Slow Leaks

Life is full of them!

They are the small things from this morning's discovery of a small leak in the fish tank filter to the time that we spend doing useful but non-essential tasks and then there are the useless drains (a tale for another day).

The leak in the filter was capillary action and the fact that for some reason it was no longer straight - hence the capillary action of water seeping around the filter cover, down the outside of the bookcase (thankfully not into the bookcase), under the mop board and into the chimney closet, the low point beside the wall that the tank is near. This was an easy clean up really, but it still took time. Since the tank is the 14 year old's and she is "responsible" for the clean-up and for making sure that new filter sponges and charcoal inserts are here, and because she doesn't always, David had to pick up the filter inserts at the pet shop this morning while he was at the office. He took another hour out of his morning to drive them home & return to work. A slow leak in the time of his day.

Instead of writting earlier this morning, like I had planned, I replaced filter parts as darling daughter was already off with her grandparents for a few days. Another odd job, like spending time grooming the very easily knotted up 17 year old long hair cat that I have, which I already did a few minutes ago after finishing off with the fish tank, and have suffered the inevitable consequences of caring. A couple of bites and a scratch.

Somehow, these real slow water leaks are a real parrallel with slow time leaks. It is almost 11 now, and somehow, when I was figuring out my schedule for today, last night, I figured that I would be blogging by 9 and be done at 10, but...
Here I am with a clean floor, a clean closet, a clean fish tank, 2 loads of washed laundry drying on a clothesline on a lovely breezy sunny day, and a partially groomed cat. Not bad but not great either.

I have yet to get into the studio to get anything made, and I still have more unpacking from the studio move to finish too, but at least the studio is neat enough that I have space to put the rediscovered finds.

The point of this is, and the parrallel, is that leaks happen. We don't plan them, and we sometimes can't prevent them. The consequences of managing the leaks is that our time gets chewed up by them. If we didn't care enough to fix the leaks when first discovered we could find the almost all the water in the fish tank drained onto the floor and the fish, if still living, swimming in very shallow water. The slow leak could easlily become a lesson in crises management and I really prefer to avoid those lessons as they are really time consuming.

Given a choice, I'll deal with a slow leak anyday over a crises even though it can still put me behind schedule a little.

May all your leaks be slow,

Cynthia