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Water, aqua, shui – expensive in any language

The plan for this past weekend was to get the jacuzzi cleaned and working before I got back to work on Monday. Here’s what actually happened. I cleaned it and then filled it with the hose. I turn on the motor and all seemed well until I looked underneath and saw the dribbles of water coming from the pump motor. Either the motor’s leaking or one of the tubing to the jets. I basically now have to either fix it myself, which I don’t count on being all that fun, or I can call someone else to fix it. Thanks to pure sloth, I’ll probably just call a professional.

I have this ritual when I get home after work. The first thing I do is check the mailbox. If there’re no bills, I quip, “Woohoo! No bills.” If there’s mail, it’s invariably bills, and I groan, “More bills.” Yes. I know. I have a non-existent social life.

Today was a groan day, except for the fact that an extra grunt followed when I opened my water bill. I think my anxiety level shot up by 2 or 3 times than when I normally get the bills. I used 5000 gallons of water. That’s a lot of water! And the requisite “lots of money” needed to pay that bill. What happened was this. They’re developing a lot of new houses next to mine. What was there before was a very large weedy field with snakes and rabbits. When they leveled the field they broke a section of my water sprinkler pipe. I was not there when it happened. In fact, I hadn’t even moved in yet. I only discovered it when I dropped off some stuff I’d packed. I don’t know how long that pipe was broken, but it was gushing water from my backyard into the neighbors for quite some time. City maintenance was called and they had to come out and shut off the sprinkler water supply. I knew the bill was going to be large, but I didn’t know how large. Shit!

So I’m left with a hefty water bill for this month I can’t even pin on the development people, because the pipe was layed outside my property line by the original builders. Genius! Pure genius! If I was a bit younger and less mature, I’d have thrown a screaming fit. Both times! Owning a house is so much fun! Everyone should indulge in it at least once in their life. Ah, hell! I knew it was going to be interesting, and there’s no one to blame but myself.