26) ‘Big’ Problems and the Oil Drum Conundrum

“Where’s your husband?”

“I’m not really sure… why? What’s up?”

The plumber was peering over your shoulder as if willing David to appear… before turning his attention back to you… “what a difference a coat makes vs the sheer dress,” you mused to yourself.

“Well there’s a problem…”

“Fuck. Don’t say that… what’s wrong???”

You’re nervous. You have begun to catch on to the fact that any problem here can very quickly become a BIG problem… in fact most problems here were big problems.

“I can’t install the toilet today…”

“Ok… and why?” You were waiting for him to tell you that the sewer line exploded and that shit was skyrocketing through your home at break neck speed… surely that had to be it… because THAT would be a problem…

“Well when I opened up the box for the toilet I saw that the toilet was broken… it’s pretty common but….”

“HA! That is not a problem. That is a return. A big problem here is a BIG problem. Don’t say BIG problem unless it’s a BIG problem… really big. That’s a no, no here… we don’t talk about ‘big problem,” you wonder if he got your “don’t talk about Bruno reference… probably not. He still laughed…

“Ok, ok… I get it,” he says, his palms outstretched as if to show I had gotten him…

“We’ll just bring the toilet back and grab a new one… you think if we did that now that you could still install it today,” you asked.

He smiled and you were beginning to think that he understood that this is no problem at all, rather a minor inconvenience. “Big problem” is a term that you don’t like dropped all willy nilly. Big problems have lots of zeros at the end of them. This isn’t going to cost you a dime.

“I mean… I have some other stuff to work on so… probably?”

“Ok good…”

“I’m going to find your husband to go talk to him about it…” and he was off towards the basement.

You almost wanted to correct him… that you were just as capable of dealing with issues as your husband was… you were pulling out your pro-woman soap box then came to the conclusion that you didn’t feel like searching for your husband and so he could find him to talk to the ‘man of the house’ or whatever.

“Have at it then.” He was already halfway down the stairs.

You laughed out loud at the broken toilet as you made your way to the opened toilet box in the soon to be half bath. “PFFT… if only all ‘big problems’ were this problematic…” you said to yourself, as you stared at the broken toilet tank still packed neatly inside. “This is child’s play… you ever plow a 16 and a half ton sinking lift through a brand new fence? You ever have your fall protection fail on a 65’ peak… as you’re falling? You ever have to take on a ‘surprise’ 2,000 square foot renovation because your basement is rotting? What about the largest honeybee nest anyone west of the Canisteo river has ever seen…? You ever dodge bats in your fucking underwear my friend? Cuz those… now THOSE are problems.” You smiled at the cracked toilet in the box… absolutely overjoyed at the prospect of this problem being so minute… so minuscule… and the soon to be solution to another real problem: a second working toilet on the ground floor. You and David had referred to the half bath as a game changer… and it would be.

Not only would you no longer have a parade of people filing through your room at all hours of the day and night, you wouldn’t have to run up several flights of stairs with a full bladder (because lord knows you’d hold it till the very last second on account of the trek) AND you were going to have a bathroom that was connected to the sanctuary which meant that you were that much closer to being able to rent it out and start generating an income from this place. The outflow of cash was far exceeding the influx.

You pulled your pants up, the three layers were a bit tricky to deal with. You had this fear of a $10,000 gas bill and so you had gotten really thrifty in regard to the heat… “There’s no such thing as bad weather… only bad clothing…” you’d tell yourself, shivering under your layers, your heated jacket a wardrobe staple at this point. One time when you were growing up, your sister had cranked the thermostat up from the usual 65 degrees to 75 and your dad had just about lost his mind… “Jesus Christ! My palms are sweating!” He dad had yelled… and he wasn’t talking about the temperature in the house… he was talking about his oil bill anxiety… and you felt that now with every fiber of your very being… you didn’t quite understand that as a teenager… as a middle aged woman in a 7000 square foot home… you understood the sentiment all too well and you bundled the fuck up (buttercup).

The kids weren’t cold though… and that’s what really mattered. They were still sleeping in their sleeping bags in the sanctuary. They’d run around in short sleeved shirts and thin pajama pants laughing at you shivering under your heated coat. As long as they weren’t cold… you could continue to pinch pennies with the heat.

Before leaving to head home Jackie had made a comment about how cold it was in the church. You agreed, “Oh I get it… but I need a baseline ya know? Like I have absolutely no idea what to expect when I get this first heating bill ya know? …Sure the previous owners never had a bill over $240 but… who knows, maybe they weren’t being truthful about that. I just need to know what we’re dealing with before I start cranking the heat up.”

Jackie understood, though you knew that the cold definitely played a part in her leaving to head home when she was leaving to head home.

Every time you’d walk by the front of the church outside where the gas meter sat, your stomach would churn as you listened to the hiss of the gas traveling through the thick metal pipe to heat your church. You pictured wads of $100 bills flying through the pipe… “same thing really,” you had thought. You understood your dad’s sweating palms all too well.

To make matters worse you were getting a lot of shit on your church’s TikTok account about the utilities… “yeah sure… it’s cool and all but wait until you have to heat it…” It felt like everyone was in on the joke that you were the butt of. Could you have really fucked this up? You had checked with the real estate agent, done your due diligence on the utility bills… but what if you were missing something. Waiting for that first bill was agonizing. To offset any surprises, when you left the upstairs level for the day to work down in the basement you’d aggressively punch the little buttons on the thermostat, dropping the heat down to 45 degrees… just enough to keep shit from freezing and besides… why keep an unoccupied floor warm? You rationalized your extreme frugality with logic. You were the unofficial “Heating Czar,” constantly checking the thermostats, adjusting when and where you could. Maybe you could lighten up after the first bill came in? Maybe you’d have to sell the place…? Worst case scenario right….? “Yeah sorry… the $10k monthly utility bills were a little too steep for us…” Your fear was that you’d deplete your emergency fund in a month or two, rendering yourselves helpless for the really ‘big problems.’

“Or…” you could almost hear your therapist’s voices…. “Maybe not… maybe… but maybe not.”

Your brain always went to the worst place scenario… that fucking OCD…

On top of that whole heating concern, was the growing realization that making the basement living quarters habitable was taking far longer than you could have ever imagined… your character flaw among many: properly estimating the time a project took only became that much more apparent with each missed (albeit self imposed) deadline.

You pictured your family huddled in the dark sanctuary around a fire in an old oil drum…

…the smoke and your visible breathe in the frigid cold church wafted out of the leak you still couldn’t trace… the fire’s light cast inky shadows next to the towering cathedral windows… they danced like demons jeering your stupidity… you were all shivering… huddled in blankets, underneath layers of clothes and thick winter coats…

What’d they say winters could get to? “Twenty below zero, dipshit…” laughed that dark humored bitch that lived in your head… “But at least you’re mortgage free, amiright?” She sneered and then your kids, as if they could hear her too… “Mommy… we’re so cold..” their teeth were chattering, their lips blue…”and I can’t feel my fingers anymore.” Your little one cried. David was unresponsive and a pale blue under his blanket when you turned to him… “David? DAVID? DAVID?” You yelled, violently shaking him… “WAKE UP! WAKE UP!”

And then you’d snap out of it and remember that you still had at least another week before the bill came in and that you still had plenty of time to roll that oil drum inside maybe even two if you really hustled… it was only in the 30s this week.

“I’m not worried about it.”

“You’re not worried at… all… about the heating cost?” You asked David later that night.

“I mean it’d be a hell of a time to start worrying now. No. No I’m not worried… I’m really trying to not worry about much these days… you know? Fresh start… new… healthier thought patterns… I’m only going to stress about everyone’s health and these kids being happy… that’s it.”

“Well THIS is basically my only stressor… I haven’t found a job yet, you’re not looking and we’re going into winter. Once I know what we’re looking at for bills, I’ll feel far better about the whole thing… and THEN I can chill out.”

“We’re fine Vaness… I’m honestly not worried about it. We’re ok… we have plenty of money left and coming in. I wouldn’t worry”

And while you always felt so much relief with his reassurance, you couldn’t get that bill quick enough… that was going to give you a much better idea of if this whole moving thing had really been a good move… a good bet… “once in a lifetime” experience or not.

You changed the subject… there was nothing left to say until the bill came… “Hey… look at this…” you were sitting upstairs in the belfry window, bundled in your heated coat you stared at the mountains in the distance; the bare trees created a brown blue cover that obscured the rolling hills… the green leaves and even the reds and oranges and yellows… were all long gone. You turned your phone to face David… he had been staring at his… the two of you scrolled, inhaling long joints in the dark room. Every so often one of you would break the silence with a laugh, or a ‘hey listen to this…”

David looked up, your phone’s glow illuminated his face in the pitch dark night.

“What do you think of this picture? Does the basement wall look any more dry than it did here in this first one?”

The basement issue was very much intertwined with the heat issue. And you were having a bit of a time letting either one go.

You weren’t sure if he had rolled his eyes or not, but he did stop what he was doing to help you decipher the wall’s dampness status.

Here’s David hard at work framing out the bathroom. Currently there is no heat in here but we will be installing baseboard heaters in the space. We have portable heaters in there now and the room has been sealed off from the sanctuary to keep the heat in. We opted to use 2x6s instead of the usual 2x4s so that we could 1) keep everything thick and heavy to stay in line with the existing look of the church’s style and 2) because we think that having that much more insulation in those walls will pay off in the long run.

UPDATE: I’m happy to report that we have since received our first heating bill and we came in at just about $98.00. You read that right… less than $100… HA! All that worry for naught… imagine that? Guess who’s ditching the coat… (and rolling those oil barrels back outside)?