One of THOSE Days, Round Whatever

I seem to be having one of those days, though it started last night when I was watering my plants and noticed a wet spot on the paving stones near the water heater cabinet. The water heater was leaking from the top, which (according to my research) means that likely some of the connections have loosened or become corroded. I shut off the water supply to stop that and a friend's coming over with tools to see about fixing it. Considering that it will soon be replaced when they rebuild that cabinet, I just need a band-aid fix, not a major repair. It seems that all the stuff I've done with the patio paid off. If I hadn't put in paving stones in front of the water heater cabinet, and if I hadn't bought flowers that I'd need to water, I might not have noticed the problem until it was catastrophic. If it had been the bed of vines, the water would have sunk in and I wouldn't have seen it, and if I hadn't had to go out and tend plants, I wouldn't have seen it. Fortunately, either by design or by poor building, the slab in that cabinet slants so the water drains away from the house, and the sheetrock in there is already shot, which is why the cabinet has to be rebuilt.

But then this morning I was awakened by a howling gust of wind and I remembered that the patio umbrella was open. I ran out to take it down before it flipped, and the cranking mechanism didn't work. I had to wrestle the open umbrella out of the stand. This happened before, and my dad fixed it by threading in a new cable, but since the umbrella is more than ten years old and since a store near me has them on sale, I think I'm going to just get a new one.

I had planned to help with a summer reading program this morning, so I was a little irked that instead I'd have to stay home and deal with the water heater (and not be able to take a good shower before going out), but it worked out because it was pouring rain at the time I'd have needed to go, and then the contractors who needed to come evaluate the cabinet who were supposed to come tomorrow showed up this morning, so I wouldn't have been home. I knew the door was bad, but it came off, hinges and all, in their hands when they opened it to get a good look. I suppose I could have gone to the reading program and then planned the water heater stuff for the afternoon, since the rain has meant this morning wasn't good for working outside, but I don't think I'd have been at my best being patient with kids who are learning to read when I was so stressed out by this stuff, and it turns out it was a good thing I was home, anyway.

In other news, the whirlwind of productivity sort of tapered off by Sunday, but before then, I managed to empty several boxes in my office. The pile looks much less formidable. I also got a good start on outlining the new book, getting into some plot specifics. I haven't decided which specifics I'm going to use, but I have some ideas to toy with. As I recall, the previous book in this possible series was also very difficult to plot, one of those where I didn't know what was really going on until midway through it, even though I thought I'd plotted it. There was a lot of backtracking and rewriting. I suspect this one will likely be the same because it's that kind of world and story. The hard part is going from big, general idea to specifics, from "and then something happens that sends them off on an adventure" to "what, exactly, happens and how does it tie into the plot, and why do they react this way instead of doing something else?"