It’s always exciting when Mom gets a new box.

It was September 6 when it arrived, and it was probably the biggest box we’ve ever gotten. Plus, it was all covered with plastic wrap, and it had these zip-tie things on it. I could tell it was going to be fun to bite on.

Well, that didn’t last long. Mom got rid of all the plastic wrap and zip-ties, but it was still a cool box to sleep on top of.

Ahh, this is the life. Here I am with my best “Maine Coon” sleeping face. But what was in The Box, and why was it staying in the front room so long without Mom opening it? This was a topic of much conversation between Panda and me over the next few days.

“Dude, your tail is tickling me,” Panda replied when I asked his opinion. “And I don’t know any more about The Box than you do.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know I was doing that. But seriously, I think The Box has something to do with Mom removing the laminate flooring in front of the dishwasher.”

“The guys who brought The Box said it had to be done,” I continued. “They said they don’t do that kind of work, and Mom wasn’t sure who you call for that. Rather than waste time trying to figure it out, she decided to do it herself.”

“I remember hearing her hammering on something in there,” Panda answered. “I couldn’t figure out what she was doing, though. I heard her tell Christy that a nice man from YouTube showed her how. It was a good thing she had that special tool she got from Grandpa’s house.”

I had to laugh when I thought of that, because Grandpa had owned just about every tool known to man. Actually, more than one of most, but that’s another story. “She told me she knew there would be something she could use in the red tool chest in the garage, and she was right.”

Panda looked puzzled. “If she only had to do the part in front of the dishwasher, why did she take out so much?”

“It’s because the laminate strips are pretty long. You can’t just cut them wherever you want,” I replied. Panda thought for a minute. “Well, I guess you can,” he mused. “But I don’t think Mom has the right kind of saw.” I shuddered. “Don’t go there, Bro,” I said. “Mom does not need any more saws.”

“Wow!” Panda exclaimed, when we looked at the linoleum that was under the laminate. “It looks like somebody had to cut the old linoleum to be able to install the dishwasher!” I nodded. “Well, it’s been there for the past 27 years,” I commented, “so who knows?”

We thought it looked okay after she laid the panels back down, but she stubbed her toe one too many times on the corner of it. That’s why she put the area rugs there. We approved, remembering her post about decluttering and how she said she likes area rugs. But what we couldn’t figure out was, why would she go to all the trouble to take out the flooring if she was just going to lay it back down again?

Then a couple of days later, The Box Guy came back. He looked under the dishwasher with his flashlight and said, “You have another problem.” He showed Mom where there was a water line that was sticking out too far from the wall. He said it needed to be capped off and brought flush with the wall. He said the new dishwasher couldn’t be installed until that was done, and she would have to call a plumber for that. So that’s what was in The Box! We were getting a new dishwasher!

Mom knew who she was going to call, but she had forgotten the name of the company. Then she remembered she had done a blog post about them several years ago, so she went back to “That Sinking Feeling” and found the picture of their truck. She called them, and they sent Antonio and Luis out right away, and, as Cody had done in 2021, they “assessed the situation”. Around this time, Mom decided to ask the plumbers if they could install the dishwasher, so she wouldn’t have to deal with the Box Guy anymore.

Antonio set up an appointment for Tommy to come and take care of the problem with the water line. In order to do that, Tommy had to remove the dishwasher, which was no easy task, because of the way it had been stuffed into the space behind the linoleum. Then, while he was working on the water line, he found that the hot water pipe leading to the dishwasher was partially blocked inside by corrosion, and he asked if we had low water pressure.

He decided to go under the house and see how the rest of the pipes looked. Mom thought this was a good idea, because she had been smelling a musty smell off and on. Years ago, before Daddy passed away, there had been a leak under the bathtub, and somebody who wasn’t a plumber had fixed it for them.

Mom remembered this, but she told Tommy she was in denial, so she hadn’t tried shining a flashlight through the little screen in the breezeway to see if it was leaking again. When Tommy came out from under the house, he said, “There’s good news and bad news.” The good news was that the pipes weren’t all that bad, but the bad news was that there was a leak near where the old leak had been, with a pool of standing water under the house. In the standing water there were a bunch of drain fly larvae! Mom wouldn’t let Tommy show her the picture he’d taken because she knew she would be traumatized. She decided she should get that fixed, ASAP. Tommy said that before anyone could do any work under there, she needed a water-damage mitigation company to clean the standing water and disinfect it.

PDS Plumbing usually uses a company called ServPro, who sent Chase and Marvin from their Visalia location. At this point in my narration, Panda interrupted. “Oh, I saw them!” he exclaimed. “I thought they were space aliens at first.” I laughed. “They told Mom they feel like Minions in those yellow outfits,” I said.

I was glad Panda had gotten to see Chase and Marvin, because I hadn’t. While they were taking pictures under the house and working on the water issue, I was finding all the best hiding places inside. They sure were making a lot of noise, plus, it was taking all day!

They had a gigantic truck, and before they started working, they set up this “air scrubber” in the bathroom to help purify the air inside the house for us. Panda and I agreed that this was nice of them. It made a soft, humming sound, which wasn’t that scary, but I still didn’t want to go near it.

Chase and Marvin vacuumed all the water from under the house and then removed all the mud. Then they sanitized and put down some white powder (Mom said it was called lime, but I always thought limes were green), to help soak up the excess moisture. They even put down plastic so the plumbers wouldn’t get all dirty when they came back.

“Wow!” Panda remarked when I paused in the middle of my story to take a breath. “This story is getting longer and longer!” I agreed. “Just wait, Bro,” I answered. “It gets even longer! I’m not done yet!”

I told Panda that a few days later, Tommy and several other guys came back and started working. They were going to take out all the old pipes under the house and replace them with new ones. Mom had decided that it was best to replace all of them, since they were so old, and she didn’t want anything like this to happen again.

This took longer and was noisier than what the ServPro guys had done. I found a few more hiding places throughout the day. Sometimes Mom couldn’t even find me! “Figures she took pictures of you,” Panda laughed when we looked at the pictures on Mom’s phone. “She probably thought it would make good blog material.”

We were amazed to see the picture Tommy took of the pipe that was leaking.

Our house was built in 1955, so it’s three years older than Mom. Both Panda and I agreed that replacing all the pipes was a good decision. “They couldn’t do the ones under the guest bathroom, though,” I explained. Panda’s eyes widened. “Why not?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, unbeknownst to everyone, including Mom, that bathroom has its own crawl space and the entrance is in the garage. It’s so small no adult could possibly climb through it.” Panda looked at the photos in dismay. “I don’t think they could even move around once they got in there anyway!” We figured out that the guest bathroom had been added onto the house, sometime before Daddy bought it in 1987. Mom decided not to mess with that part after all, because it would have involved taking up the bathroom floor to get to the pipes.

Panda looked a bit disappointed. “Okay so what about the dishwasher?” he asked. “Did they finally get it put in?” I hesitated for a minute before speaking. “Well,” I began, not sure if I wanted to break the news to him. “Antonio came out the next day with Tommy, and he opened the box while Tommy was doing some touch up work on the new pipes under the house. He put the cardboard in the recycle bin, but then he had to go to another job. And when Tommy went to put the dishwasher on the dolly and bring it into the kitchen, they noticed something!”

It had a dent in it!

“Aww, man!” Panda exclaimed. “After all that? Was Mom disappointed?” I shook my head. “No, she wasn’t, actually. She said she discovered this was never about the dishwasher in the first place. If it hadn’t been for her deciding to get a new dishwasher, we would never have known about the water under the house and the mud and the drain fly larvae.” Panda made a face. “Ewww!” he said. “What are drain flies?” I explained that they were those little, tiny moth-looking things we would sometimes see around the house. Mom never thought they were any big deal. But I guess they had to be reproducing somewhere. Panda breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay so I get it now,” he said. “Everything happens for a reason, and it worked out for the best. That’s cool. But what about the new dishwasher?”

“Tommy went and got The Box out of the recycle and tried to tape it back together,” I explained. “Mom spent about two hours on the phone with Lowe’s and the Kenmore people and finally got it worked out to have it replaced. But the new one hasn’t come in yet.” I yawned. “If I wasn’t so sleepy I’d tell you about those phone calls.” Panda yawned, too. “I hear you, Bro,” he said. “We can continue this conversation later.” And with that, we both fell fast asleep.