Fumbling Toward Insolvency (Part 3)

The estimates are in:

$14,000 to excavate and replace the broken main drain and run a liner

$8,000 for downspouts around the house

$4,000 to replace the front porch 

$4,000 to add to the back porch to prevent water running to the house 

$20,000 to support basement walls and install drainage

On the wish list:

$10,000 to replace bathroom

The kicker:

House is worth $70K if we are lucky. We owe half that on the mortgage.

Insurance covers none of this.

Buy your house for cash companies don't even want the house.

The Dao De Jing has lately been ringing in my ear:

Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult; Make something big by starting with it when small. Difficult things in the world must needs have their beginnings in the easy; Big things must needs have their beginnings in the small. - Chapter 63, D.C. Lau translation

Often, from a theist perspective, we are called to pray through the difficult but sometimes we miss the common sense and it is here where I find the Dao finds resonance. Perhaps there is something in Proverbs or Ecclesiastes to align with this but I struggle here when these problems of our own doings and our own choices.

I post all of the above not for doom and gloom but to look at it and face it, in print, not completely without hope, but wondering how we got here.

I won't bore you with other details such as immigration and other debts that were accumulated in fashions worthy of a 'how not to' book but I'm reminded of a Talking Heads song and there is something comforting in the absurdity of it all:

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by, water flowing underground

Into the blue again, after the money's gone

Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground