Hearing the bird

It was one of those days.

Robert had been playing bridge with Adelaide, the Taiwanese woman who is about as sensitive to cards as she is to people, and finished 12th out of 15. He was not happy.

And I had been here trying to get the water heater that supplies the kitchen and guest rooms fixed.

The brand is Eemax, and if you have any sense, you will run from it as you'd run from a pump spewing airborne plague.

In the year and some since we've lived here, we've replaced each of our two water heaters at least once, and the circuit boards within maybe twice or three times each. They know me at the factory now, and that is not a good thing.

Our plumbers have discontinued contact with the company, except to call in this warranty claim. And the circuit boards they sent went in today. And did not work. At all.

So after I stopped hyperventilating, and ordered a new Bosch heater from an entirely different supplier, and got out to the porch, there was the bird of paradise starting to sing.

The start of the paradise song was beautiful, at last.