So That Was Yesterday

Lights Out – Check It Out! January 31, 2015 — Toll of Another Bell

So That Was Yesterday

Our truck has some issues with starting, there are a number of linked reasons this is probably occurring which I’m going to try to attend to come next month (next pay period). The odd part is the majority of the time she won’t start if the trip is based on my wife’s need to go somewhere and will start if it’s because I need to go somewhere.

Wednesday: wife needs to go to appointment – no start.

Thursday: I need to go get chicken food – starts okay.

Friday: wife needs to go to her mother’s place – no start.

Later Friday: I need to go out for ….well we’ll get to that – starts okay.

So this is yesterday –

First I get a good writing session in on the new novel. That makes the day start off great, as I haven’t been able to have my morning writing session in three days, due to that four letter word – life.

but then…

The truck won’t start, meaning I can’t get my wife to her mothers, where she goes every week to clean the house (my mother-in-law is in no shape to be able to do it herself anymore). This is annoying, frustrating, and time taking. After an hour, I have to give up and my wife��reschedules for Saturday (today)

With my wife not going it changes the day. I was going to chop up the few pieces left of the wood giving enough wood to make it until Saturday. Then Saturday, when she would be home, use the chainsaw to cut more wood.

So now, instead, I need to take more time out of Friday��and cut the wood then Saturday, chop it. More time doing what I don’t want to do, and less time for what I had planned, and had been looking forward too – namely writing.

So already this day has gone from good, to not as good. All right, things change – move on, go with the flow, and adapt.

A hole was discovered in my wife’s studio wall – a large enough hole for a small cat to go out of … and obviously a lot of heat as well. I had purchased expansion insulating foam to temporarily deal with the problem but had not used it because I wanted to use the remained of the can in the craw space under the house to block another hole which lead to pipes freezing from strong, cold east winds. (yes the house is falling apart it seems). I figured, as the day wasn’t going in the direction it should, I’d tackle this project and get it off my list.

Filling the hole in her studio goes off without a hitch, if you don’t include having to make sure a kitten doesn’t get himself, or his fierce attack paws, coated in insulating foam. So then I combat crawl under the house. I use the remainder of the foam, and am turning to crawl out, when I notice that there is water trickling off the water pipe.

I discover it is coming from the plastic couple which joins the bit of remaining copper line to the PEX I installed a few years ago. I don’t know if it was leaking before I got down there or if I hit it and caused what was clearly an already weak piece to break. It didn’t matter at that point the outcome was the same – I had to fix it.

Now not only was I not going to get any more writing in today, it seemed as though I wasn’t going to get much wood cutting done (no wood = no heat = more issues than I care to think about including more pipe issues).

I crawled out, turned of the water at the pump house, and searched my plumbing supplies for something to replace the broken bit. As luck would have it, I did. I grabbed the tools to attach the piece and crawled back under the house, where I discovered the piece was 5/8ths and the pipe was 1/2 inch.

So I crawled back out, slightly damper than I had gone in.

Now I needed to go to the closest town and buy a piece. But would the truck start?

She did – almost no problem. So I drove to town and, with the help of the employees, got��the piece I would need to fix the issue. It is a device that slides onto the pipe and then clamps hold – really the only way to attach copper to PEX. Just as I was walking away the man pointed out that the device was reusable. He showed my the $2 and change little piece of plastic designed to slip over the pipe and add in releasing the connector device from the pipe. ��As I didn’t I didn’t plan on needing to take it off (since I was getting it to fix a problem that wasn’t going to go away without the connector) I thanked him for telling me about it, bought the connecting device and drove home.

Once more I crawled under the house. I connected the two pipes pieces with the device I had just bought, and went out and turned on the water. Then, once more, I crawled back under to make sure everything was working. As soon as I got to the entrance point to the crawlspace, I knew something was wrong. I could hear water. What I didn’t know – just what was wrong. So I crawled back under (did I mention this is not easy, a combat crawl dodging pipes and fitting through narrow spaces) and across the much wetter space to get to the joint.

It is spewing water! A three foot geyser��shooting out of the place where the device is attached to the copper pipe.

It was the PEX pipe side that had been the original problem. ~sigh~ (actually I used a whole bunch of four letter words and not one of them was ‘sigh’)

I crawl back out and much wetter this time, turn the water off, then I crawl back under again to try and take off the device so that I can put it back on, assuming I just hadn’t snugged it firm enough agains the copper pipe. (don’t know how that would be possible but it seemed the likely issue)

Remember that little tool?

Yeah – I finally gave up trying all sorts of different techniques to remove the device and, with an aching back, a kinked neck, and wet clothes, and a mood to make Genghis Khan look like a peacenik, crawled back out from under the house.

I grabbed my wallet, phone, keys, and squelched back out to the truck. The truck started with little issue, and I drove, with gnashing teeth and foul words, back to town. I grabbed the tool and the guy suggested I buy a second device, incase I have to cut the pipe and find myself not having enough to connect. I could use the second to insert another short length of pipe, bridging the gap. Sounds like an idea to me, and if I don’t need it, it can go into the plumbing supplies.

I drive home, I empty my pockets, I crawl back under the house. I use the tool – which, although I used in the store on the practice piece with no problem – which doesn’t seem to want to work. Finally I get the pipe out from the device and a piece of the internal mechanism of the device (which goes inside both ends of the pipes and where the water flows) goes popping off into the muddy water. It wasn’t that I had not put it on right – it was that the piece had broke.

I manage to get the device off the other end of the pipe -the PEX side – only to discover the other side of the broken piece is still jammed inside the PEX piping. I curse, I try to pry it out with my teeth, I finally give up. I’m going to have to cut the PEX just below the broken insert. But – do I have enough total length to make the cut and still connect the pipes with one device?

Turns out I have enough with a hair’s length, maybe two, to spare. So I take out the pipe cutting tool, I’ve had in my pocket since the second trip under and cut the PEX. Now the pipe cutting tool, is a circular blade set in a device that can be slowly tightened, you spin the device around the pipe, the blade cuts in and you tighten it and turn, tighten, urn , tighten – and then the pipe is cut. It works great on copper pipe, on PEX, which is bendy and soft… not so much. So the first two attempts are failures and with each one, I have to move where I’m cutting back just a little, but I can’t go too far or the pipe won’t connect. Finally I get a clean cut.

I attach the new connector. I crawl out from under the house, I go tot he pump house, I trun on the water, I crawl back under the house. I don’t hear anything but that doesn’t mean it isn’t leaking so I have to crawl all the way there.

It’s dry, well the pipe and connector everything else, including me, is not.

I crawl out. I go into the house and stripping off the wet clothes tell my wife I’m going to the neighbourhood diner to get myself a burger, should I grab her one to. She says yes. I put on dry clothes and go out to the truck…

which refuses to start.

I come in. pour myself a shot of whiskey, down it, and then spend the next half hour listening to music so I don’t go rampaging about with an axe, destroying everything I lay eyes on.

When I manage to get some control over the worst of my mental state. When I wrestle myself from the brink of a total mental snap. I went back out to the living room and suggested we watch some Doctor Who.

Yesterday was a whisper away from my complete break down, shut down, and melt down.

Today– today I’m feeling the effects or yesterday. Anyone with mental issues knows that there are ripples from the bad days. These ripples from the cause, create more bad days, slowly easing off to whatever ‘level’ is at that time . . . unless something else happens to disturb the control, and then the ripples from the new add to the ripples of the old and create something bigger than either of the originals.

I am afraid I can already see the next cause – it’s right there and created by yesterday’s issues. I simply don’t know if I’m going to have ‘levelled’ before this issues disturbs��my daily life.

All I want is to write – I need to write. It is my therapy, my grounding, my escape. Days like yesterday though make even that hard. I wrote this, but it is a recording of what happened, it isn’t a release of creativity, it isn’t escape. But because of yesterday I don’t – my brain – I am disturbed too much to find that way into my world of fantasy.

All I can do is try to resume some normalcy; grasp at the common and hope it all settles.