Home > Stories > True Holiday Miracles > The Unfortunatley True Hatch Holiday Letter 2009

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Find the Miracle

It all began with the inauspicious realization that the lady of the house had become inexplicably puny.  She took to her bed and lost both her voice and about 10% of her previously size-zero body weight over a period of six weeks.

As we wrestled with this medical mystery, the toilet in the master bathroom decided to stop flushing and, when flushed -- by insinuating the man of the house into its flushing mechanism -- would not stop refilling.   The plumber was pretty much in residence, off and on, for the better part of three weeks.  We worried about the water bill.  We were petrified in anticipation of the plumbing bill.

While waiting for the plumber one day, we noticed a small fountain of water pouring out of a crack in the patio cement surrounding the swimming pool.  We immediately filled a few buckets and sinks and turned off the water to the house.  This stopped the outside leak and had the salutary effect of stopping the leak in the toilet at the same time.  Unfortunately, it also meant we couldn’t actually flush the toilet.   We sent for reinforcements to jackhammer the patio, but then it started to rain – six inches worth -- making outside repairs difficult at the bottom of a three-foot deep hole, replenished hourly with an endless supply of rainwater.

We were starting to feel a bit grimy as the days went by without a shower.  The man of the house had to don a raincoat and venture out into the elements to get buckets of water from the swimming pool to flush the toilet.  We decided, however, that the Gods were definitely angry when the lights went out.

SCE had begun an ambitious upgrade of a Hope Ranch feeder line, which cut the electricity to our house. The result: no water, no toilet and no electricity.  We were starting to feel like Venezuelans.  

When we finally got the water main repaired, the water back on and a new mechanism installed in the toilet, we felt like we had bottomed out and were on the rise, when the SCE notices started stacking up in our mailbox.  Day after day, new outage notices arrived for over three weeks.  A four-day job with 3 crews, stretched into a one-month job with 1 crew taking long lunch hours.  During that time:  no computers, no vacuuming, no television and no laundry.  We couldn’t even pay the plumber because the checks were stuck in the printer.  We could shower, so we smelled better, and the sanitary facilities continued to work but we just weren’t ready for the next chapter.

The invasion of the killer ants began with the cessation of the rains.  Ants were everywhere, marching across our bathroom, dressing room and bedroom in phalanxes, swarming over and into open sacks of cough drops, inundating and devouring everything sweet and delicious.  We attacked them with Windex, brushing endless dead carcasses off our counters.  Now our favorite tradesman was Ed, the ant man, who circled the house each afternoon with the toxin de jour.  Each morning, however, we would experience yet another infestation in yet another room. The kitchen was the final region to fall to the beasties; the cookie jar was totaled, followed by everything in the pantry

This year’s miracle, apparently, is that everything is nearly back to normal, and knowing things have to break down first to get better later, we expect a better than ever Holiday Season and wish the same for you.

Home > Stories > True Holiday Miracles > The Unfortunatley True Hatch Holiday Letter 2009