Three times a charm?

You hear it all the time - trouble comes in threes.
So if you have had two incidents happen, brace yourself, something is on its way.
Three weeks ago - on a Saturday - we noticed that the central vac was not working well. It could suck things up, but not with the speed and force that we need in a house full of dog fur.
The logical thing to do was change the bag in the canister in the basement. It was pretty full, but turns out that was not the problem.
The Ump banged on the pipes leading to the canister in the basement hoping to dislodge any clump, but to no avail. Not good news with company on the way.
He had a football game to attend that Saturday afternoon, so he took off and I kind of puttered around the house, collecting my thoughts before heading to the grocery store. I was listening to Aerosmith - OK, it was a little loud - so I heard no hint of the approaching disaster.
It was not until I stopped at the sink to wash my hands that I received the first clue that something was amiss. No water.
Oh no. I just knew the Ump had whacked a water pipe or something. I turned off the stereo and immediately heard gushing water.
I threw open the basement door and ran down the stairs to confront water spewing from the water softener in the corner.
Some kind of sludge was all over the floor and my guess is that the water had been flowing for a good 15 minutes because there was a large pond growing.
With the Ump gone, I ran up the stairs and outside to see if I could locate our next door neighbor who is a contractor and a very handy man. Luckily, Danny was doing his typical Saturday spit-shine on his truck and I dragged him back to the house with me.
Of course, he had to run the gauntlet of barking and growling dogs to get to the basement, but he quickly figured out where to turn off the water to the house.
I called the Ump to tell him what was going on. He was already at the game and obviously reluctant to drive home. "Well, there's nothing I can do, right?"
OK. That was a statement of fact, but it was not the statement I wanted to hear at the moment. I think one of the top 10 reasons why I got married was so that I would not have to deal with life's little wild pitches by myself.
For 20 years, I - with the assistance of various landlords - handled everything from the invasion of a sewer rat to the invasion of the town sewer. It's much better to share the distress with someone, even if they don't have any more of an idea of how to deal with it than you do. Misery, indeed, loves company.
I can tell you something you may not know about water softeners. Not only do they contain water and salt, but they also have some kind of resin which - when poured on your floor - creates a skate rink kind of slickness that makes walking a challenge.
So, with two strikes against us, it didn't take long for fate to sling a third curve ball our way.
The following Saturday morning, I was headed to Strasburg for a hair cut when I opened the refrigerator and noticed a lot of condensation on the food.
I called the Grump, I mean the Ump, who said many unfriendly words on his way to the kitchen, including a small entreaty to a higher power asking what we had done to deserve such attention.
We found a repairman who could come look at our refrigerator - which is not four years old - on a Saturday. Certainly, we could get no one here from Sears which is where we purchased the refrigerator.
This kind fellow charged us $50 for a Saturday call and told us the compressor had died which meant one of two things. Expensive repair or new refrigerator.
When we finally go through to Sears, we were told that they would not take this man's assessment of the situation and would, therefore, send one of their folks out to diagnose the problem - on Oct. 4. A full 10 days later.
What are we supposed to do for a refrigerator until then, we asked. Tricia, I think her name was, told us she had no control over anything - that is just the way it works. Besides, she was in a call center in Texas.
The rest of that story is that when the guy comes on Oct. 4, he will not repair our refrigerator. He will charge us $65 to tell us what we already paid $50 to hear, that the compressor is shot. He will then schedule the next available repairman to come see us.
The next part of this story is why you buy locally and not from national stores that aren't in your neighborhood.
We went down the street to Beidler's, picked out a refrigerator, and they were at our house within an hour. They took our old refrigerator down to the basement and installed the new one.
So, we are using an old hose on the central vacuum; we bypassed the water softener and are considering whether or not to get a new one; and we still have our appointment with the Sears guy because we are going to keep the refrigerator in the basement.
I think now would be a good time to have the furnace cleaned.