Report From the Trenches

I believe that "trench" would be the most descriptive word for my basement, because the edges of full of yucky water and it smells more or less like a sewer. I keep holding onto the memory that after the hurricane in '99, when we had way more water than we had this time, it all dried up and did not smell. Let's keep the good thought. I think it's the big carpet remnant that smells, anyway, and that's going over the weekend.

The plumber was here and said that the leak (from the kitchen sink into the basement) isn't that bad and can wait until next week when they're not busy (and when I'm on what is now laughingly called "my vacation"). He also said that I could safely use the washer and dryer, and I got right on that, because I'm thinking the less-than-lovely smell is also the result of -- TMI coming -- cat-towels that have accumulated Boo residue over the last couple of days and which I could not wash. Eeuuw, indeed. But they're clean now, and K and I are going to hit the IHOP and then I'll put them in the dryer when I get back. I know that lots of people never run the dryer if they're not home, but I always do. I figure, if the house is going to blow up, I'd really rather not be here. But this time I have to wait for it to get going and make sure I don't smell gas. (The plumber assures me that dryers have safeguards so that if the pilot is out, the gas doesn't keep on coming, which really, who knew? I've always suspected death-by-clothes-dryer is a real possibility. Just another one of those things I irrationally fear.)

(Which leads to this particularly long "I digress". Before we moved to the house 20 years ago, we lived in a two-family house, the upstairs apartment, and I always suspected that one day, the house would do us in. So, one morning, I woke up early, about six, to get little baby R her bottle, and on my way from the kitchen to her room, the whole house shook. I a) was scared shitless, and b) could feel the floor shaking and moving under my feet, and c) fell and/or fainted. Either way, the Hubs, who was asleep, heard me hit the floor and leaped out of bed. Once he saw I was speaking to him, he helped me back into bed, where I lay in a quivering heap of cold sweat, and went to take the bottle to the baby. While he was in her room, I heard on the radio that there had been an earthquake in north Jersey a few minutes earlier! When he came back, he asked tenderly if I was okay, and I said, not moving, "There was an earthquake." He did his best to comfort me, and said "No, you fainted." "There was an earthquake," I said again, and a few times, until finally he heard it on the radio too, and then believed me. The furnace had not blown up. There had been a goddam earthquake. In New Jersey.)

(The house shook another time, too, when one of those big round oil thingies in Linden, on the New Jersey Turnpike maybe 15 - 20 miles from us, blew up, but we also heard that and found out about it right away.)

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So we are back from the IHOP, headache much better after eating, and I only ate what I planned to and that's fine. I'm finishing the entry before I approach the dryer, since I ought to finish one thing before I start another one, and K is having a cigarette down in the basement, and you know, why tempt fate. She was telling me more over dinner about yesterday's subbing experience, and she was making me happy. She's got the teacher instinct, all right. Not that I wouldn't have expected her to, she's got it in the blood from both sides, but it's nice to know for sure.

Hey, I read a book last night! I've been thinking more about why I don't read books often anymore, and I usually say it's because I have a short attention span, but I don't think that's it, actually. I think it's that I know I will get lost in a book, and I don't want to start one unless I have the time and focus to give myself to it completely. Okay, that sounds weird. But I actually went in to work later than usual this morning -- I skipped my walk -- so I could finish it. The funny thing is, it turned out that this was a book I'd read before! It was Vonnegut's Slapstick, and although I realized right away that I'd already read it, I kept on. Next is Jailbird, which I didn't buy but had in the library. I may not start it until tomorrow night, though, since I'm devoting my after school time tomorrow to that nasty rug downstairs.


watching Reba :: entry #1435