Life is what happens when… well, it just happens.

As if there wasn’t enough going on these days, God has decided to throw me another curve ball. Or maybe it’s the Fates. I don’t know. But whatever it is, it has a funny sense of humor.

R called me at work yesterday and said “Are you sitting down? Unit D is off the market.” If I haven’t mentioned it before, we own four townhouse units with R’s best friend (J) and his wife (E, but we’ll call her EV). We live in one unit, J and EV live in another and we rent the other two units out. About a year ago, we put Unit C and D on the market so that we could get out of the landlord business and start to build our own nest egg to buy another house. So, the units have been empty for about a year, but since we live on the property, we check them out every weekend or so. With that background in mind, the story continues… R tells me that something happened to the toilet upstairs in Unit D and it leaked water. Ok. It didn’t really leak water, it more like gushed water. All over the house. The ‘leak’ was so bad that it collapsed the kitchen ceiling below it. And warped the flooring in the bathroom, the kitchen, soaked the carpets through the entire house, shorted out the light fixtures, and then poured into the basement. The house looks like the apocalypse. R and I spent the rest of the afternoon calling the insurance agent, the adjuster, contractors and a water restoration company to come to start cleaning up the damage. They set up about 12 fans and two huge dehumidifiers to start drying the place out. They later told R that they think the kitchen cabinets and countertops will have to be replaced as well. The adjuster came this morning and told R that he wants us to get a quote from the contractor and he’s estimating that the costs are going to run…take a deep breath… $50,000. And no. I’m not joking.

Trying to remain positive about this, I remember three things: no one was hurt. The house didn’t catch fire even though the water got into the electrical system. We have insurance.

There’s always a silver lining, right? I’m getting good at finding it these days.