The first time the washing machine drained and the toilet overflowed and flooded the bathroom and warped the bathroom door here at the rental, we called the Landlord, or the person we had been led to believe was the personal representative of the landlord.
The next time, when we realised that the raw sewage was bubbling (I use the word under advisement) up in the front yard I called again and got the Landlord himself who was horrified.
The next morning a crew of twenty-somethings with lithe, lean bods and tattoos and baseball caps arrived with shovels and began digging up the sewer line.
Watching them dig was not so exciting but come on, I'm old and fat but I remember and I'm not dead so I got kind of a kick out of watching these kids, any one of whom was almost old enough to be my grandson.
So today they came back with a Bobcat. Not, alas, a real one, which would have been VERY exciting if they had tried to dig with it, but a backhoe.
And they began to dig.
I didn't get their names. This one seemed to be in charge altho to be honest they all worked just as hard as the next one and all of them seemed to know exactly what they were doing. This kid did this a thousand times, stuck his head out the front, and each time I expected the Bobcat to buck and snap his neck.
This one had the most interesting tats which I did not get a photo of. They kind of wrapped around his ribs on the other side and were very tribal. The sign on the truck they drove said "Gutters" and I made some crack that it was a long way from gutters to sewers. He said he had started in sewers and felt of the two it was by far the most secure career. He laughed. He was covered with sweat and dirt and clay and god only knows what else, standing in a hole at least 6 feet deep peppered with broken tree roots, cigarette in his mouth, laughing.
They are filling in the hole. They had us run all the water for like a half hour. Now the huge pile of dirt and cement pieces and roots are being shoveled back into the enormous hole. I have no idea what they get paid for this. A lot, I hope. I do not see anyway the dirt is going back in the hole. I know it will sink, but....
I do hope the Landlord is not expecting us to water it every day.....my real yard and garden are a complete disaster, having been left for an entire growing season to go completely wild with weeds, and it has.
They have just cut our lawn mowing down by a good bit, I guess.
AND
of course, I can flush the toilets again!!!
As a pioneer or explorer I would not have been much of a success, I'm afraid. It's not the bugs and beasties that bother me, but the lack of a loo.
Not a glass of beer: the color of our drinking water at the moment..... some days I feel as if I need Cody Lundin just here in the house.
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