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Calamities call for just the right spirits SANDRA SNYDER WALL TO WALL

Saturday February 06, 2010 | 12:00 AM

My house hates me. I’m convinced. Either that or it’s full of bad little ghosts who used to like me but are now ripping mad at me and trying mightily to show it.

Pity, because I still truly like the old place and think we can go the distance. Maybe we need a counselor, someone to hear my dreams and the house’s other plans and bring us to the middle.

Atop my list: Enough with the plumbing already. OK? I get it, ghost, if in fact you are Casper’s evil twin who’s been wreaking all this havoc.

It started in the basement one not-so-fine recent day after a visitor dared inquire about the obnoxious blinking blue light on my refrigerator and got an explanation: That never-should-have-bought-it whole-house water filter needs changing every three months, and three months pass way too quickly, which means that thing is always blinking. But, hey, mind doing the honors this round, sparing me the carpal tunnel I’m going to get from trying to turn that stubborn water valve off so often?

Long story short, the honors got done all right, and the valve got broken for good. I got an admonition: Old, corroded valves such as this simply are not meant to be turned on and off every three months. Was good to know, now that water was unstoppably trickling, then a day later pouring, all over the basement floor.

Emergency plumber called. New, user-friendly valve installed. One hundred forty dollars poorer.

The moral? Unfiltered water is delicious. Never mess with a good thing.

Then we moved on to the bathtub drain, which has been a slow-moving nuisance for three years but which I’ve always, I boast, managed to unclog myself, with a little help from some super-strength, false-sense-of-security fizzy stuff from Home Depot and a good plunger. Got to the unbearable point, though, that one shower meant three feet of standing water for six hours, maybe more.

Sooner or later, you must surrender.

Tried a new plumber this time. Six and a half hours, a holy mess and a shell-shocking $350 later, the water had passage, the tub a whole new drain mechanism and I an ugly trophy. Like a prancing alley cat with a mouse in its mouth, Plumber No. 2 proudly displayed not one but two crazily long and twisty trails of dreg he freed from what he called some seriously slapdash pipe work. (Of course it was.)

Moral? Clean hair is overrated?

Then the garbage disposal took a turn. Were the two measly leftover meatballs really bad enough to cause such gagging and croaking? (I was highly insulted.)

Plumber No. 2 and Plumber No. 1 agreed: If a disposal could have been more jerry-rigged anyway, they hadn’t seen it, meaning replacement, not repair, was in order. I deferred, figuring my ghosts surely had more mean tricks up their gossamer sleeves and this wasn’t urgent.

Good call. A few days later, the basement became a rainforest, courtesy of a leaky toilet gone haywire all night long. If I tell you a one-day job turned into a weeklong one, would you really be surprised?

And just when I thought we had to be done, the 3 on my microwave’s touch screen fizzled. Just like that. All I could do was laugh. I mean, come on, ghosts. I raged. They remained quiet.

A sudden thought: Could I actually have offended a house full of angels?

Because come to think of it, something or someone mysterious has done a pretty good job of disaster-aversion on my behalf over the years.

Maybe I’m just not grateful enough.

If the angels have simply been on holiday for the past few weeks, I could hardly blame them.

About the Author

Sandra Snyder covers Features for the Times Leader. Reach her at (570) 831-7383 or ssnyder@timesleader.com.

Sandra Snyder is the Times Leader's features editor, overseeing the food, family, home and Sunday lifestyles sections as well as the weekly entertainment Guide. She began working at the Times Leader in 1993 as a copy editor and has held various positions, including Hazleton editor/bureau chief, editor of the Times Leader-Mountaintop and Social Issues co-team leader. She also has done general-interest news and features reporting. Her most memorable interview to this day remains the delightful and now decidedly not 16-going-on-17 Charmian Carr, a.k.a. Liesl in "The Sound of Music." These days, she encourages readers who love (and sometimes despise) their homes to write to her and share their household tales, tragic or otherwise, particularly the type they're willing to have retold in print.