A puddle in my kitchen and hall

I walked through a puddle on the way to the bathroom this morning.  Socks wet, I reached for both the kitchen and hall light switches on the wall.  The leak had continued overnight.  

They finally replaced my dishwasher yesterday.  I came home to the sound of it running and was quite excited.  I had been without one for almost three weeks.  And then I noticed the puddle in front of the dishwasher.  Opening the cabinet under the sink, I found another puddle.  And water was seeping out from under my stove.  I wiped it up and made dinner, at which point the puddle under the sink had reformed.  

So I walked down to the office which was still open.  Neither maintenance men were on site anymore for the day but one of them agreed to come back although he was stuck in traffic so would be a while.  The plan was to just stop the leak last night and then deal with fixing the issue the today.

I went off to choir practice.  I assume he came although I noticed it still had a very slow drip when I went to bed.  I hoped it wouldn't be strong enough to cause problems overnight but here I am.

So this morning, I wiped up what I could, moved my kitchen table to make room for maintenance to get behind my stove, ate breakfast, and headed off to work. On my walk, I noticed the airplane taking off into clouds of varying density.  It disappeared and reappeared many times.  Then I paused to watch a Cooper’s Hawk perched and watching me.  And I breathed in the calm I felt.

Was it irritating to deal with a non-working dishwasher and leak?  Sure, but I did what I knew had to be done and let the rest work itself out.  I am confident I will come home to the issue under control.

But it still felt foreign.  Had I still been married, I would have woke up to his swearing and complaints.  I would have had to simultaneously soothe him while I figured out how to solve the problem.  Was I always this calm about solving actual issues or was this a skill I developed because I had to devote so much of my energy to managing him simultaneously?  The chicken or the egg?  Was it a skill I already had which played a role in sustaining the relationship for so long?  Or did his behaviors cause me to develop the skill?

So now that I don’t also have to manage him, I have extra energy to admire the birds and planes and continue on with my day, in an empty office on this thirtieth day of the shutdown.