Life after Madrid

 After a few days of rest I was ready to attack several projects my husband and I are working on.  The two biggest projects are organizing the remodel of the bedroom portion of our home - still untouched from the original construction and our upcoming "Around the World Trip".  

Michael got home from Ghana 4 days after I returned from Madrid.  The next day he tested positive for covid.  He immediately called our doc for a prescription for paxlovid.  I wasn't feeling so well either - felt like I was coming down with a cold.  Last time Michael got covid - in June of 2022.  I was in the same house with him and never got it.

Would my luck hold out this time?  It seemed so.  I took three covid tests over the next week and a half.  All were negative.  But I kept feeling worse and worse.  On Tuesday Feb 13, I woke up with every bone in my face aching.  My head was screaming at me.  I took one more covid test.  It was positive!  So I can no longer say I have never tested positive to covid!  I am now on paxlovid which leaves a really awful taste in my mouth!

While all that is going on - the front door suddenly will not open from the inside.  Still - you can open the front door from the outside just fine.  Anyone can get in - we just can't get out.  This happened before I tested positive for covid.  So I had called a locksmith and had found out that he did not have anything that would match our current handle and lever.  I would go to Lowes the next day to pick up a new set and the locksmith would come over in the late afternoon to install it.  Then Tuesday came - and I canceled it all.  

     

You can get in from the outside -  but you can't get outside from inside the house!

Since I now can't go to the store I look on-line for a replacement front door handle.  I look at the Kwikset website and can't find the same lever as we have.  I contact them to see what I should replace it with.  They come back with the answer that since the door handle I have has a lifetime warrantee - they will send me a new lever.  I wish all companies were that responsive in honoring their warrentees!

Fast forward to Thursday.  Around 11am the electricity in our house goes off.  I report it and discover that it also effects many of my neighbors.  The reason for the outage - "Investigating" - which remains the explanation throughout the outage.  Michael has a 1pm apt.  He has to go outside to unlock the garage with a key and manually open the door.  He returns an hour later and again has to manually open the garage as the electricity is still off.  

Michael pulls his car into the garage and manually closes the door.  Suddenly there are strange noises.  He looks up -  the bar to the garage door opener is strangely askew.  The blocks of wood in the wall above the garage door, which anchor the bar to the wall are sticking out of the wall by 2-3 inches!  Michael manages to straighten the bar - thus pushing the blocks of wood slightly back in position.

     

So now we can't get out of our house by the front door or through the garage.  We are not going anywhere!  We are both feeling unnerved and discombobulated by all these strange coincidences!

Luckily, a garage door technician can come to fix it on Friday afternoon.  Does this mean that we will avoid the pre-trip causalities in late March?  Just to explain, a day or two before almost every major trip we have taken in many years - something very problematic has happened.  Once a leak started in the upstairs ceiling the day before we were to leave.  A phone or computer suddenly stops working and new ones must be purchased the day before.  Once a light fixture in the garage (hanging over the cars!) fell just as we were waiting for an uber to take us to the airport.  The last trip - a light fixture in the kitchen suddenly fell out and dangled down about a foot the day before leaving.  

Here is to a stress free day or two before we head off on our next trip!