliance and roof nightmare, I’m exhausted. So I’m going to get a hot drink and sit around and wait for the stove and furnace to go out. But I’m fine, it’s fine, EVERYTHINGS FINE!!!
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