When the Inspector Calls

Our insurance company sent someone around to inspect the property recently, which generally means trouble. If you send someone to inspect something, it rarely results in full marks. A singer’s got to sing, a dancer’s got to dance, and an inspector's got to find stuff. I remember, once upon a time, telling our food safety officer at The Hancock Inn, as he moved about the kitchen and bar areas, humming a tune, that all I really wanted in life was a perfect food safety rating. He stopped humming and gave me a hard stare. I think he may have been deciding if I was serious (I was). “That’ll never happen,” he said.

Sure enough, we received notice from our insurance company a week ago that we needed to replace the roof of our garage, which is also where I have my office for writing columns like this one. The roof does not leak, there are no cracked or missing shingles, and while there is a little moss growing in places nearest the gutters, I sort of like the old cottage look it helps create. But, fine: in truth we have been talking about replacing the garage roof to match what we put on the main cabin several years ago, a more aesthetic than functional improvement, which is the reason we have been kicking the issue down the road.

The insurance company has been very generous with the time they are allowing us to make the improvements before they move out—which is how it feels after all these years of being a commercial, as well as residential customer, offering regular displays of affection by paying them on time every month. Kind of like being told, ‘You have nine months to prove you can give up gambling, or I’m leaving.’ But things don’t get cheaper the longer you wait, so we are efforting the roofing along now.

The project has to wait, however, until after our forestry team can get here to take down the hemlock tree towering over the garage, which has developed a split running down the middle to where I can reach up and touch the bottom of it between the two trunks of the tree. I have no idea how long it has been like that. I noticed it around the time we got the insurance letter. Our forestry team is two weeks out, which matches the schedule of the roofer. Hopefully, we will have the pleasure of having them each, more-or-less back-to-back, in logical order. But this makes it, ‘I’m leaving if you don’t stop gambling,’ at the same time the bookie is threatening to drop a tree on our house.

It does not end there because we were advised by our auto service friends that the Subaru will need rear brakes and tires in the next thousand miles. The news came with the receipt for repairing the wagon’s hatchback, which had not been closing all the way. My wife showed me the note the next morning before we jumped in the car to go to market, and, promptly, the rear brakes started squealing.

Most people get lost the first time trying to find us here in the woods, including the nice insurance inspector, who drove past the driveway a couple of times before deciding, ‘Well, this must be it.’ We could put a gate up at the end, but, for sure, unplanned expenses will get through to catch us sitting in our deck chairs, waiting for the water to boil to make Kraft mac & cheese.

We expect the dog trainer in another hour to work with the ebullient Huckleberry. I am going to ask if he can get Huck to bark at the threat of incoming capital requests. That was the other thing the insurance company sent along after the inspector’s visit—a dog questionnaire. There was no pretending we didn’t have a dog, not when it greets you by nearly jumping through the open car window. The questionnaire asks, “How is the dog restrained when outside?” I thought about answering, by gravity. In truth, Huckles has eight satellites tracking him through his GPS collar, which send down lightning bolts if he crosses the fence line. This is the technology I would be interested in deploying against expense lines that decide, on their own, to go over the limit.