My Journey to Publication
It appears that my journey to publication may have stalled before it got started. It seems that my house is depressed or trying to kill me. I am not sure which.
Two years ago, I treated myself to all new replacement windows. This past year, knowing that my roof was on its last legs, I splurged for the environmentally sound but infitely more expensive metal roof. I love the roof and the fact that it is warranted for life, but now I have to get gutters; not a big expense but I can't seem to find anyone who carries the color I want. I also installed some solar heating panels that work beautifully when it is sunny. Unfortunately, this winter has been a pretty dark one, at least according to my new panels which are going to have to work a lot harder in the future if they hope to justify their expense. After I had arranged to do all of these 'planned' projects, my front yard decided to cave in. One day, as I navigated my riding mower around my 'lawn', I narrowly escaped a five foot drop into what I like to refer to as The Caverns of Sterling. The hole was deceivingly small on the surface. Below, it could easily accommodate a family of four and my riding mower. So..........$8K worth of excavation later, I thought that I could finally commit some of my limited finances to my writing. Sadly, my house seems to have other ideas. First it was the electrical. One day, after using the microwave, I discovered that half of the outlets in my kitchen were no longer functional. My temporary fix was to run extension cords and move appliances to utilize my four remaining outlets. I got lucky that time. Thanks to a very handy neighbor and two attempts, he was able to fix the problem for under $200. Thank you Joe. In the middle of that little debacle, my pipes started acting up. I have a well and, I am told, very high maganese levels in my water for which I have not one but two whole house filtration systems. The first indication that there was a problem was when I flushed the toilet and ended up with a bowl full of rust colored water. I quickly discovered that every pipe in the house was affected. Although I have very limited handy skills, I did not want to incur a large plumbing bill so I played with the water filters until I thought the problem was resolved. Surprise...two days later it was worse than ever and the pipes were apparently sucking a lot of air. The racket that ensued when I flushed the toilet was (is) unbelievable. So I broke down and called a plumber. On the morning he was scheduled to come out (predictably), my water was running clear and there was no air in the pipes. I cancelled the service call. Two days later, the problem was back. Now I know that the house is really screwing with me. So I made another appointment. This time the plumber actually came out. Although the pipes would not reproduce any of their bad behavior for the plumber he said that he could diagnose the problem. I bet you can see where this is going. You guessed it. It seems that I need a new pump - to the tune of $2000 (if my well is not too deep - Ha!).
Long story short (I know - it's too late for that, right?). Anyways, I will have to now earmark the money I had planned to use to publish my first book to service my water problems instead. C'est la vie. I just hope that my home sweet home has no other nasty surprises for me.
Check out my website.
Be patient, it is still under construction.
http://furrytails.mysite.com/index.html