The Rule of Three

After consulting with a friend of mine, Google, I was interested to find this:

"The rule of three is a principle in English writing that suggests that things that come in threes are inherently funnier, more satisfying, or more effective than other numbers of things. From slogans ("Go, fight, win!") to films, many things are structured in threes. There were three musketeers, three little pigs, three billy goats Gruff, Goldilocks and the three bears and the Three Stooges." I know that if I think harder, I can come up with a few more examples like Scrooge was visited by three ghosts. But it is Friday and my brain is not working too well today.

I know that things usually happen in threes and it is pure coincidence but after the death of Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett this week, Josh and I wondered who would be the third Hollywood celebrity to meet some tragedy (I am NOT only talking about death. I am not looking for that but I found an interesting website. http://www.celebrity-deaths.com/) Last night we were all just hanging out at home and found out that Michael Jackson died. MICHAEL JACKSON! Ed McMahon and Farrah Fawcett had been battling cancer but Michael Jackson just dropped dead. Unreal.

Then I realized we had our own rule of threes this week but thankfully no death or tragedy. Just inconvenience. I was going to mention this earlier in the week but I was dreading what the third thing to go wrong would be catastrophic. I didn't want to jinx anything.

Over the past three weeks, we have had three major house issues: the well, the freezer and the air conditioner.

The Well:

We are on a well on our property. There is a filtration system which makes the water very drinkable from the sink. We don't even need any type of additional filter on our sink or bottled drinking water. (Though if you come to my house and don't like the water, tough. Drink it or bring your own. BYOB.) Recently the water in our house, however, did start to taste a little funny. Josh has been taking care of the well since day one and all it needs is for us to monitor the chlorine and salt levels. Nothing major. We have had minimal problems with this well and since it is our well, we have no water bills. (SCORE!) But after having funny tasting water, we decided to get someone out to take a look at the well. Apparently, we should have been having someone come out to service the well every other year (it has been 4 1/2 years. oops.) to change the filters, carbon, etc. So, a few hundred dollars later, we have our wonderful water back but we are a little lighter in the pockets.

The freezer:

I came home one day to find that our Popsicles were forming beautiful color pools in the bottom of our freezer and our ice cream was a little soupy. (EMERGENCY! Save the ice cream and then yourselves!) Thankfully we have a chest freezer so we were able to move most of the food items that had not completely defrosted to the chest freezer before having to throw them away. But we had no clue what was wrong with the freezer. It was cool in there but not cold enough to freeze. After fiddling with the dials and realizing that wasn't the problem, it was time to call the Maytag repair man. Now, we had just recently replaced the microwave. I wasn't exactly expecting another 4 year old appliance to go. Unlike the microwave, the fridge was quite a bit more money and was going to be worth spending the money to get someone out to look at it. So we called Maytag and they came out the next day. Fridges have a 5 year limited warranty so we didn't expect to pay much (maybe a deductible) if anything at all. At first they stated that our fridge was out of warranty because we didn't have our paperwork to prove the fridge was under 5 years old. Good thing Josh was there to handle the guy because I would have gone hormonal. We didn't even have walls up for our house 5 years ago let alone the fridge...Josh called the Maytag main office, got the correct paperwork for the closing of our house and that proved we didn't have the fridge in our possession before December 2004. Whew!

The repair man determined we had a freon leak and hooked up a contraption to find the leak...and stated he will be back in a week to check it. A WEEK! UGH! Again, not the end of the world but an inconvenience. In the mean time, he believed we had a problem with our evaporator and ordered a new one. He came back a week later and the evaporator was delivered to our house in the mean time. However, when he came back and opened the box, the evaporator was severely bent. He had to order another one and came back in another week.

So two weeks later, we have a working freezer and we were only out $20 for a tip.

The air conditioner:

The day the freezer is fixed, we realized the air conditioner upstairs (we have separate units for each floor) was blowing but not cold. The temperature was already up to 83 degrees since we have been having a heat index of 105 this past week. Thankfully downstairs the air was working but my parents and grandma were in town visiting which just exacerbated the situation since sleeping arrangements were going to have to be altered. Abigail was sound asleep and since it wasn't unbearable upstairs, we left her sleeping. Josh and I decided we could make it through the night and slept in our bed while my grandma had the guest room downstairs and my parents had the couch. While everyone was getting settled, Josh decided to go outside and upstairs to see if he could tell what the problem was with the air conditioner. However, after a lot of sweat and ant bites over the two of us, we couldn't figure out the cause. Good news was that air conditioners are covered under our general house warranty and I called the company to send someone out. Bad news was that they could not send anyone out for 36 hours. We were work order 301 and while they sympathized, they just couldn't get there any sooner. Good thing I was tired because I would have gone hormonal on them. 8 months pregnant, 3 guests, 105 degrees and one working air conditioner...(though it could have been the downstairs one to go so this was definitely the lesser of two evils). The next day it reached 91 on the thermostat upstairs. I decided that Abby was NOT sleeping upstairs and neither was I that night. We put her in her pack n play downstairs in Grammy's room and I slept on the futon mattress on the floor. Josh decided it wasn't that bad and slept upstairs. Fine. More power to him. I called the warranty company again and someone was set to come out to our house between 8 and 9 AM. True to their word, they showed up at 8 AM, fixed the problem rather quickly (some minor part burned out in the compressor) and we had air in the whole house.

I really hope nothing else is set to go wrong so we have to start counting what will be problem two and three. I am done for now with fixing things but think in your life where you have been encountered by the number three. It is scary!