Things Your Plumber Never Told You
Last week a friend commented that our “house event” seemed to be going on for a long time and was “pretty life-occupying.” Well, yes. That’s undeniably true. But it’s so much more fun now than it was last summer. In August we couldn’t bring the natural gas line to the house until a mitigation crew dealt with the consequences of our leaking oil tank and filled in a 9-foot-deep pit in the front garden. In the course of “doing the right thing” (much more time-consuming, complex, and expensive than we had imagined) we were declared a toxic waste site and everything ground to a halt. We’re still working with the invisible infrastructure of the house, but now we’re laughing a lot more. The tape around the drain pipes was a temporary fix that allowed us to shower while spending a couple of days repairing decades-old structural damage. We’ve discovered reserves of patience we never knew we had. And we’re making full use of our buckets.
I can’t imagine any site that you occupy being considered ‘toxic’…. though I remember my surprise when I found out the site near the park I played at in Piscataway was actually a dump site for radioactive dirt. Strange, the things that can occupy space near you, with invisible but dangerous consequences. (Though I think the ‘dirt’ was covered with a lead tarp, if that helps at all…)