A day for venting

I knew it was going to be a bad day when I caught a whiff of Ruthie the Wonder Dog returning from her morning constitutional in the back yard.
The brown smudge on her light yellow coat told the story - she'd been rolling in shit. This apparently is her idea of perfume - something she can do to make herself more interesting. She's done it at least three times in the past month, each time necessitating a bath before she's cleared to roam the house and share the furniture with the rest of us.
Today, she had the misfortune to do it on a day when the high temperature was only 52. The last time anyone bathed Ruthie in the house, we had to buy an auger and snake out the bathtub drain. From then on, all dog washing has taken place on the deck behind the house. I had plenty to do this morning and no desire to wash a dog in such chilly weather, so Ruthie was banished to her kennel in the kitchen.
Everytime I stirred from my office upstairs, I could smell her stench at the top of the stairs.
I doubt that she knows exactly what she did wrong, but she has a guilty look that tells me she knows she committed some terrible transgression.
I spent a fair portionof the morning editing images from an engagement photo shoot Maria and I did Saturday for a coworker of hers. It's a freebie - we're shooting the wedding gratis also - but once the CompactFlash cards are downloaded to my computer, it falls to me to color correct and size them, something I find increasingly annoying since we're hemhorraging money again.
The rehabilitation of our rotting front porch, which was estmated at $4,000 last summer, is mostly done and I have the contractor's bill for $5,975. Yes, that's a 50% cost overrun and if I didn't like the guy and his work, I'd be freaking livid. He explained that the cost of lumber has risen by 30% since last fall and reminded me that they had the unexpected task of shoring up the foundation where it was blowing out under the porch.
On top of that, they found an active termite colony under the porch. I called the exterminator and their guy estimated it would cost $1,200 to treat the whole property. When I gasped, he explained that it's company policy to do a complete treatment, whether it's needed or not. And then he quietly let me know, based on his inspectiono of the property which turned up no other infestations, that he thought all I needed was about 5 poison traps arrayed around the outside of the porch. And he happened to have a whole bunch of them in the back of his truck and his employer is very loose when it comes to inventory. Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink. I got his drift and asked if he could be persuaded to treat the porch at a reduced rate and not tell his boss. Sure, he said. So we agreed on $200 cash and I watched him install the termite poison traps.
Of course, there's no warranty here and all I have is his word as a 17-year bug man that it'll solve my problem. But then he has to trust me not to rat him out to his employer, too, so I'm counting on that bit of leverage keeping him honest with me.
I'm unaccustomed to under-the-table deals. The idea makes me very uncomfortable, but not nearly as uncomfortable as writing a $1,200 check when I hadn't planned to.
So I edited images and paid bills and stewed about our cash flow this morning.
Just before I left for the bank to shift some money from savings to checking and then on to lunch with Maria, I decided to run some food waste down the garbage disposal. When I turned off the water, I heard major spashing in the basement, a sure sign that something very wrong was going on.
I discovered to my horror that the PVC pipe running straight up from the sump pump to the pipe carrying kitchen sink/dishwasher outflow had broken at a joint midway up and all of the kitchen waste was falling straight down into the sump. Left unaddressed, it will create a terrible rotting stench that the furnace will suck up and distribute throughout the house. So we're cleaning out the sump and repairing the pipe this evening.
And, oh, did I mention that there's a leak somewhere around the downstairs shower? Maria mentioned seeing water on the basement floor after her son Austin showered the other day. I have no idea whether it's a caulking issue or a problem with the drain.
Take all of this stress and pile on top of it the fact that Maria's paper is shortstaffed and she may not be able to take a vacation this summer.
Maybe Ruthie has the right idea.
Maybe I should go out into the back yard and roll in dogshit and see if that makes me feel better. It seems to work for her.