At any given moment, when living on this property a battery dies or a part of something wears out or I don’t know, what was working perfectly, stops working for no reason at all. We are trying to have everything work perfectly for two solid weeks while our friends are house sitting.

The day after we gave away our two extra micowaves, ours stopped working. I can easily live without one but it if we took it out, it would leave a big gaping mess on the wall above the stove. It was also still under warranty, we just needed Whirlpool to fix it.

E calls the help line.

“Not a problem Sir we can get a repairman to you this week” E says “that won’t work. We live on a remote island. ” “Not a problem Sir we can go to any island” “Not this one” E replied to the Quebecois customer service rep. “Honestly, Sir we go to Gabriola all the time” “That may be so but I don’t live on Gabriola” By the end of the conversation E had agreed to bring the microwave to the Whirlpool dealer in Nanaimo. He had a work order and an appointment time and everything.

The day before we were going to take the microwave for a boat ride to the city we got a call from a new customer service rep who, by the sound of her voice, lived in the deep south. She told E that the repairman was not going to be able to make it the next day to our house. E asked how exactly he had planned on coming. She said she didn’t know but there was a note on the file that he might need to take a boat.

E thanked her and assured her that arrangements had already been made. We took it in and it will be ready this week. Our house sitters will be nuking their lean cuisines without worry.

A very good propane oven/stove came with our house. It is probably the only thing we haven’t needed to upgrade. It is small. A large oven is a waste of propane. We just need one large enough for the occasional turkey.

Last month, I turned on a burner and left a fry pan of onions browning while I went in the other room to load the washer. E came in the front door to find the kitchen reeking of gas. The burner had gone out. Explosion and chaos thankfully averted. We were dreading having to look for a new stove. In the meantime we made do. The trick was to turn the burner on once and watch it die out and then turn it on again. It would then work fine… The temporary fix was good enough for us but not the best solution for our house sitters, you know, if we want to keep them as friends.

E called our “gas guy” and asked his advice. Apparently over time propane leaves an oil residue in the copper pipe and it settles into the little dips of the pipe. What was happening was that residue would block the flow of gas until the pressure built up again to push it through.

So this week E replaced the copper pipe to the propane stove and bingo bango bongo, the stove is fixed. No more potential carnage.

We are on a roll. We have five days to go and at this point we are running out of things to fix.

Knock on wood