My Social Media-less Life

Today I woke up with a plan.

And immediately that plan was changed.

For me, that’s not a huge deal. My life isn’t thrown into a tailspin every time something changes. If it was, I wouldn’t be a house cleaner. Nothing stays the same for longer than 3 minutes.

The original plan for today was to take a friend to the airport, help my mom with an easy place (she’s the main cleaner of that place), then we would go do two houses together.

And then I cleared out my library of books last night and knew that if I kept those in my car for too long, I would probably talk myself out of getting rid of them. So I took those to a friend’s house before going to pick up the other friend this morning.
And since I was out in the area, I returned something to the UPS store from Amazon for my mom.
And then of course, I topped off my gas tank…

AND THEN I went to get my friend.

And then after I dropped her off, I went to return something else I’d been waiting to return until I had a moment and the store was actually open.
And then I ran home to inhale lunch and make coffee for my mom because her morning was also not her usual morning.

Once I gave her coffee, I had the option of two stops to make, or I could stay and hang out with her since she was pretty much done. Thankfully I chose the shorter of the two traveling options… but with as long as I was at the store (selling off more things I could get money for), it might not have mattered all that much.

By the time all of that was said and done, I realized, we were only safely going to get ONE client cleaned today… and that was the only “main quest” thing I did all day today.

Because then, the inside of my car started leaking! What in the world is going on? I began to wonder as I contemplated how much of my desk I was going to get cleared out tonight.

Long story short, I didn’t get home until after 7pm… and then had to turn around and go back to my mom’s house because she forgot her phone and her husband asked if I would be willing to take it to her. I was home less than 2 hours… but I got some of my old memories boxes cleared out of stuff that I really didn’t need all that much.

By the time I got back home, it was almost 10pm and there was no way I was going to get anything else done… and I didn’t kid myself about that.

Ultimately, I decided… today was “side-quest” day.

Oh yeah… and about my leaky car… thanks for reminding me.

It’s been leaking all afternoon. It started shortly before or after I picked up my mom to go do our one “together” house for the day.

And it wasn’t stopping… and it got pretty heavy at times.

On the way back from the house (it’s about a 45-minute drive), I asked my mom to look up possible solutions. If I can fix things easily without getting charged an arm and a leg for labor, I will do it… getting under the car is where I draw the line. She looked it up; it’s a simple clog in the air-conditioning drain, and I can get to that from the passenger side of the car. No problem.

So we went to an auto parts store and picked something up to help get the potential clog out. When we got back to her house, I took out the hose and stuck the little bit through it to get any clogs out… and nothing came out.

Well alrighty then… we should be good, I think happily.

Nope.

I get back home and there’s a new puddle on the floor mat. Thankfully my mom let me borrow one of her old “dog towels” that she uses to dry the dogs off when it rains a lot. So I soaked up the wetness, stuck the towel up in the console as far as I could and prayed that will help.

When I leave to take my mom her phone… the towel is SOAKED. At this point, I’m really beginning to wonder if maybe I did something wrong, so I drive with the A/C off just to be safe. Thankfully the sun is gone by now so it’s not too terrible, just muggy.

When I get back home from that, I decide… you know what? I am going to figure out what this problem is.

So I look it up online and I find this old message board from 2012 that gives the exact problem AND just a little bit more information than I was originally given from the YouTube video.

Excitedly, I grab a couple of things I think I might need (including my phone for a flashlight) and run down to the garage to fix the problem.

I disconnect the hose like I did before and it just starts draining like crazy! Thankfully one of the tools I brought with me was a bowl I can stick under the spigot, so I give myself a moment to process.

And then the Holy Spirit says, “Look at the hose, Erica. What’s wrong with it?”

So I look at the drainage hose and realize I had set it back the way I found it when I moved the carpet… but that way won’t let any draining happen because it’s not on a downward trajectory.

At some point today, the hose came out of place? Either way, I set it back the way it’s supposed to be, reconnected it to the main compartment, and watched all of the water drip out of the car as the condensation under my console just clears up as if it was never there.

So Greg the Grey (my car’s official name, if you don’t remember 😉 ) has a sense of humor and had me out here thinking my car can sweat from the inside.

Also, Erica definitely forgot how gravity works, so I hope you enjoyed my “side-quest” day story. 🙂