It’s been a day. I met my friend, Jonathan at my house this morning at about nine. He has an old pick-up truck. I wrecked mine a few years ago coming home from an inipi ceremony...I poured water and sang all night long for a healing sweat, but that’s not the diary.
Jonathan and his truck came to my house to help me haul out all my belongings and sort the salvageable from the lost...about 50/50 so far. This is the second day of salvage. The salvage goes to my landlord’s two-car garage and covered carport. He’s not using them. I’ve stacked two pairs of folding tables to make shelves. I’ve bagged all my clothing, bedding and massage linens, and will sort and launder later, but not too much later. We’ve emptied the laundry room, living room and single bedroom except for bits of trash, broken clothes hangers and such, and those will be staying for now. Their presence will not matter to the landlord. I’ve given away my tropical fish, brilliant rasboras, a silver loach given me by Jeni when she and her lover were breaking up...he was feeding her fish to his Oscar...my two ten-year-old silver dollars, bigger than my hand now, and Batman, a ten-inch plecostamus. They went together to a new home, and I still have to empty the aquarium, but it can wait. Tomorrow I’ll be emptying the bathroom, and Monday, hopefully, the kitchen. Then I’ll start on the deck. Incline/decline bench, wall stack, 300 pounds of free weights, mountain bike in a magnetic resistance trainer. Table saw, tools, paintball gear, barbecue stuff. The hot tub can stay for now, but I’ll drain it. Have a huge pile of possessions, on and under tarps, under a pop-up canopy, in the driveway and on the lawn, my staging area. Books, several hundred, many swollen fat with wavy pages.
This started Thursday morning, the sixth of October, when I stepped out of the bedroom into the bathroom. The floor was wet. I stepped out through the other door, into the living room. The carpet was wet, very. It rained the night before and I guessed the French drain behind the back corner of the house had been cover by mud from the hillside, so I got dressed and headed out back with mattock and shovel. Dug the mud off the drain and noted the gravel was full of sand, so I dug down to the leach pipe and pieced it with the mattock. It was completely full of sand, so I dug a trench around the knee wall, but there wasn’t any water in the drain to run off. Odd. I went back in and got out the shop-vac, and filled it, eight gallons of water, in maybe five minutes. Emptied it and filled it again. This was not good at all. I turned the water off and called my landlord. He said to just hang in there, his maintenance guy was in Utah and would be back in a week. I, umm, got a bit chesty with him. "A week? No, this is NOW! Get somebody out here today."
And I went back to vacuuming water out of the carpet. With the water off, I actually began to catch up, but then more water began streaming in across the bathroom floor, and it smelled like gray water or worse. I called the landlord again, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t return my call, either. The water stopped. Disinfectant and the shop-vac, big floor fans. It would dry, but no plumbing. I called the landlord and left another message. I came home in the evening, still no call back from the landlord, but at least the floor was dry, and the smell gone. I went to bed.
When I got up Friday morning the floor was wet again, bathroom and living room. It hadn’t rained and the water was shut off. I had to think a bit. I have worked in construction and city maintenance, and have some knowledge. My guess was that the house above me on the hill was leaking gray water and possibly sewage into my house and I had an internal plumbing leak. Called the landlord again, and he answered. I told him what I thought and he said, "No, not possible."
I went back to vacuuming until it became obviously futile, and quit in tears. Three shop fans, all the doors and windows open, and the floor was continuing to flood. I gathered up some things and left for the weekend, but when I returned the house was like a swamp. I began moving valuables out, and called my now unresponsive landlord. I considered calling county health and county code enforcement, but decided I didn’t need the place red-tagged with all my stuff in it.
Here I should mention that I have lived in this house for the past seventeen years. It is rural, sort of. Outside the city limits, away from the road, up in the trees. My red heeler, Sadie, has lived here all her life, and it is ideal dog property. No traffic, nice neighbors, trees, squirrels rabbits, quail, the occasional coyote, deer or bobcat. Nice, and affordable. Also my primary workspace. I do massage and bodywork here, along with computer repair. Or did. Not now. I did some couch surfing, and settled in with an ex. Our parting some sixteen years ago was hard. Painful for all concerned, but we’ve both had time to heal. She suggested I call the landlord, and eat a little humble pie. I agreed, I got chesty with him, but if he had listened to me, we would be a week further along in this process. The call helped. I apologized for my rudeness, not for being upset, and told him that I wanted him to know I was grateful for having the house for so long, that when it was good it was great, but when it had problems it had problems. He offered to put me up in a hotel for the duration of the repair and rehab work, and I countered with a better offer. A hotel that takes dogs, only two in town, $90 and $130 per night, is not cheap. Divide the rent by the number of days in the month, and deduct it from the rent, starting the first day and ending when I move back in, at the same rental agreement.
Thursday, Gary, the maintenance guy, arrived from Utah. His nephew, Francois, had been digging around the house like a madman, but had found nothing but holes. Gary and I talked, and he at least acknowledged the possibility that there was at least gray water, maybe even sewage, running through the seam between the concrete floor slabs and into the house.
My home is still full of sewage...yup, sewage. My uphill neighbor’s sewer line is severed, as are his gray water lines, and it is all percolating down the hill side and up through my floor. I am evacuated, and will clean out the bathroom and kitchen Monday. A friend, John, is a warehouseman, and has volunteered some heavy plastic unitized industrial shelving. I can pick it up Monday morning, and set it up under the covered carport. It will be another several days before everything is under cover, and by the time it is organized, hopefully, the repairs will be made. I have been told by the landlord and Gary that the house is getting a full interior rehab...all the drywall out, carpet out, frame heat-treated for mold. All new walls, flooring, paint, fridge.
Sunday, the seventeenth. I’ve taken the day off, and am not trying to salvage anything today but my sanity. Saw a massage client, went out for lunch and spent the rest of the day up at Meditation Mount, enjoying the mist and quiet. I brought Sadie, my red heeler, and a friend, Claire, who is having a rough time of her own. We spoke very little, and on the way back she thanked me for my silence. We stopped by the house, and picked up some more books, a space heater and a rice cooker. I dropped Claire off and went "home," not really home, just a room in someone else’s house.
No, I do not have renters’ insurance. I think the landlord will be square with me. He seems to be happy I’m trying to be helpful in this instead of threatening him with legal action. He and I are both Viet Nam veterans, both army, he a captain, me a sergeant. It helps. When I stopped by the church where I work part-time as sexton and volunteer as homeless shelter host, the office manager asked me how I’m coping with this fiasco, what helps. I told her I’m waltzing through it. She said, "Huh?"
I replied, "You know, the AA waltz...1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3..." but she didn’t understand. I explained, quoted her the first three of AA’s twelve steps. "Admitted we were powerless over (alcohol) and that our lives had become unmanageable, Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him."
That level of acceptance does not remove responsibility, as some have suggested, for action. It gives me a realistic starting place. I realize this is not much of a diary, but having my home flooded with sewage and losing so much like this just seemed to beg notice, so here ‘tis.