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Hi Sandy, how are you?

Good –and I have news, Linda.  Bonnie sold her house!

Wow! You’re kidding! 

Nope, they’re moving to an apartment on City Line Avenue.

Why?

They got tired of all the upkeep and outside maintenance, shoveling snow, picking weeds, and they didn’t want stairs anymore.

Would you want to move there?

No, I’m not ready for an apartment.  I love my house and my yard is so beautiful this time of year.  And now that I had a deer fence put up, I might actually have some bushes and flowers that won’t be breakfast, lunch, and dinner for Bambi and his extended family.

Aren’t you going to miss seeing the deer outside – you always told me you thought they were beautiful.

No - I can just look at them on my neighbor’s lawn now.

By the way, Sandy, what are you doing home now? Aren’t you usually out this time of day?

I’m waiting for the plumber to come.

Your sink is still clogged?

No, he fixed that a few weeks ago.  It’s the toilet.

Don’t you have a plunger?

I’m queen of the plungers, but this is different.  When you flush the toilet, everything goes down, but then the water bubbles up – it’s like Mt. Vesuvius erupting.

That’s not good.

No, especially because it’s the toilet in the basement, which means it’s below the sewer line.

Speaking of basements, how is yours?  Do you still have a lot of water in it?

No, the flood waters have receded, but we still have to find someone to repair the holes in the wall where the water was coming in.  We keep waiting for it to dry up but it keeps raining.  Hold on, that’s the doorbell.

Is it the plumber?

No, it’s the UPS man.

Oh, what’d you buy?

I had to order a new glass cover for the light fixture in my bathroom.

You broke your bathroom light? How?

Well, last week Bob took the glass off so we could put new light bulbs in, but evidently we didn’t have the right ones, so he left the glass on the vanity for the time being.  But then I decided it was in my way, so I moved it –

And you dropped it?

Not exactly.  I went to put it on the ledge on the other side of the tub, where there’s a lot of room and it would be completely out of the way, and I had it in my hands, but when I put one foot in the bathtub I slipped and fell.

And it broke?

Smashed into a million pieces.

With you in the tub?

Yes.

Are you okay?  Did you have to get stitches?

No, it really wasn’t that bad – a few little scratches and one deep cut on my finger, which is why I had blood smeared all over me.

Oh my God – Bob must have freaked out when he saw you bleeding. 

Are you kidding?  He didn’t even look at me – he was so busy looking at all the broken glass and scratches in the tub, he got really annoyed and wanted to know what I was thinking putting a light fixture in the bathtub.

And what was your answer?

You mean after I told him his first concern should have been me?

So that must have been fun to clean up.

I didn’t do it – Bob had to clean it up.

Oh, he must have loved that!

Well, I was still picking slivers of glass out of my knee.

And how about the glass slivers that could still be in the tub?  Now you’ll have to wear clothes to take a bath.

Oh we’re over it now.  We have other things to worry about.

Like what?

Remember when I told you the other day that I was sitting in my kitchen drinking coffee and I thought I heard something falling in my garage, but I was afraid to look?

Yes?

Well, it wasn’t an animal in the garage, like the time I had the raccoon, it was the stone wall at the end of the driveway, which collapsed, and now half of it is lying all over the ground.

The one you just had rebuilt three years ago?

Yes, that one.  It took Bob an hour to move all those big heavy stones to the side so I could get my car out of the garage.

So now you have to have it rebuilt – again.

Yup.

Well, maybe the same man who rebuilds the stone wall can repair your basement wall.

And clean out the gutters that are blocked up.

Good luck with all that, Sandy.

Thanks – You know what, Linda – I think I’m going to call Bonnie and see if there are any more apartments for sale in her building.