Why Pot Lucks Are Fun

 Of course there's the obvious point that the host(ess) doesn't have to buy and cook everything. And you never can know in advance how the people will behave- or not - so I'm taking that out of the discussion, even though everybody had a good time for Thanksgiving One this year. FYI Thanksgiving Two is tomorrow, since different people have different schedules and other sets of family to share the holiday with. We took that into account and offered our guests a choice between Thursday and Saturday... and stocked up on 4 turkeys because we're doing a repeat double-down for Christmas. (Thawing two birds at once in the same standard size fridge is... interesting.)

The real fun part is the variety of the food. We provided a roast turkey and stuffing, which in this house means stuffing muffins, making them very handy for pot lucks, whether held here or taken to somebody else's house. Our guests filled the meal in beautifully. There were mashed potatoes and gravy, made in our kitchen by one guest while the turkey cooled enough to carve, rather than being made hours earlier and reheated. There were two salads, one with cranberries and mini marshmallows, another with cabbage and apples and other things. That was a hit as well, especially with Steve, since he's had a problem being able to eat fresh apples for many years, but these were marinated, softening them just enough for him. Everybody brought their own beverages of choice, and we supplied cups and ice.

The really fun part of pot luck food is whatever comes in large quantities, not what manages to fill in all the need for variety. This year it was pies. Between snowy weather, and somebody being "under it", and somebody else having a sudden family emergency to deal with, we wound up with 8 people this time. And five pies! There was an apple pie, a peanut butter silk (OMG YUMMY!) which I'd never heard of, much less tasted until then, and three pumpkin, one of which was heavily spiced just the way I love mine, while the other two were lightly spiced.  Some, like me, had a sliver of more than one variety. I had actually picked up some cinnamon ice cream for the freezer "just in case" nobody brought desert, or people wanted some on top of their pie. Turned out the pies were so good nobody even remembered to get the ice cream out, so that's still there "just in  case" for tomorrow's meal.

Advance info hints on several (varieties of?) cranberries on that menu.

Static Central! O! M! G!

Shortly after we moved in, I ordered some bathroom rugs. After looking at the dull, gray colors available in a couple stores, apparently the pride of the season (finger down the throat, gagging), I went online to find more choices. And boy, did I ever find them! I googled teal, without specifying in my search whether I meant teal blue or teal green. I found both, and in varieties from plain, to old country homey, to swirley/fanciful, to totally spectacular and metallic. I fell in love, and out came the plastic.

Card, that is.

Once they arrived, I found I needed more since the floor was so large. Ones matching what I already liked were soon on their way as well. Every thing was beautiful, for a while.

You have to know already what happened, right? Being a bathroom, dirt of various sorts accumulated. Company will be here soon with the holiday coming. There was no choice. Washing commenced, the biggest rug solo.

It quickly stopped as well. With the first opening of the washer lid when the cycle ended, handfuls of bits of paper were all over the place. Where did they come from? The first rug looked exactly like the next one waiting, except for the dirt being gone and seemingly replaced by paper. 

Seriously: paper?

Where did the paper come from? It isn't on any of the other rugs, those in the bathroom, or those brand new and still in storage. From the amount coating everything, ("everything" being defined as both sides of the washed rug, the bottom and sides of the basket in the washing machine, and the utility room floor because hunks dropped off the rug as it was pulled out) there could have been a solid layer attached to the bottom of the rug. How had nobody noticed? More to the point, why would anybody line a throw rug with slippery paper? Most of he paper was white, but a lot had black flecks on them as well. It looked like they could have been the bottom of the rug, white with tiny black rubber bits in starburst patterns great for gripping the floor, except flipping it over it looked exactly like it had (except for dirt) and the matching but dirty one's bottom as well.

First thing to be done, i.e. not done, was putting the second dirty rug in the machine. Second was spreading the clean one out to air dry. I never put throw rugs in the dryer, since any rubber backing decomposes quickly in the heat, making walking on them precarious. Not a good thing for seniors, much less anybody else. Then a lot of paper pieces were picked off the first rug and tossed in the trash.  It was noted that a lot coated the bottom and sides of the washer basket. Big project for later, and mental note made not to wash anything until it was cleaned.

As in  4 days later. Much other work remained to do in the next few days first.

The wait created new "fun". I started with broom and dustpan to clean the floor... the first time. By the fifth time, all in the tiny utility area, it became painfully obvious how much static was generated in the paper. It clung to broom bristles, then dropped off. It clung to shoe soles... and tracked through the house. It clung to the now dry, clean rug... and refused to drop off! I quickly learned to brush wet fingers across the surfaces to kill the charge so pieces would fall to the floor. Of course in two minutes they dried again and clung to the floor and broom and....

I gave up on perfection after half an hour, declaring things outside the machine "good enough". Much of what landed in the waste basket liner bag actually stayed there. My progress was apparent, until I turned around and looked at my footprints in white flecks, mocking me.

It was time for the machine basket. I hadn't actually looked inside it since the rug first came out. It was much worse than I remembered. There was a thick layer of overlapping pieces on the basket floor, pryable up with fingernails in clumps. A full circuit yielded a couple handfuls. However, more small pieces remained on the basket floor, mostly jammed vertically in any crack available. Even more coated the side of the basket, in bands about a foot long and 2 inches wide. I fetched a brush from the kitchen, hoping it would loosen the clumps. My optimism proved overly ambitious. Again, fingernails were able to pry much of it loose. As before, many small pieces remained nicely stuck to the basket walls.

I made a decision I hope not to regret. I set the controls to the smallest load possible and started the machine. As soon as the water quit running I stopped it, and took a look. There was apparently a thin coat of water across bottom and sides, supporting about half an inch of bubbles.

Bubbles? I hadn't added soap. Where did those come from? Regardless, I grabbed a paper towel roll and wiped up what I could from all the surfaces. I knew I wasn't finished, and started the machine again before going shopping. Steve had put in a grocery order, now due to be picked up.

Once we were back, I checked the washing machine again. There were small clumps of the paper scattered in all the places there had been big deposits. Of course, they were all dried already and stuck to all the places they could possibly be stuck to, given the small amount of water used. More scraping, more damp paper towels, and I finally pronounced the washer good enough. This is the part where I really hope I am right. I hope no bits oozed through cracks and jammed up small moveable (at least formerly) parts of the machine. What stuck in big globs instead of clogging tiny ones the first time around, might not have been restricted the second time.

That's only one of the remaining questions however. Not finding any source of the paper by comparing the washed rug with the unwashed one, but knowing it came from somewhere and one rug was the only thing in that cycle, I need to decide  whether to wash the second rug. Or do I give up on a beautiful matching piece, both in original design and ability to collect dirt, and toss it away?

I have two loads of clothing in my hamper. I think I'll decide after I wash those. Tomorrow.

Extraterrestrials? Seriously?

 "Medium" can be an interesting place to read, even learn stuff... maybe. There was one today that put my back up however. It started by the author saying they worked at NOAA, and extraterrestrials live under the oceans.

Whoa pardner. Got any proof that they're from off-planet?

Let's start with two premises. 

First, we haven't discovered everything there is on this planet yet. However, we think we are the prime species, have the best brains, best technology, etc., etc. So far we've proved we're pretty arrogant as a species. We love to claim we are the most advanced creatures/beings ever to have evolved on this planet. 

Second, we continue to find things on this planet we can't explain... yet. It may be as simple as crop circles, which we've quickly learned can be done very elaborately by a cooperating bunch of high school kids who happen to be able to scrape a bit of radium from old watches as "proof" of space aliens. It may be as complex as the etchings on the Nazca Plain, which nobody has duplicated recently, so "therefore no human ever has." Only recently with lidar are we understanding the complexity of the temples and roads of a previous culture which marked solstices and equinoxes, in conjunction with a huge cultural network of roads for trading, among other things, both south and north of our border. Trees and much willful destruction have long hidden most of it. Technology and height are revealing it.

 Because we haven't ourselves done these things, it's very easy to claim humans never did, since early ones had to have been primitive, right? Gods, space aliens, who knows what people give credit to for what's in front of eyes willing to explore and see?

We can't breathe under water. In our arrogance, we have concluded since we are the only (self-defined) intelligent life here, that nothing intelligent lives under water. We are "the only species" to build things, therefore nothing has been built under water. 

We are learning, some of us, just how intelligent some other species are. They communicate. They build societies, cooperate in hunting and gathering. They use tools. But since we can build machines and tools to kill them, they're obviously not as smart as us. We are still supreme because we say we are. And thus, anything smarter than we are must be one of two things: a God, or a space alien. Despite learning more on a nearly daily basis of how much we do not know about the planet we live on, our arrogance still holds sway over our beliefs. (Some might say that alone proves our lack of intelligence.)

Now, about our oceans: stuff is happening there, stuff we can't exactly explain. Some of it is sets of noises, patterns still unexplained. Once heard and samples sent to other world locations, more are heard, recorded. They act in concert with each other. Ideas arise, but explanations are not yet found. So far it is assumed to be some life form, communicating across the ocean floor with another life form, though seemingly instantaneously. They seem to be very deep on the ocean bottom, so theories even arise as to what possibly might be a food source for something so... odd.

Remember those "tic-tac" shaped UFOs from a year or four back? Pilots had videos, possibly showing sharp right angle turns, dives into the ocean not creating splashes, things previously unobserved, unexplained. (Shhhh, don't tell anybody, you might lose your job when they decided you're unwell. Unfit.) Now our modern technology shows unexplained trails underwater. Of course, radar worked at revealing  previously hidden subs and its secrets were kept... for a while.

We're (they're) not saying it's pick-an-enemy-state's advanced technology doing it. The author says they're claiming space aliens, and have 'reasons" why it can't be us...yet. Or even if it still is way-y-y-y-y beyond our capability, but not any kind of human, they have to claim it's some undiscovered space alien species.

Why? Why can't it be something like a new-to-us intelligent species which also evolved on this planet, hidden from us until recently because hiding is part of their advanced technology too? Note I'm not saying it is, I'm saying they haven't/can't prove that it/they didn't originate here. There are tales and myths of various sea people through the ages. If they were real, couldn't it be possible they figured out how violent and dangerous humans can be and have learned to stay well away from us for their own safety? We were starting to do a pretty good job of covering the oceans as time went on. I'd avoid us!

But we're that invested in our arrogance, believing nothing better than us exists or ever existed on our planet. Has to be from elsewhere then.

Since I don't have that answer, I have come up with another set of questions, starting with a different premise. We know our activities are changing our planet, including our oceans. Global heating is changing currents, temperatures, salinity, nutrient distributions. Sea life evolved in stability for those factors, one reason saltwater aquarium fish are so vulnerable, as tiny water amounts change water quality significantly with small variations in any single factor, often resulting in fatalities. (Freshwater fish always have variability, including each time it rains, and evolved for it.)  Corals are bleaching. Life forms are decreasing, starving, sickening, dying. Plastic pollutes nearly every bit of it. Garbage and chemicals are being dumped there in ever increasing numbers. Our mechanical noises harm certain life forms. 

All these things we know. Now throw in an untested theory about what the new observations mean.

So, if we actually have a technological, intelligent life form in our oceans, now what? Never mind where they might be from right now, let's suppose for a minute they really are there. What's next? Do they rise up to stop us from killing off life on this planet, supposedly them as well? Do they just die along with all the rest of us? Are they just observers, making us the subject of some documentary as an object lesson to others about what not to do to your home planet?

Or are they just waiting for us to finish the job? Are we improving the planet for their needs, empty of life and ready for reseeding the flora and fauna to support their lives once we've proved we're a failed experiment? Or even zookeepers of many of our current species, holding them in stasis for a return and another try? I have read so many sci-fi stories and books, the list of improbable possibilities is very long. If they are there, intelligent and with advanced technology, the biggest question for me is why?

We may be very arrogant a species, but we do not lack for imagination, or at least not all of us.

It just isn't proof, either way.

"Swan Lake"

 That's all the identification I'm giving out. It's not the real name. The docks are pulled out before any ice builds, boats sit on land snugly tarped, so there's nothing else in the water to disturb them. Trumpeter swans, that is. Adult pairs - those are the white ones, although some have brown necks from mucking about the bottom of wherever of whatever lakes they raised their cygnets on last summer for green food  growing off the bottom. The cygnets are still grey, still sticking close to their parents, probably signalling all the other birds that they're not big enough to be paired up yet. It's the wrong time of year anyway.

We have not seen a single Trumpeter on the lake all summer. Too busy, to noisy, too many humans, not to be trusted. Until now.

Migration season is upon them. Just over a week ago there was a single set of parents with two young, gracefully parading just offshore, viewable to anyone who was picking up mail at the mail shed with an open view to the shore almost a block away.

A couple days later they were not to be seen. Not, that is, until turning the corner and looking across this end of the lake to the other end. Some were paddling down at that end. Others had pulled out onto the grassy yards. Steve was along, and together we counted 13.

I've been busy, and not down getting mail or otherwise anywhere with a view again until tonight. A bit before dark I drove down to grab the mail. Steve was expecting another book. Once that and the other mail were on the passenger seat of the car, I made the loop along the lake to my next errand. It wasn't too dark to count 15 trumpeters on our end of the lake, mixed ages, scattered groupings.

Heading across the road's lake loop, I noticed another woman, standing still, looking to where the bigger group had been a few days previously. A quick glance showed a bunch more swans where her gaze was fixed. As I pulled up with her, I rolled my window down. Without even having to ask, she informed me there were twenty on that end of the lake. I informed her of my counted 15 on my end. Thirty five swans on the lake this evening!  We both were thrilled they had paused here, not leaving the area quite yet, and shared our pleasure as being able to witness them, before both of us went our separate ways.

I'm now hoping our Thanksgiving company might get a view of them before they head on their way.

Reminders To Self

I'm officially back.  Nothing has changed except we're bigger laughingstocks in the larger world, or would be if the results weren't likely so dire. I'm banishing politics from here for the season. So far, other life goes on. I've started the two-week prep for my stuffing muffins, to be baked ahead tomorrow for holiday celebrations. We're hosting, here in the new place.

I recently had my annual eye exam. They're finally free to me, including the glasses prescription numbers, thanks to Medicare coverage, some supplemental insurance, and the fact my status has been qualified as diabetic. Not pre-diabetic. The A1C numbers haven't changed, just the medical coverage. I'm still not needing meds to control my blood sugar, just the need to watch my diet, aka count carbs. The more complex the carbs, the better. The fewer, the better. I'm still trying to pretend chocolate doesn't count. It really wouldn't, except they still insist on loading it up with sugar. Yummm.

Reminder: get one new lens in my glasses, not two. One eye still matches the old prescription, and the frames are still fine.

This will be my second thing not previously covered. I get proper shoes too. I'll find out next month just what that means, including orthotics, but I'm happy so long as they support my high arches. Those became a problem for me back in '85, after a work injury resulted in heel spurs on both feet. Those took about 4 years to get rid of, with the "magic" answer including very rigid soles (with good gripping power, so nix to all shoes feminine) and high arch inserts. I currently wear double inserts in "normal" shoes - men's shoes that is.

My sudden recent foot issues were a shock. After twelve years of a lot of walking barefoot in Arizona on the concrete floor of the house, sometimes bare, others with a simple rug on it, and no hint of an issue, suddenly I'm walking on a wooden floor, still bare-footing, for months while unpacking and organizing the new home, and even outside on occasion over grass. One foot suddenly developed a sharp pain in a different location. No longer in the arch or heel, but forward, just behind the toes. It has abruptly stopped me from being barefoot. I have a bit more tolerance for being barefoot on the carpeting than the smooth floors of kitchen and bathrooms. That translates into about ten steps without pain versus two, and rapidly closing in on zero.

While the fixes for both things are not a financial burden, lessons have been learned in both cases. 

For the eye exam, they of course have to dilate the eyes for a good view to the back. Any diabetes changes possibly leading to blindness will show up there. I'd made that appointment for the afternoon, with time built in for my often unpredictable work schedule, since it depends on my client's unpredictable work schedule. By the time the appointment was over, the sun was almost setting. At first I though that was a bonus, especially combined with my drive home being in an easterly direction, and not into the sun I couldn't protect myself from even with the black shades they hand you. But it was an hour's drive, and during that time, everything got black except oncoming headlights, each of which turned into light explosions. The ones behind me weren't any better as they perfectly caught in my mirrors, exactly as they were designed to do.

Reminder to self on this one? Make that appointment a few hours earlier, even if it costs work time!

Let's see how well I remember that in a year for my next eye exam!

As for the feet, my newest reminder to self is already becoming habit. My shoes are now taken off right next to the bed, last step of the day, and left on the floor where I can step right into them. Without socks for those first steps, they slip right on, shoelaces still tied. I'm in a hurry. After all, my first - or now next - part of my waking routine is walking straight into the bathroom, with its smooth hard floor and significantly more than a single step across it for its first use of the day. And last. And... nevermind.

If you wonder about hard shower floors where I have to stand for ten solid minutes, yes, they were also excruciating at first, until I remembered my pool bag in the closet. I have no good place for pool walking here any more, so it was way back in a corner. But inside were a pair of pool shoes, and while flexible, they also had arch supports tucked inside them.  I now wear one during my showers, and if this happens to my other, still-sound foot, I have the second still in the bag, also with arch supports.  The trick now with those shoes is to tilt to drain for a couple days between full showers, but there's a good place for things to drain and dry, no matter who else needs a shower when.

After a needed foot exam, I was sent two doors down the left hall, not counting restrooms, to the orthotic shoes department. I have an appointment for fitting two weeks out. The conversation with the doc leading to that went something like this:

" Does this hurt? How about this? Hmmm, jargon jargon inflammation jargon epsom salts jargon jargon massage jargon I'll write you up a...Oh wait, you're diabetic? You qualify for free shoes! With orthotics! The nurse will point you where to go on your way out."

Somewhere in that first appointment I'd talked about what had been done last time and what worked (my fix) and didn't  (the previous podiatrist's fix).  I was reassured they produced useful shoes these days, measuring/fitting feet differently than back in '85. It was something about putting your feet in a tray and filling it with foam which hardens. Or something. I'm pretty sure they have a way to get it off afterwards. I'm trying to keep an open, optimistic mind. 

I'm definitely keeping my old arch supports. Even if only for in the shower. And for inside winter boots.  (Reminder: go boot shopping, it's winter here!) And maybe for....

The kind of arch supports that I know work had been getting hard to find, what drove me to my regular doctor in the first place for a referral. I've been stretching them out way past their "use by" date or its equivalent. I finally got the brainstorm about a week before that podiatrist's appointment to check the manufacturer's website. They still sell them online. I ordered 6 pairs before they could change their policy. They adhere to the shoe inside, but the glue does wear out. Most days I adjust them while in the process of putting my shoes on. I have given thought to Gorilla - Gluing them in place to see if that's an improvement, but now I get orthotics, so we'll see how they work before getting out the big guns. (Hey, I'm referring to the glue, not my feet!)

Since that appointment we had a diabetic friend and his wife over. In his case he's become insulin dependent. He also wears diabetic shoes, and was delighted to hear Medicare will now pay for them. As a way of encouraging me in turn, he stuck his feet out to show me that different styles of shoes for diabetics were now available. He was wearing sandals over his socks that November day. It had just snowed out. I'm thinking he REALLY needs a free new pair of shoes!

Final note to self: DO NOT go for the sandals!

Hiatus

 I decided to step back for a bit. It's not that my first impulse wasn't writing a long scathing rant, because I've still got the partial rough draft sitting here, multiple pages, untouched, unfinished. It's that there's a lot to work through since the election.

I'd like to ask what happened? How on earth could we do it? But one comment that keeps repeating in discussions about it explains quite a lot. Voters overheard their fellow voters' comments about not even realizing that Biden wasn't on the ballot! How the hell can we be so ignorant?

We did this. We brought in an administration headed by a conman, Putin puppet, narcissistic man-baby  Hitler admirer, FOR THE SECOND TIME !

I wanted to think we didn't deserve this. Now I have to think we do. Unfortunately what's coming will be very painful for the people who voted it in (Surprise!), and with his vengeful nature, even more for those who didn't. It will also hurt everybody else, not just Americans, not just adults. Not even just people. 

I'm stepping away to grieve for a while. I need to organize, to plan, to try to find sense in the world again. I need to ask myself questions, both about surviving what's ahead, but whether I want to, whether I even want our species to, much as I so dearly love some of the newest members of it who have no say is what's coming.

We have been warned, those of us who bothered to listen. To read. There is a playbook out there, literally. It's very long. It's not fantasy. It could have been, had enough of us been playing attention. Yes, I know, busy lives, price of eggs, all those excuses. It just mattered more this time.

But all too soon, very little will. Matter, that is. Too many tipping points being blown past already, with no returning.

I need to go figure out how to deal with it.

Remember: No Flushing Now!

The plumbers were just here for the second time in two weeks. They're very good at what they do.

Now we've had some interestng plumbing problems in our lives. The first I can recall as an adult and responsible for paying the bills is frozen water pipes. Yes, they had heat tapes on them. But no, they decided to stop working when it hit 30 below. and of course it happened right on Thanksgiving Day when we were hosting the dinner. We had to cancel, of course. 

Plumbers are expensive on holidays.

When I was Mayor, the city had some interesting issues. If you think your house plumbing is expensive, try having to replace a full lift pump needed to bring all the city waste up a level or three to dump it into the sewer ponds. Granted it was a city of under a thousand people at the time, as development was just starting to take off at the turn of the century, but some criminally negligent resident had flushed a whole basket of baby clothes, diapers, cans and bottles into the system, slowly enough that each item wound all the way down the path until they all jammed up the lift pump. 

And they wondered why the city had to increase rates! 

For an educational tour I once got to follow one of the public works employees around along the path of the neighborhood sewer line, watching him raise a few manhole covers and see what might have accumulated along the path which needed to be removed. At that time, things were pretty good. A single penny was found and removed, to be washed and spent of course. Other objects from previous inspections were mentioned during the process, including other money and possibly valuable jewelry, on up to larger line blockers. As far as I remember from my terms there, this vandalism was a one-off. Newsletters and other notices blanketed the town of course. Nobody ever confessed. Everybody paid. Those living closest to that part of town with backed up sewage in their basements paid extra.

The newest issue is for the third mobile home I've lived in (though we refer to it as modular) or the fifth for Steve. We've found a few interesting issues, like need for painting, electric work, and similar things my son Paul can do, raising or lowering closet bars for hangers, a replacement carpet (professionally done), and even an indoor plumbing issue. A lot of decorations have been hung, along with an expanding hat rack. As soon as the kits for them arrive, we'll be taping 3M film storm windows across the insides of our many huge, extremely thin and somewhat leaky windows so the furnace can get longer rests. (They're due today.) There's been furniture to assemble or reassemble, depending on how they arrived here. Light bulbs have been replaced, nightlights installed, wifi and cable put in, a better ramp for Steve's scooter in the shed, and secure bracing for the railing on the front stairs. Paul even put in new working doorbells after we told him we didn't actually need them, but the "Big Ben" tolling is actually a comforting sound.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things. but there was always one thing needing to wait to be checked out, and it had to be done by a specialist: Checking or replacing the heat tapes and insulation under the house for the water lines. We've had our first snowfall, about 5" of very heavy wet stuff that melted the next couple days, including what the park's plow shoved across our parking pads along the streets. I contacted the park's person for the heat tape job, and last night, with a flashlight in pitch dark, another problem was found, needing an immediate fix before he'd head under to deal with heat tapes and insulation.

I understood his hesitation completely!

The sewer pipe was both disconnected at a joint by just a bit, and blocked somewhere after it dipped below ground level. Need I mention there was a "lovely" mess over the ground? We have no idea how long it's been that way. With the house up about 3 feet from the ground, give or take because of the slight slant of the hill down to the lake over its 28 x 66 footprint, we had absolutely no idea what was going on. We got an immediate referral to plumbers who could fix it, who turned out to be the same company who'd just fixed the inside problem. They open up at 6:30. I called at 6:38, and at 1:32 this afternoon the problem was fixed.

This was an old problem, with a bad repair. We know what company because they left their company name down with their repairs, so we could use them again, I suppose.

Ummm, no thanks! No really, you've done enough. Truly!

They'd had to snake out the drain previously, sometime before we bought the place. It had clogged at least once back then, but in order to snake it they had drilled a hole in the pipe (!) across the top where it hangs horizontally under the house floor studs. When it plugged again the water backed up to that hole and sewer water "escaped" all over the ground under the  floor. It was bubbling out the top of the pipe at that spot, spreading lord knows where, and mostly just sitting on the  ground. 

Now just a note here. We watched the entire process when the new home next door was moved in, ground graded repeatedly before the concrete slap was poured,  the two sections connected, the whole thing braced up on the slab by stacks of concrete blocks, utilities added, stairs built, a shed in process, furniture moving in etc. I took dozens of pictures. Apparently all of that from building up the ground to level and pouring the very thick slab is legal standard these days. Our house went in back in 2001, and we have seen no evidence of a slab under it. I won't swear there isn't one, just that we haven't looked for one. In fact, I just learned how to open the sections of skirting (they have clips)  to see underneath. What I did see the night the problem was discovered was a ground cloth of some sort, with puddles sitting on it. Oh yes, along with oodles of pieces of pipes, cords, and who knows what else stored underneath inside the skirting. Usable? Or somebody saving on construction materials disposal costs?

The first thing I heard this morning when I called the plumber was to not use any water until everything was fixed later this afternoon. No showers, no laundry, no washing dishes, and above all, no flushing!!! Good thing I'd already figured the last thing out!  I mean, not so good when I walked back in the bathroom, but good for the plumbers. There was one trip to the nearest gas station.... but the gas tank is now full, and there is now antifreeze in the washer fluid tank. Besides, I bought a lottery ticket that'll be as useless as all the others over the years. I think of them as a cheap entertainment tax, the basis for fantasies of "what if".

We can use water now. The house probably smells better but I can't tell since my nose hasn't improved that much after all.  Or perhaps it's in rebellion. Whatever gasses filtered up inside while the problem was developing we both have become nose blind to, but the timing is great since we're hosting Turkey Day this year. Now I have to contact the Park guy about the pipe heat/insulation job, but I won't blame him if he decides to wait a couple days. 

It's forecast to be in the low 50s for the next week anyway.