Dear Readers, My friend, Mary Mike is the best!

My posts on Writing Life Stories sounds like a letter to a friend, I'm told. I guess that is what I am doing each week -- writing a letter to my readers, my friends.

Someone wrote to me and said it is too bad that more people don't read your blog. He doesn't know that I have many readers but only a few comment. I don't follow the guidelines for bloggers and I don't ask for comments, but am so happy that I have regular readers who do comment.

Those who subscribe by leaving their email address on the sidebar where I ask for followers, have my new posts pop up in their Inboxes. Often they email me rather than leave a comment on the blog page. No matter how they come, I always enjoy hearing from my readers.

Just like you, I have my share of challenges every week. No one's life is always easy and simple. I don't want to whine and complain, but my challenges seem to have grown completely out of control since last November. Last night was the latest one.

I was on the telephone with my dear friend, Mary Mike. We were talking about her latest find in genealogy. She is a whiz in locating ancestors and she knows all the online methods that would take me the rest of my life to learn. As we talked, I decided to walk downstairs to the studio and get to my main computer. At the bottom of the stairs, I saw that I had another crisis.

My small storage room where I keep office supplies, Christmas decorations, boxes of papers and other things I need to have close by, was completely soaked from a broken pipe where the water comes into my house. It was horrible that the entire floor was soggy, but the break in the pipe up on the wall was spewing water on the shelves and the walls.

I cried to Mary Mike, "I have to hang up. I have a water leak and flooding."
She said, "I'll be right there."

I managed to focus on cutting off the water and calling the man who had installed the filter earlier this week. By the time he arrived, my friend had come in and begun hauling out boxes that were soaked on the bottom and some all the way up the sides.

We had no place to put them except the studio. I put down towels and throws to protect my hardwood floors. She began soaking up water  with towels while Richard, the filter man, went to work on the broken pipe.

As you know, I just had a water leak and broken hot water heater a few months ago. That whole event cost me nearly two thousand dollars. I wanted to sit down and bawl like a baby.

Whoever said that you spend less money after you retire or you don't need as much money after you retire was full of bull! Barry and I went to financial counselors and thought we had planned so that we would be well set in retirement. We didn't know that all the costs of living would skyrocket and health insurance, medical insurance, car insurance and homeowners would become outrageous. Groceries have become ridiculous. I'm told that the tariffs that our president has put on everyone has caused that. I pay more for one person now than I did for two people ten years ago. But, I digress.

My major problem was my flooded storage room. The water had sneaked through a wall into the studio in one place. But Mary Mike said, "We can take care of this."

I sent Richard to find the old shop vac in my garage. I am so glad I had not given it away or sold it at a yard sale. I haven't used it in almost twenty years. He could not find all the pieces in the dark garage, but resourceful Mary Mike asked me for duck tape. She took a part of a leaf flower and taped it onto the hose of the shop vac and Richard went to work. When he finished, we gathered all the fans I could find and put them in the wet storage room. Mary Mike positioned them to where they would do the best job. Then we took my dehumidifier and put it into the room also. By the time we were through, my back was killing me, and she was very tired. Neither of us is a young sprout.

"Keep the fans going for about a week," Mike said, to be sure it is completely dry.
"A week? I have a class to teach here in two weeks," I said, looking at all the boxes, lugs and bags on the floor of the studio.

After icing my back, I crawled into bed and slept well. Today, I am doing my best to clean up and decide what to keep and what I can store in my garage for now. I will need someone with a good back to move all this stuff out, and I hope I can find someone soon.

Life is no picnic lately. I learned a good while ago that I don't own this house. My house owns me and it is shouting its needs almost every day it seems. It makes me think of a house on our farm that belongs to a family member who has neglected it for years. No one lives there now and the yard is like a jungle, but nothing is being done to take care of it. Perhaps that old house was crying out for too many repairs and too much upkeep that the homeowner just could no longer manage. I can imagine the couple running out the door with their hands up screaming, "I can't do it anymore. I am gone. I will not come back."

Too bad they didn't have a friend like Mary Mike. She is amazing with what she knows but she has learned much of it because she had to take care of her house all by herself. I often said she was being tested by God, like Job in the Bible. How she keeps going on and on is a wonder to me.

This is my letter this weekend, dear readers. I am not going to run away, but I will be making some hard decisions in the coming months. Please send your positive vibes my way. Negativity is doing its best to drag me down. But it won't succeed for long. I still have much to do and just have to find the best way to do it.