Wow, has it ever been an exciting week in our material world here at home! A week in which an anticipated repair turned out to require an expensive and necessary replacement, and a potentially even more expensive replacement was sufficiently repaired to limp along for another year. That’s right, I’m talking about household systems.

 

I don’t get it?*

 

Don’t worry, 9, I can assure you she’s being vague again.

 

Scorn me if you must, Lily. I’ll cut to the chase and improve my storytelling with a picture:

 

 

 

For the uninitiated, this is an irrigation pump. It is ancient and venerable and it lives in my basement. Also, it is leaking, which started in a minor way last fall. I’d just replaced the very badly leaking pressure tank a few weeks before the pump started leaking. I watered the garden as little as possible and kept an oscillating fan pointed at the good old General Electric until it was time to shut it off for the winter.

 

During the interval, elves did not arrive to magically repair it.

 

As winter, kicking and screaming, eventually relinquished its authority to spring, I fantasized that the pump issue was something simple. For no logical reason I decided it could be resolved by finding someone to make a replacement gasket.

 

This Monday I called a local commercial and residential irrigation company, one recommended by a friend who’d used them for commercial projects. In less than an hour a pump technician paid a house call. He was an older guy, and though he used his iPhone for a variety of analytics he also took notes on a small, field-worn spiral pad. The pad won my trust. I’m expecting an estimate for pump replacement today.

 

Sounds expensive.

 

Let me put it this way, 9: it’s a good thing Grandpa Denny and Grandma Mary, not me, are the ones taking you to Disneyland at the end of your school year. So, yes, it will be expensive but it will also keep the veggies watered, and help maintain the value of the property. Which brings me to part two of this week’s household capital expenditures.

 

 

 

I have an HVAC maintenance contract with a company that tests and repairs the heating and cooling systems every spring and fall. Every spring I get a pitch about replacing the elderly air conditioner. Every spring, I resist! For one thing, it will cost about as much as the first house I bought in 1979. For another, my house, though built in 1948, is amazingly efficient at staying cool in the summer. The soffits are deep, there’s a full concrete basement, and the enormous fir tree south of the house provides lots of shade. Last summer I probably used a/c for less than a week, total.

 

The HVAC technician determined once again that the system was still in decent working order. The refrigerant was down so I had it topped off for one one-hundredth of what a new heat pump would cost. Off we confidently sail into another hot Walla Walla summer!

 

The pump news was Monday. The HVAC news was Wednesday. Thursday morning I hopped in the Subaru and pointed it toward the YMCA for my second regular weekly swim. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and- -Bammo!- -the instrument panel lit up with three indicators. Check engine- -ABS- -Cruise! I turned off the engine in the Y parking lot and turned it on again. The lights remained. Dragging myself back to the car after 45 laps, I tried it again. The indicator lights, in the fashion of Senator Elizabeth Warren, persisted. I called the mechanic for his take on the situation. He didn’t sound worried, just said to come by and he’d do a scan on it.

 

You mean he was going to look at it?

 

In a way, Lily. These days, instead of some grease-covered guy lifting the hood and tapping various engine parts with an equally greasy wrench, they use little electronic boxes with cables that plug into the car and do a computerized reading.

 

Computers are boring.

 

Unless they’re on spaceships!

 

The good news is, it was nothing to worry about. The mechanic said ninety-nine times out of a hundred that array of indicators has something to do with emissions standards, and is usually resolved by checking that the gas cap is sufficiently tightened.

 

That’s Greek to me.

 

And it’s not quite how he said it, Lily, it’s just my civilian’s understanding of what he said. Anyway, he unscrewed and re-tightened the gas cap, cleared the indicators from the dash, and said to call him if it happened again.

 

Meaning he doesn’t think it will?

 

Yup.

 

t’s funny how, when I thought I’d have to take the car into the shop for repair, and possibly have nothing to drive for a few days, any foreboding I had about the irrigation pump replacement evaporated. I immediately started obsessing about how, without the Subaru, I would get to Fort Walla Walla Museum on Sunday to do my Living History presentation. The bus line near the house only runs on weekdays. I could call someone for a ride, I guess, but. . .

 

It feels like the best luck ever that I am able to drive Matilda Sager Delaney to her gig!

 

 

 

Whatever you’re doing- -this Friday, this summer, this year- -may your joys be many and your replacements be few!

 

 

 

 

*If you are new to this blog, Lily, a good student and aspiring actress, is my inner 14-year-old; 9, who is 9 and has a passionate dislike for Richard Nixon, is my inner 9-year-old. . .