The Water Cycle

As you see, the view from my patio chair has been marred. It all started with a leaky faucet. In retrospect, I wish I had just shut up and let it go. So it leaked. Big deal. I try to be earth-conscious, but really. The water recycles itself no matter what we do, no? It leaks out of my bathtub faucet, it pools in the tub, it evaporates, it rains back down onto the earth. It's the water cycle. I could have just shut up and let that happen. But noooooooo........

This is the aftermath of my fateful decision to call a plumber. Good heavens, I'm unemployed. You'd think I could find better ways to use my time than calling plumbers. Most unemployed folks would surely have the good sense to ignore a leaky bathtub faucet. But there's a part of Whirlingbetty which calls itself Missgoodytwoshoes, wanting to do the right thing all the time. A good homeowner dutifully calls the plumber when the faucet leaks, even if she's unemployed.

This is what it looked like after the plumber left. How did I not realize that demolition was part of the deal? I mean, would you expect your tub to end up like this due to a leaky faucet?

Note the holes in the wall way above the faucet- the plumber cut those holes after I said that as long as things were torn up, I'd like to have a shower installed. (It used to be just a bathtub, and I was thinking of resale. How long can I hold onto this house without a job? And wouldn't prospective buyers want a shower?)

Silly me- I thought the plumber was actually going to complete the job! The plumber left it as you see above. Stunned, I called my realtor, who put me in touch with a contractor who is now reconstructing my bathroom.

I was called upon to make a major decision about the tiles. The original yellow tiles are irreplaceable, it turns out. So the contractor had to integrate some other tile color into the yellow theme. I chose the above tan/gray which matched the wallpaper and sort of went with the yellow. Hopefully the finished product will look OK, and the bill won't send me into cardiac arrest.

This guy, whom I encountered in the park outside of my house early this morning, personifies my mood right about now.

Actually, he's just eating, not snarling as the front view implied. Or maybe he's smoking a turtle-sized cigar....

This photo was also taken this morning just outside of my house. It's a senior recreation center owned by the city, built in the late 50's, I'm guessing. It's rather unsightly, isn't it? Well, it's soon to be demolished. That brown and white sign is front of the building was removed minutes after I took the photo. Hopefully the absence of this eyesore will raise the value of my house, which faces this property.

This photo shows my house (on the right, hidden in the trees) in relationship to the soon-to-be-eliminated senior center. The city, ever creative, will turn the site into a parking lot.


This is the view out of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows in the senior center. Soon it will be the view from the city's new parking lot. Sometimes I wish I'd been a city planner....but where would I begin?

And this photo takes the prize, so far anyway, in this summer's whirlingbetty hummerpic competition. Too bad the hummer is a female. This was taken by The Child, who snatched my camera unbeknownst to me and got lucky.