We’re Having a Breakdown

Every once in a while when life is going great, something happens that throws your entire routine out of order.  It’s always something unexpected like getting a ticket when you are running late or a flat tire while you’re at lunch. 

For us, it happened on Sunday.  The day was moving along nicely when Gary went into the garage and hit the button to engage the garage door opener.  It began to rise slowly and loudly.  Our garage door is always loud; that’s not too unusual.  It creaks and rattles, but lately it’s been complaining more than normal. 

A few months ago, there was an incident with the door and the back lift-gate of the Jeep.  It’s never been the same since.  In fact, recently a crack had begun to form in the middle of the door.  It’s one of those things you know will come back to bite you, but procrastination rules supreme anyway. 

On Sunday afternoon, the door went up a few feet and then stopped suddenly.  The breakdown had officially occurred.  You know, it’s funny how such a little thing can throw a monkey wrench into your routine. 

We released the mechanism to raise and lower the door manually, but it’s such a pain.  We have to unlock the door, open it, get into the car, drive out, get out of the car, shut the door and relock it.  When we get home, because we can’t locate the key, we have to go through the back door, enter the house, go into the garage, unlock the door, open it, drive through, and then close it.  Ah, it’s times like these that remind you to be thankful for the little things in life.   

Three days later, a young repair girl arrives with a new garage door.  Funny, we didn’t expect a female garage door repair person.  Yes, I know it’s stereotypical, but we were expecting “bubba”.  Anyway, she did a great job.  I was excited.  Our routine could now get back to normal — yay! 

When I went out to check on her progress today, she was getting ready to leave.  The door was replaced.  It looked great.  Then she delivered the bad news.  The problem wasn’t only with the bent, cracked door.  The garage door opener had also decided to die.  Hmm, we hadn’t expected that. 

In addition to the garage door problems, the freeze protection and water features on our pool broke a few days ago.  As of today, they are working again, but the repairman didn’t test the remote before leaving.  It doesn’t work, so there’s more to be done before it’s fixed…argh!

That means we have a few more days of manually opening and closing the garage door and manually switching on/off the water features. 

Good times….good times.