It's Worth It, It's Worth It, It's Worth It---It Would Have Been Worth It

On Wednesday afternoon, there was (finally, finally) a sign of progress on the elevator. A truck was parked in the lot, workers were unloading supplies from a trailer, and most promising of all:

Blocked off elevator access.

I am was thrilled to think that we may (finally, finally) see the elevator fixed. But that doesn't mean that I won't be skeptical until the day the thing works, and it also doesn't mean that I won't complain about the noise of the work.

It's worth it! Truly, it is! But oh ye gods and little fishes, is it loud.

Well, that was then, this is now. I wrote that on Wednesday, and the workers were here Thursday, but on Friday morning, the trailer was gone, and I heard from the condo board that the workers found more damage. The company is working on an "estimate and timeline of the additional repairs."

It broke May 7.

More than four months ago.

And now? Who knows.

I'm torn between crying and screaming.

Neither would do any good.

Not What It Was Supposed to Be

boooooooooooooooo

I really wanted to write today about how the elevator work had started! And how excited I was!

Instead, since there was no sign of work by this afternoon, I emailed the condo board to ask for an update, and they said the installer had a burst appendix and had to be rushed to the hospital. They're working on getting another installation team here, "hopefully this week."

Now, I don't want to be unsympathetic to this person. I sincerely hope he is okay, and recovers well.

But also: Is this building on haunted ground? Has someone laid a curse on it? Maybe it was built with a 30-something-year good-wishes spell that wore off?

I don't think it's that last one. Things have gone wrong in the building before. But not like THIS.

Chills; Another Step Toward Elevation

Spoke too soon about the vaccine aftereffects: mid-afternoon Saturday, I got the chills so badly that bundling up on the couch wasn't enough, I burrito-ed myself into bed in the fetal position until I warmed up. But other than swollen lymph nodes under that arm, which has happened to me after most if not all covid shots, I'm doing okay today, in a low-key, hanging out way.

Meanwhile! We have been told that the elevator work will start on Monday or Tuesday! We all seem to be in the mindset of "that would be nice, if it works out to be true," which I think is fair given how many delays have been part of this saga. At least, we're trying not to count on it. I know that I will be a wreck if anything else goes wrong, no matter how many times I tell myself not to count on it. I just keep thinking, maybe, maybe? 

I have climbed* more than 900 flights of stairs since May 7. I am so ready to be done with the stairs. 
*Do you still say 'climbed' if it's down? Do we climb down the stairs, or only climb up? I think my grip on English is loose today.

Maybe/Hopefully/Provisionally Teeny-Tiny Good News

It ain't over 'til it's over and all that, but we have been told that the elevator piston has been manufactured and shipped, which could mean they hit the latest, mid-September target date. Maybe. Hopefully. 

(The timeline recap is here, if you're new, or just have forgotten details over the last four effing months of this saga.)

Honestly, I'm afraid to believe that nothing else will go wrong. There are still so many potential failure points, and I will only celebrate in full once the elevator actually works. But this is at least not bad news, and I'll take that!

Oh Noooooo

Our dishwasher died the other day: the cycle ran much shorter than it should have, there was water still in the bottom, and while it did drain when we told it to, it then would not start a new cycle. From Mom's records, it was installed in 2009 and expected to last 10-15 years, so it's right on schedule.

HOWEVER.

Can we really expect the service people to carry a new dishwasher up five flights of stairs? Probably not, right? I mean, it seems unlikely to me. Which takes this right from annoyance into disaster, within the class of first-world problems. 

The whole well-documented elevator situation has been awful, but in a straightforward way, if you follow me. The annoyance has been awful from day one, but it hasn't gotten harder to carry everything up and down. The increasing length of time has sucked, but the difficulty of each individual trip has been the same. The thing is, it requires a lot of coping and planning to handle things that used to require next to none. 

And now we add the fun of hand-washing every dish for a month. I don't know what ancient spirit I pissed off, but I'm sorry already.

Sigh. Anyway. We are soliciting opinions on brands of dishwashers, either ones you love or ones you've hated, and where to get them. So far, some of the advice is contradictory, but I welcome your take on it just the same.

Do Not Buy Up High in a One-Elevator Building

When my parents were condo-shopping 30 years ago, they had a list of features they wanted: Three bedrooms, two baths, a garage, a view of the water, and a short walk to the beach, as well as two bridges if on an island (my dad did some business travel, and didn't want to miss his plane if there was a bad accident on "the" bridge). This condo ticks all those boxes, and I can't blame them for not having the foresight to insist on a building with two elevators.

However, in hindsight, yeah.

We got another update yesterday.

As a refresher, here is the timeline so far:

• May 7: The piston breaks. The first estimate is that it will take "about 30 days" to fix.
• May 9: In an update to include the cost, we're told it is "a 10-week process," which means mid-July.
• May 26: There was an owners meeting to discuss costs, but no change to the date.
• July 20: The updated, updated estimate is now August 10, based on 2 weeks for shipping and a week for installation.
  
  
• August 3: Now they say the piston won't even be completed until August 21, which combines with the 2 weeks for shipping and a week for installation to give an updated, updated, updated guesstimate date in mid-September.

As I replied to the condo board president, "Is there any reason to believe them now?" (He didn't have a real answer, not that I expected him to. I did specify that I'm not blaming him for this, although I will tell you that I did not appreciate him saying, "I'm as upset as you all are!" He's upset in theory. We're upset in reality. These two things are not the same magnitude.)

If it gets pushed out again, we'll be getting into time for the snowbirds to start coming back. I wonder if they will, or if they'll delay until it's actually working again? Maybe not the people who are one flight up, but more than that?

I'll also tell you that the first neighbor who tries to laugh, ha ha, at how annoying it was is going to get the bitchiest bitch face ever from me. I might start to find this funny in 2032. Maybe. 

Maybe not.

The Group Chat, or, Regarding the Elevator Saga

I've been reading a lot of things recently with group chats as part of the story ... okay, fine, it's fan fiction, it's Heated Rivalry fan fiction ... and it's influenced my thinking enough that when I was thinking of which body parts were being bothered by the elevator/stairs situation today, my brain phrased it as "my hips have entered the chat."

It's been my knees complaining the most, ever since the elevator broke seven weeks ago, and the literal hundreds of stairs I have done do not seem to have strengthened the muscles at all. In fact, my right knee has started creaking and clicking ominously, and yesterday when I was getting out of the car, I moved it in a way that had it twanging like a rubber band, very painful. But last night, my hips were complaining too, and that has continued today, even though I haven't done the stairs yet. Sigh.

Another month of this, eh?

Not Even On Purpose

I already showed you the new suitcase that I bought recently, but then I brought it upstairs this week (literally up the stairs, grrr) as well as my carry-on bag, and, well. This wasn't even done on purpose, but.

It's a set! How about that.

As for me, I am hanging on, here in the land of the elevator-less. 

• I am listing items for my trips downstairs like a general making a battle plan: what to take down; what to go out for, as long as I'm down; what to carry back up. Yesterday, I was carrying up a backpack full of things (groceries and travel stuff like packing cubes), the carry-on full of (lighter) things, and pizza.
• I have put two chairs on landings along the way (at the 3rd floor and then between 4 and 5) so that I can rest on the way up. 
• I am very carefully rationing what needs to come up--like, yes, I want Coke upstairs, but carrying two cans at a time is easier than carrying a 12-pack along with everything else.
• I am, amusingly, more rigorous about waste, in small ways. I mean, if I have leftover milk in the cereal bowl, I put a smidge more cereal in to finish it off, where before I might have let a sip or two go down the drain. I carried that milk up five flights, I'm not pouring it out!

This weekend, I'm going to organize my packing; I don't need to finish the packing, but I don't want to wait until Tuesday night and stress myself out by thinking of things I wish I had gotten.

This morning at work, I put a reminder in the chat that while I will be working on Monday and Tuesday, after that I am out through the end of the month. And let me tell you, that felt good.

Time to Buckle Down

After the initial panic---no elevator for a month?! or more?!---I have started to settle down and work things out. Don't get me wrong, it still completely sucks. But I have to deal with it anyway.

My initial thought, honestly, was: how infrequently can I manage to have to go out? But then I had a chilling realization.

Used cat litter smells. Strongly. As does some kitchen trash, too, but the cat box scooping? I have been taking that down every other day, in happier, elevator-filled times, because it just does not smell good.

So it's not like I will be able to go out once a week and make that work. Following up on that, as long as I have to go down, I can maximize errands for those days. Or, for instance, bring home pizza for dinner. 

One of my initial thoughts was dismay about doing the condo checks. But honestly, that isn't going to be much worse than climbing the stairs would be anyway. Stopping on each floor going up? Well, it's not like I can climb five flights without a break anyway, not in these temps and with these knees.

Another 'happy' thought (such as it is) was, at least we have a garage, and can leave things downstairs. Cereal was buy-1-get-1-free, and I left a box in the garage. I'll buy some bottles of wine for Mom, but only carry up one. I'm even going to bring a gallon ziploc bag down and carry up that much cat litter at a time, because why kill myself bringing up 20 pounds at once? It's not like I need that much on a given day.

Yesterday I used a good, heavy-duty tote bag with good handles to carry things, and I also have a backpack in the garage that I can use.

Am I calm about this? Not really. I was already counting down to my vacation and how much I have to do to a) be ready to go, and b) have things ready for my brother when he comes in to keep Mom company. Removing the elevator from my tools for this planning increases the degree of difficulty by an unexpected and truly unpleasant amount. But what are you going to do? I'm not cancelling the trip. Do my best and move on.

Breathing deeply.

Oh, No. No, No, No

My building got bad news today: our elevator broke, and will be down "at least a month." (The piston broke, and my guess is that it takes that long to get the parts they need.)

For those who don't know, we live on the sixth floor, so this is not good. 

My mother finds the stairs very difficult, and will be trying to minimize trips as much as possible. 

I also hate the stairs (going down, my knees hate it, and going up, pretty much all of me hates it), and I'll have to be carrying up groceries, cat litter, suitcases ... this is going to suck, basically.

I had to go out today for an appointment, and when I dragged myself back upstairs at last, I checked the weather.

I mean, yeah, it could have been raining, that would have been worse, but ... this was bad enough.

It's been two years of good times, elevator. After this, please give us years more.