The Ponce Chronicles (Part 16)

National Ferret Area.

This is the day we would have arrived back home, if not for the storm up north. The place is strangely quiet. It’s raining, and the mountains are wreathed in fog. The clean, freshly filled pool sparkles and dances with raindrops. It’s just Allysen and me. We were expecting Paul Bunyan the tree cutter at 10, but he may have decided it was pointless to come in the rain. (Or perhaps pointless to come for people who can’t get money out of an ATM without a Broadway show.)

We have discovered that the skylight over the new washer leaks in the rain.

On the other hand, I think how beautiful the place looked last night, with strategically arranged LED floodlights illuminating the trees and the steps and the pool, and things like a little old roof leak seem not so bad. Also, last night Allysen found the wall sconce lamps for the dining room that tenant Veronica had taken off the walls and buried in an old closet. They are back up, and add a very nice touch to the dining room.

Today will be something more like a day of rest, with cleaning and small repairs on the docket.

Heh. Day of rest? We continue shopping for needed parts. Our destination, National Ferreteria (National Hardware). My repeated attempts to get my GPS to recognize the word “ferreteria” finally end in searching on “ferret area,” which instantly becomes our new name for the hardware center. Bonanza! Jelly jar lights for the outside corners of the house! We have spent hours and hours searching for exactly these lights—including trying to buy them on Amazon, only to discover that nobody ships to Puerto Rico. Well, here at National Ferret Area, we find a large stack of them on an end display, for $7 each!

So far, so good. We end up back at the mall (dark now, still raining hard). While Allysen shops, I move the car to a better location. Oops. In the dark and the rain, I drive over something. A bag? Box? Plastic jug? Whatever it is, it’s now stuck but good under the car, scraping along the asphalt. I get out with my tiny pocket flashlight to peer under. Something is definitely wedged there. Only one way to get it out, and that’s to lie on my back in the downpour and inch under the car. Damn, it’s hard to reach; why do they make cars so low to the ground these days? I finally get a finger-hold and yank it free. It’s… no, not a box. It’s a glove compartment from a car. That’s right, someone has ripped the entire glove box out of a car and thrown it into the parking lot, probably just so I could drive over it. Who does that?

Sopping, I ooze back into the car, and call Allysen. “Can you come out soon?” She recognizes the sound of my voice, and hurries out.

Back home, we change into dry clothes and attend to small repairs. In the laundry area, I discover that the electricians forgot to hook the washer drain hose back up after installing the new electric circuits. Rain continues dripping from the ceiling onto anyone who dares stand in the laundry area. Think you’ll get clean and dry, do you? I get the various hoses reattached, get them to stop leaking, and shove the machine back into place. We’ve got wet clothes to wash, you know?

After dinner from the food court, I tackle the dishwasher. It has power now, but still doesn’t run properly. I’m going to check the water inlet filter, which I know from our own machine at home can clog and keep a dishwasher from filling. I turn off the water supply under the sink. I start to loosen the fitting—and get a spray of water in my face. Surprise! The shutoff valve doesn’t work! I am half soaked again. Actually, water is everywhere; the dining area is open to the elements on one side, which is open enough when water is blowing from the sky. The tile floor looks like a swimming pool. The pool itself is threatening to overflow.

With so little time left, I keep trying to fix things. I seem always to need a tool that’s in the other section of the house. Did I mention that the living and dining areas are separate, with an open deck between them, the better to commune with Nature? Well, Nature is pretty damn wet tonight.

The one thing I have going for me is my Tilley hat, the best hat in the known universe, bought for me by my daughters a few years ago. At least my head stays covered as I dash back and forth across the deck. Here’s me in my Tilley hat, in a drier time.