We are getting ever nearer to having a clean safe water supply. What a hassle. It's taken:
- two bacteria tests
- three visits from the county water quality inspector
- one spirited conversation between husband and county inspector
- three meetings with three different drillers to hear their competing, mutually exclusive plans
- some small marital discord over what to do
- six weeks of hassles refinancing the mortgage on the Cleveland house, in part to raise the funds
- two days of sitting here to help the installers and answer questions, while enduring bone-rattling machinery
- a mini excavator tearing up part of the yard, which now needs to be landscaped anew
- guys pouring bags and bags of concrete-like stuff into the old well. "It's older than Moses!" observed one of the workers.
- $7,809.50
- a huge bottle of bleach to sterilize the pipes… involving running around turning on and off taps, sniffing for bleach and in the process inhaling a fair amount of the stuff… and now we're without water for 24 hours while it sits in the pipes working, we hope, its magic.
All that remains is… one more bacteria test and complete installation inspection by the county dude, which will happen later this week. IF we pass, then… hello faucet! Clean and potable water will be ours. And… if we don't pass, MORE hoops and hassles. Dread. Let's all pray together…
A note to all city slickers: you take for granted the whole faucet, running water thing. You carp on about arsenic and lead and chlorine, but honestly… isn't just turning the water on a lot easier than all this? Get a filter and you're good to go!
Well, if and when this all works out, we will have true "Jurassic water" — the accurate term actually used by Mr. County. And it comes out of the earth sparkling clean and numbingly cold. The new water pressure is already wonderful– it makes every shower feel like a shower massage. Soon, we will be on the road to glory.
This brings to mind what a summer it has been, with major projects stacking neatly against each other, leaving no daylight. Since I'm into bullets today, let's review:
- deciding to rent the Cleveland house, seeing as it simply wouldn't sell, that was in May
- putting in a new kitchen seeing as the old one was falling into ruin– many trips to Cleveland and meetings and hassles
- having the interior repainted– see above
- meeting with the 4 20-something renters, nice young people!
- haggling over the lease ad nauseum, annoying little bastards!
- dealing with the insurance and utilities
- putting in new carpet– see above
- getting new dishwasher, sitting in the car in a violent thunder storm waiting for it to be delivered; watching a tree go down only a block away
- Refinancing the mortgage so that now our payments are slightly less than the rental income– i.e., the house is now break even instead of sucking up tons of money
- dealing with the whole well situation, see above
- and now… rumor has it: good news! Our new kitchen in the new house might happen soon. This is great… long over due… much needed… much wanted… AND it will be, you guessed it, a huge project and hugely disruptive.
I'm looking forward to the part where we just live. We just get up, go to school and work, come home, play outside, have dinner, and just… you know.. go along calmly without ten contractors lined up outside the door.
In amphibian/reptile news, we get the feeling we have a snake. A LARGE snake, living on the terrace and perhaps eating … toads! Ben sighted it one night, and based on his description, my mother thinks it's a hog-nosed snake. (There are no venomous snakes in Ohio, so fear not.) In any case, I was walking back and forth putting the kids in the car and suddenly I was accosted by a very loud and hostile HISSSS! coming from the bushes. Other times, I've walked by and heard more of a thump sound, as if someone is sleeping right in or near the downspout, and has been startled.
All was quiet there for a week or so, and I thought… hoped.. the snake had moved on. But Ben heard him do the downspout thump thing yesterday morning.
A traumatic event a few days ago: Isaac very foolishly decided to let his prized baby bullfrog out of its critter keeper for a short fun hop. The frog was hopping around on the terrace bricks, a brilliant hopper, really powerful and getting lots of air. So then, sure enough, it hopped right into the bushes. And not just ANY bushes– the very bushes where the snake has apparently been hanging out! So Isaac realized what had happened: his frog was lost into the utterly dense foliage, and also had basically jumped right into the jaws of death.
So he started SCREAMING. I mean, full-on air-raid siren, and sobbing with bone-wracking sobs, and yelling desperately, "What am I going to do!? What am I going to do!?" Being a devoted mother that I am, I rushed inside and got equipment: a broom and a flashlight.
"What's your plan?!?" screamed the forlorn Isaac.
May I add here that I'm afraid of snakes?
But nonetheless, I began batting the bushes with the broom and peeking under shrubbery with the flashlight. I saw nothing… no snake, no frog, just leaves. I worked around the bush as best I could but still saw nothing, heard nothing. The frog had disappeared, but the snake was seemingly not at home.
Plan B: I went inside and got a flat pan full of water. I explained to Isaac that the bullfrog would want and need water, and maybe it would hop into the little pan pond and then we could catch it. As I was setting this down under the bush, the frog hopped right out into view! I froze. I just FROZE for a second– "Isaac, catch him!" I told Isaac. But he too froze. Bullfrogs are a little, well, slimy. Cold, and icky to the touch. "You catch him!" yelled Isaac. "No, you catch him!" yelled I. "MOM!!!" he screamed. I finally made a go of it, but came up with a handful of leaves, and the frog has not been seen since.
The fact that the snake-thump has returned does not bode well. The good news, though, is that my mother in Iowa has a whole pond just full of bullfrogs. "I saw one the other night that was a two-hander!" she exclaimed. She and my step-dad Max are coming out in a few weeks, and will bring one, if needed, at that time.