Plumber is supposed to come by today and check things out from the outside of the house. (He didn't call yesterday because he was on a job until 11:30 last night. I got the sense, though he didn't come out and say it, that it was not so much an urgent job or a large job but a very demanding homeowner that caused it to go so late).

After listening to my description, he said it might be as "simple*" as needing to replace part of the drain piping under the house.

(*that does not seem simple to me. I have a pier and beam house but still, if the sewer pipe has a problem when it goes into the ground under the house, would not that necessitate, I don't know, tearing down the house to get at the pipes? I certainly hope not - or if it comes to that kind of thing, that they can do a "bypass").

I hope it's a simple fix. At this point I'm not even hoping for "cheap." I have some money from a CD that came due that I just chunked in a small-amount-of-interest-bearing checking account with the thought that if a better investment came along, I'd invest the money. But I'm still gunshy about the economy. So I may be "investing" that money in my house.

Which come to think of it, my investments there, though they haven't paid off monetarily, have certainly paid off in my comfort and happiness, which I think is worth something.

It will be nice not to have to route the drain for the washer out the back door, and worry about "can I take a shower and run the dishwasher in the same 2 hour span of time?" And not having to worry every time I run the sink disposall, "Is this backing up somewhere and going to come back to haunt me later?"

I also fixed a problem with my health insurance yesterday. And (hopefully) fixed a problem with the credit cards - a payment I sent in over 2 weeks ago was never credited, so I stopped the check and did a "check by phone" instead (which cost me $10, I note with annoyance, but the interest I was racking up would probably be more than that by the time a new check I mailed got there and got processed.

Modern life works great when it works. When it doesn't, there are a lot of things to take care of.