The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

The good.

Our house has had a tiny water leak since before we bought it, but we were told by a plumber that it was too small to detect so we'd have to just wait until it got worse. The flooded flowerbed/yard allowed us to figure out where the leak was and get it fixed, so we no longer have a water leak!

The bad.

After a lot of digging around and futilely replacing spigots and valves, the plumber determined the leak was must be in the main waterline. It's a copper pipe and apparently the leak was a result of a bad soldering job. The area was such a mucky mess that it took the plumbers all day to replace the leaky section and solder the new pipe, racking up a $585 bill.

The ugly.Our yard may never recover!

Today I was at work, mourning the loss of the $585 and thinking about all the things that we could have used that money for instead. Then I realized that me getting really bent out of shape about having to spend money on something that is out of our control really goes against our life philosophy of not putting much value in money or the material things that can be bought with it. We're really careful with how we spend our money, mostly because we don't want to waste it on things that aren't important to us, but sometimes I get so caught up in it that frugality almost becomes an object to me. Sometimes things come up that you have no choice but to spend money on, and I finally came to the realization that there's no reason to get grumpy about it. It's probably a good perspective for me to have--- seems like homeownership is full of costly surprises!

***Complete side note: I am watching TV as I write this and a KFC commercial just came on that advertised chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes with gravy, fresh cole slaw and a biscuit for $1.99. I don't even want to know how that is possible.