COINCIDENCES

Acadien Trail Look-off

      Some times I think that we are characters in a play and have less control over our personal plots than we think.
  
     You see, not long before Sue passed away, I’d booked a       septic sucker company to come to our home and empty our septic system. There was, however, one problem. I didn’t know where the tank was.
     
    Anyway, I cancelled that appointment and filed this alimentary system problem away in the back of my mind. There were too many other issues to think about. However, it pushed its way to the front of the line the day that my toilet lost its flushing power.

Acadien Trail

I phoned the plumber and asked him if he could help me find the septic system. He arrived with a long heavy rod which he used to poke and push through the earth.

​He’d heard another fella say that the tank should be about sixteen feet from the trailer, so that’s the area he searched.

Let Me In

Well, he kept poking until he located the pipe. He also put a hole in it. I paid him some money for finding the pipe and putting a hole in it. Before he left, he said that the septic tank should be within five feet of the hole in the pipe. This was based on his sixteen-feet-from-the-trailer theory. The plumber had been exhausted and not feeling well and that’s why he stopped searching.

He told me that once I got the septic system emptied he would come over and seal the hole.

 I did a little digging myself, but had no luck, so I phoned another fella and asked him if he could find the septic system. 

​This fella began pick-axing from the hole in the pipe place and worked his way to about sixteen feet from the trailer. No septic tank was located.

Hiking Buddy, Dominic and Me at Corney Brook Falls

Well, the fella just kept on pick-axing. He pick-axed, and pick-axed. Sixteen feet from the trailer, seventeen, eighteen and on and on. He pick-axed all the way to sixty feet from the trailer. Now doesn’t sixteen and sixty sound very similar? Anyway, there it was. The golden chest filled to the gills.

I paid the pick-axe man.

​Now, I did make an appointment to get the tank emptied but in the meantime, and it was a fairly long meantime, I wasn’t using the toilet. However, I had my methods. It’s a bit easier to solve when you live where I live. Plus, now that we’re talking coincidences, I found, a week or so later, what I think they call, a commode. It was at a neighbour’s house. I had given it to the neighbour. Sue, had found it and carried it home. We weren’t sure why. Now I think I know why and so I had an unflushable but handy toilet bowl. What a coincidence, eh?

Anyway, one day, to Dominic’s dismay, a poetically big, noisy, septic-sucker truck came to our place. 

​The nice man emptied the tank, rolled up his big sucker hose and then, well I did what I had been regularly doing. I paid him.

Torey On Little River Beach

However, the toilet still lacked enthusiastic flushing power. So, I had to continue to stay on good terms with my commode until I got the plumber to arrive.

The plumber came with his long, metal, drilling, snake gizmo. He turned and twisted this snake-like machine right down my toilet’s throat, and he did find the problem. Actually, more than one problem.

​You see, because of how hectic my life had become, I had been foolishly dumping old dishwashing water down the toilet, without adequately poking around in the murky water to make sure that nothing was hiding under the soap suds.

Mask

The plumber found a fork. Then he found a knife. I was hoping that he may get the toilet to cough up a complete table setting. I do suspect, that my toilet bowl is hanging onto my sugar spoon.

Of course, before the plumber left, I paid him.

​You may be wondering what this septic tank story has to do with my being part of a play.

Baddeck River

Well you see, only days after the septic system story came to, what I considered was its conclusion, I went to Tim Hortons to buy an Iced Cap.

​I was in the drive-through. When I got to the ordering square I said, “One small Iced Cap.” 

Baddeck River

Then I said, “And that’s all I want.”

The servers who all seem to have poor hearing, said, “Any thing else?”

I said, “No thanks.”

​Then the server surprised me. She asked me, no, ye verily, she told me to stay put. I was to stay put. Can you believe that? 

A Wild Space

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” she said.

​The reason I had to be inconvenienced, and what a coincidence, was because a huge, loud, septic sucking truck was beep, beep, beeping its way in front of me. A man, not the same man who pumped out my tank, got out of the truck, and unrolled a big hose which he hooked up to Tim Horton’s septic tank. 

Black River Fen

I waited as the hose sucked out all that Tim Horton’s had to offer.

See what I mean? I was living in a play called, A Seriously Stuffed Septic System. The play unfolded and unfolded and then threw out a surprise ending before the curtain came down. It was as if the universe put a big period at the end of my septic sucking experience. It threw a septic truck in front of me as I was going about the normal business of driving through a Timmy’s drive-through.

Has this happened to you after you’ve just spent over a month dealing with your septic system? Just a coincidence? An annoyance? Or maybe, a well thought out play with all its actors in their right places?            

Cabin On Baddeck River

I have written some blogs about my annoyance with and doubts about the over-use of the virtual world machines. Don’t get me wrong. I use some of them and depend on some of them, but I think people should give their heads a shake when they depend too much on them. In other words, they should get their heads out of their machines and smell the roses or at least take a look at them. Not the virtual ones. The real ones.

Baddeck River Critter

The thing is, Dominic is a motorized vehicle chaser. He will also chase bikes. Our road is quiet, but not as quiet as it used to be. That’s because the bridge is out and so there is a detour. Our road is not a detour. However, people who depend on their GPS machines think it is.

Two Yellow Chairs

Now that’s only after they have driven past about five signs saying such things as Road Closed, Local Traffic Only, Detour Ahead, Detour Right in Front of Your Nose, get your F’n sniffer out of your virtual know-it-alls, etc. Two of these warnings have flashing orange lights on a big stand which partially stick out into the road. Doesn’t matter.

Along Baddeck River Shoreline

Last week a driver pulled over and asked me how to get to Margaree. 

“You’re using a GPS aren’t you,” I said.

He showed me his phone with the GPS on it while Dominic yapped and yelped, as he tried to gnaw on his tires.

“You’ll have to turn around and go back to the main road. Keep going until you see a huge blinking sign that says, ‘Detour, Road Closed, Local Traffic Only. Make a right there.”

He thanked me and drove away while Dominic wildly barked, as he desperately tried to chase the truck. He is obsessed with chasing cars. 

​People are obsessed with chasing their GPS.

BADDECK RIVER