Cracks Suddenly Appear

You might want to brace yourself. It’s been one of those weeks. Or something… maybe it is one that has been going on for a bit more than a week. Anyway, I am more just wallowing in breaking things and changes.

It’s something that has probably been building for longer than possibly last week, but I have no real facts or figures to base anything on. More just like a cosmic feeling of karma without knowing what exactly you did for the punishments coming your way. And yes, I feel like cryptic is the way to go with things.

Or maybe I just like the over dramatic build up to all the oddities that are my life.

Sometimes, I feel like the drama of my thoughts and actions are the fun I derive from the world around me. I am putting on a show and it is for my own personal entertainment. You don’t have to understand. But be warned I may pull you in.

And really, I am not building to anything life changing here. Although, I will put it all into perspective. See, it started last week when I was getting ready to do some more of the work needed to finish getting the pool ready for the summer. I peeked out the back door and noticed that the water line had dropped below the level it should be to keep the filter pump flowing. It had to have run dry over night but for how long I had no clue. I immediately unplugged the pump to shut it off.

This is the most empty our yard has looked over the past 10 years.

It was a little later that I went out to see what was going on with the filter. Let me tell you, Water should not be pouring out the side of one of these things. They are a closed loop that has a hose coming from the pool and another leading back to the pool. Water is not supposed to pour out the side of what should be solid plastic. It wasn’t just a break in the filter wall. No, this was a crack that traveled from the top to the bottom of the filter. Sand and water had poured out of it overnight.

After looking at the prices of filters we had decisions to make. As much as we have enjoyed the pool over the past 10 years, we decided it was time. See, the costs of getting a new filter had to be weighed against the possibility of having to put in a new liner over the next few years. All of it has a limited life and chlorine running through it all charges a toll to the longevity of it all. So yeah, we made the decision to put the pool down. It’s been a bit like losing a member of the family.

I mean, yeah, we have been talking about the demise of the pool over the past couple years. But it took a major issue to force our decision. And that doesn’t make the decision feel any better. I mean, seriously, what are we going to do now, swim in a lake? Let’s not be crazy now. If this had been the only big break in the week, it wouldn’t be as odd and annoying as it is. We were thinking the day was coming, just a shock when it finally happens.

Which brings us to the next thing. So the other day I ended up dropping my phone as I was getting out of the car. On To Cement. Yeah, it wasn’t a bright moment of my day. You could say I was lucky. It was only the glass of the screen that broke and not the display structure itself. The spiderweb of cracks do cover a good amount of screen though. I ended up having to pick up a screen protector to cover the broken glass and hope to bandaid it all together.

And see, this is where everything gets a little weird. I don’t really use my phone very often. Mainly it is music in the car and a handy texting device when I don’t have access to WIFI. But really, I could probably live without the phone. I spend more time on the laptop and the iPad than I ever do on the phone.

I only connect the two incidents because of how close together the issues came up. But my reaction to them both came out a bit different for each of them. With the pool, we use it quite a bit during the summer. Sure, there are costs to owning a pool and maintenance to be done pretty much daily. But the reward of ownership is a something nice to enjoy. We are going to miss it but we have other choices, though they may not be as convenient as our back yard.

My phone on the other hand, that I really don’t use all that much. The broken screen is this constant reminder of how annoyed I am at the way it came about. The thing of it is, we tend to have cheaper phones because of situations like this. It doesn’t hurt as much to replace the thing when something bad happens. And so, I sit here, staring at this cracked screen and wanting to get it fixed. I mean, I could go to the trouble of picking up a burner phone to use while this one waits to be fixed. But I know it won’t be my phone. It’s like I have a special connection to this thing and it is part of my life whether I would will it or not. It sits here with its nasty broken screen, mocking me for the horrors of dropping something with a glass screen on cement.

Before you say it, I know there are worse things that could happen to a person whether they have a phone or not. That doesn’t give much comfort to the situation that looks horrible. But either way, what’s done is done. And even then, eventually I will end up getting the thing fixed. But for now, I will look at the cracked screen and wish for something so much more than the horrors I face the day with.

Now after all that, I wonder if there is a moral or some axiom of knowledge we can gain from all of this. The simple being that all things break. Even when we are careful and protective, things still break. No matter what we do, we are still left with a choice of how we will handle the situation, even when it irks us and there isn’t much we can do about it.

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