Case of the Ailing Pilot

If I ever introduce you to my friend Karen, I don't want you to say something to her like "Oh! is this CRAZY Karen? I've heard so much about you," because this is one those cases where she really is crazy, not crazy in the zany and humorous sense of the word. I call her Crazy Karen to set her apart from now dead Karen, who died of ovarian cancer, and my friend Judy's daughter Karen who isn't crazy, but can yell at her kids like a fishwife.

Crazy Karen is the woman who called me up and told me that she was going to slash her veins with steak knife and bleed out on my mother's grave, but changed her mind and checked herself into detox for 45 days, and when she got out, her husband had cleaned out the bank accounts and filed for divorce because she was a drunk.

I didn't quite know what to say when Karen told me all that because we aren't that close, and that was the first I'd heard from her in about three years. Finally I told her I was glad she changed her mind, because it would have been so awkward for us if she'd died on my mother's grave. I'm sorry, it sounds self-centered of me, but I was really at a loss for something to say. And her reaction was to sort of start whooping something about all of a sudden she realizes it's not all about her, and she should have been more considerate of our feelings. Fine by me, wouldn't want her to get mad at me because I'm insensitive and selfish.

I swear to you, we are not the kind of people you are starting to think we are. My dad was the mayor, for goodness sake, and his family established the town bank in the 1890s and owned it for a hundred years. Our life is just a little more colorful than some when we look back on it. Nothing wrong with that.

Karen goes up to our summer home sometimes when we're gone to spend a weekend, which I don't mind because she may be crazy, but she is very responsible and always leaves it as clean as she found it.

When we left Colorado this winter we hired a handyman to go to our summer home every two weeks and make sure everything is okay - no animals rampaging through the cabins, and the furnace running okay in the house with hot water heat. Even the plumber agreed with us that it is easier and better to leave the hot water heat on all winter rather than trying to winterize that house by draining it. Besides, we can pop home for a quick visit at Christmas or any other time, and just walk in and start living, and C. Karen has a place to go for a weekend getaway.

When we were showing the every-two week man around I told him the most important thing is to look for water on the floor in the furnace room, because if there is water, there is something wrong with the furnace and he should call our plumber right away.

Karen went up there over President's weekend, February 17, and then again the weekend of March 10. March 12 she emailed and said there had been some water on the floor in February, but by the time she got there in March, it was dripping from some valves high up, and there were puddles of water on the furnace room floor. I called the plumber and told his wife about it, the combination to the locked gate onto the property, and where to find the house keys hidden in the flower bed. Then all I could do was worry about whether the plumber was able to get in okay because I didn't hear anything further.

Finally I emailed Karen and asked her if she could call them and find out if they got in okay, and she emailed back that they had ordered a part and were up there installing it that very day. So, problem solved. Except I wondered what the handyman who was getting paid to discover these problems and deal with them was thinking.

Karen and I figured out that between February 17 and March 17, he was at our place three times, and never said a word to me about the furnace. Karen went up there March 19 to check on things post-plumber, and reported that the keys outside the house were missing, and the handyman had left a note that he was going to call the plumber. This was a little late, since the plumber had been and gone, there were shiny new furnace parts in evidence, and no standing water in the furnace room. We couldn't imagine what he was going to call the plumber for, and why he had yet to contact me that there was anything going on.

Finally, this morning at 6:30 am the phone rings and it is the handyman. He says that when he went to the house on Saturday the 17th (after the plumber had been there on Thursday), the pilot light on the furnace was out, and he thinks it went out because the plumber needs to come and replace the thermocouple. And he thinks the water in the furnace room that apparently he did notice after all, but ignored, was caused by minor pipes freezing in the furnace room after the pilot went out, but he's checked all the sinks upstairs and there doesn't seem to be any permanent damage in the house. I don't know about you, but I don't think any pipe freezing is minor if nobody deals with it in a timely fashion. Especially not if it's your pipe. He did not seem to have noticed that the plumber had already been there.

He wants to call the plumber to have them come replace the thermocouple on the furnace because when he re-lit the pilot light, there seemed to be some puffing action going on, and he didn't think that was normal. Except he lost the plumber's telephone number in his truck somewhere, so he hadn't called yet. I told him never mind, I would call the plumber. I get the feeling that if he hadn't lost the phone number he would have called the plumber and tried to handle it all without telling me what was going on in order to cover his rear with regard to ignoring the symptoms of furnace problems.

None of what this guy is telling me makes sense, because the way he tells it, the pilot light went out in February, causing the water to start showing up (but when Karen was there the furnace was running just fine) and then the pipes froze so more water showed up (which he ignored when he was there February 27, and the furnace was running but leaking big time March 10 when Karen came for another stay) so now he's fixed it temporarily by re-lighting the pilot light, but in order to fix it for good, he thinks I need to call the plumber (to come back after he was just there replacing pressure valves on March 15) and get a new thermocouple.

The handyman's short-term solution was to talk to a fisherman out in the river at great length, according to him, and that guy is going to find the key in the flowerbed (which Karen says she looked for and it was not there, but the handyman swears is there) and go into the house and check the pilot light and make sure it is on. He doesn't live right there, so he is not going to be checking it regularly, probably just once. He might have found the keys and taken them with him, but I don't know. If somehow the handyman forgot and took the keys with him, the fisherman can't get in anyway, and certainly not the plumber, either. I sure don't want to pay the plumber to send guys there and find they are locked out.

I told Mr. Troutbend I just hate these things because it is like car mechanics when you take your car in and don't know what is wrong with it. They will 'fix' something whether that's what's broken or not, because they know if they guessed wrong, you'll be back and they can guess again; it's all just parts and labor charges to them.

It is very possible that the plumber might have missed the root cause of our problem, but he's a good plumber, so I have to think everything is okay. One scenario might be that the plumbers shut off the pilot light to replace the valves and forgot to re-light it, but I can't imagine them not firing up the system to make sure the valves they'd just installed were working. But I suppose stranger things have happened. Maybe they were so giddy at being unsupervised in our house that they got flustered. Jeez. I hope they put the lid on toilet down if they used it, and remembered to flush. Dang. I'm sorry I just thought of that. One time these boy scouts... Never mind, that's a story for another time.

So the next step is to email the son of that fisherman who agreed to check the furnace because I don't have an email for the dad, or even a phone number, and ask him to ask his dad about the keys and what his opinion is, then the son can email me back. Believe it or not, I sort of thrive on these convoluted processes.

When I get the plumber's no doubt inflated bill, if I decide more work needs to be done, I can put a note in the payment asking him to go back to the house and check the thermocouple on the pilot light, which I'm sure is permission for him to go wild with new parts and labor, except I don't know if the keys to the house are where he can find them any more.

Fortunately, C. Karen has her own key, so if push came to shove, she could take time off from her job and drive the 30 minutes up there to let someone in. Hold the door: the plumber is based in the same town she works in, so they could meet for a hand off of the key and meet again to get it back. Complicated enough? Maybe there are some eligible plumbers that she could start dating. Goodness knows, she could use some love in her life.

The ultimate solution is to cut this Las Vegas vacation short and fly home a month and a half early. I really wouldn't mind at this point, since it's no fun sitting here fretting about it. We'll have all summer to figure out what we're going to change for next winter so we can have some peace of mind.

I decided to give this a catchy title in the style of a Perry Mason mystery so as to attract more readers. Tee hee.