Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Water in the Basement

Water in the Basement

Yesterday Linda headed off to work. She works in a nice modern hospital and has a difficult job on the cardiac ward administering all the drugs associated with cardiac surgery. It is extremely hectic and they call her about every day to come in and work extra hours. She politely declines, except on Fridays when she goes up anyway for the weekends. In six weeks she will be retiring and we will have each other full time. That is a mixed blessing. The interludes put a strain on our relationship but also give it a breather. A little bit of Percy Goodfellow goes a long way, I like having the weekends to work on my trucks and yes the extra income is good. Sometimes it is hard sorting the right reasons from the wrong reasons.

Anyway yesterday evening I got up from a marathon writing session and walked into the bathroom. I noticed water running in the commode. I picked up the porcelain cover and noticed the float plunger in the down position, no water in the reservoir and the slide not seated where the plastic valve drops into the drain hole. Normally this is not a big deal for most urban dwellers expect they receive a whopping water bill that month. I reseated the valve and there wasn’t much water pressure in the house. Out in the country we have a well and a silt filter and the water is pure but a bit murky coming up from deep in the ground. Anyway I went downstairs into our finished basement and there was about an inch of water on the floor. SHUCKS! I said to myself. Now, the only way that this could happed was for there to be two concurrent failures. First the commode had to continuously drain and second the sump pump had to fail to function. The water from a continuously draining commode goes into a sump, which is a 55 gallon drum sunk into the floor when the basement is poured. When the sump fills a lift pump sends the excess water to the septic tank however when the pump malfunctions at the same time ,the water backs up into basement. At midnight I was sweeping water across the linoleum floor into the drain and jiggling the sump pump to connect and evacuate the water. When I got all I could up I put the floor fans to going full blast. It was 3 O’clock in the morning when I called it quits.

It could have been worse. This house is 15 years old and the guts in the commodes need to be replaced as does the sump pump. That will be another project for next week. I wish Linda had some plumbing skills. In a rural area you learn how to do lots of things folks in the urban areas would never even attempt. They aren’t all that difficult if you get a how-to book and follow the directions closely. It isn’t that we can’t afford service technicians but it takes forever for them to get out here. So when something breaks, Linda and I sit down at the kitchen table and figure out how to fix it. These discussions we have are good for our relationship and while we yell at each other sometimes when we try and fix things together there is a feeling of accomplishment when we succeed together, not to mention the money we save. This has worked for everything but hanging wallpaper. That was almost the end of our marriage.

Linda is also good for my writing. She has read so much about everything that she has a good sense for what will work and what will not. I use her as a sounding board.

This morning she called from the Hospital. It is a ritual of hers as she settles into the days work. She calls it her “Percy Fix.” She needs to talk to me as part of the putting on her game face process. It is an interesting psychological process because when she is home there are long interludes when we don’t say much to one another. Then when the weekend arrives and she is away she calls me three times a day. (No it isn’t because she doesn’t trust me!) I think I told my readers that unlike my father and brother I don’t have the “Twinkle” gene. Except for Linda… she says I do but you can’t really trust your wife to be completely honest on that subject.

Anyway today I will spent most of my time in the basement and perhaps I can have it dried out by the time she gets home. Why is it that everything goes wrong when your wife is off to work?