Things Fall Apart

Chinua Achebe's novel, Things Fall Apart, was a high school staple when the Cuters were young.  I read it, liked it, let it fuel my interest in western African authors, and forgot about it.  But the title stayed with me.

As our medical situation devolves into absurdity, my house began falling apart, too.

The toilet in the bathroom kept running.  Deaf as I am, it didn't bother me.  TBG, on the other hand, was driven crazy by the intermittent rushing of water in the tank.  

The refrigerator in the garage decided to die while Little Cuter's family was here, on Thursday, as the garbage cans were collected by Waste Management.  The smell of defrosted frozen left overs was potent.  I kept the freezer door closed until Sunday, the night before our Monday collection.

Opening it was traumatic, nauseating, gross, and awful.  Figuring out how to dispose of it all took some concentrated thought.  With TBG in no condition to do any heavy lifting, my first thought was a multitude of plastic grocery bags.  Unfortunately, the first one had a hole in the bottom.  Defrosted goo was all over the floor and my flip flops.  

There was a big box on the floor.  I dumped the Halloween decorations out and dropped the bag in.  That jump started the cleansing.  Pastries, chicken chili, pot roast - it all went into the box.  The Tupperware which had contained them had an odor ... a stench ... a stomach turning combination of scents that required immediate dousing with Dawn and hot water.  By the time I got back to the box, the liquids were beginning to destroy the bottom.

I pushed the box all the way to the curb, mustered all my strength, and heaved it into the can.  The pushing was a great leg and glute exercise, the lifting strictly mind over matter.  Someone was watching over me; the can didn't tip as I had feared.

With two projects in mind, I called Scott the Handyguy, our savior in times like these.  He picked up the fridge I selected at Lowes, moved the old one and installed the new one.  It's beautiful.

He worked on the toilet, fixing one part and discovering yet another piece of our house that was falling apart.  A quick trip back to Lowes for the necessary parts and five minutes later the unwanted sounds were a thing of the past.

Things do fall apart.  We're lucky to have someone to put them back together.  Now, if the doctor would only call us back........