Happy Thanksgiving!
From my bed. As I sit here in pajamas under a blanket imbibing ginger ale and wondering just how much it would suck being at work for eight hours versus calling in sick on my second day (yes I got a new job) (and yes, I'm considering that; I have phone anxiety).
In the meantime, the family out there is cooking up a storm and the real horde of people hasn't arrived yet. I hear they do a hymn sing every Thanksgiving as a tradition, it should be interesting to see what that's like. While they do that and socialize and have fun, I'll be hiding in my room watching movies and missing my family, 250 miles to the east.
But hey. I have snow and they do not. I win.
May your Turkey Day be filled with much food and even more family, no matter how annoying.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
My house has issues
So tonight the washing machine in my basement decided to get funky and instead of washing clothes like it normally does and is supposed to do, it spewed water all over the basement, soaking anything that was set on the floor within a 10 foot radius of it. That may not sound like a lot, but to the fortunate few who have survived an expedition into the basement, that is an extraordinary amount of stuff.
This is how my basement is laid out: You go down the stairs into the basement. You visually locate the area you are trying to reach. You then proceed to navigate your way through the maze of things on the floor in order to get there. My basement holds enough things to furnish a second house. If you go down there you will find books, records (of the vinyl variety), furniture (including nightstands, cedar chests, a dresser, an ottoman, a book shelf, a jewelry case, several tables, including one for ping-pong, and a chair or two), cloth, clothing, a sewing machine, a mattress and box springs, a guitar, a trampoline, arts and crafts of several varieties, Christmas decorations, mirrors, clocks, toys, an ironing board, jewelry, rugs, pieces of carpet, a cardboard box cut into a castle fort, movies, and those are just the things that I can name while sitting up here in the safety of my living room at two in the morning without going down to catalog the entire contents of that room.
Boxes are piled on top of each other, things are leaned this way and that, and the floor is only uncovered so to leave paths between all the piles. Going down there is similar to playing Pac Man. Go through the maze, move things out of your way as necessary, avoid the ghosts, and reach your goal.
So when I went down to check on my laundry, I discovered (by stepping on them) that the rugs on the floor were wet. Further inspection of the floor led to the knowledge that the cardboard boxes surrounding the washing machine had been attacked by an unanticipated flow of water. And, of course, these soaked boxes hold books that had now also become wet. I promptly began to empty the boxes, only to find another and another and yet another box affected by the flood. I then began to find more rugs affected as well. The rugs were easy. I put them in the offending washing machine on the spin cycle and then laid them out on an unaffected portion of the floor by the heater to dry. I then did my best to squeegee any standing water into the drain in the floor (yes there's a drain in the floor, more on that later), but when you don't have a squeegee, that's an incredible yet impossible feat to accomplish. Instead I used an old mop conveniently located right next to the machine that has a fine toothed brush on it for reasons unknown to me.
Now, this is how my washing machine works.
The water comes from a magical land connected to the washer via a portal in the wall. It washes the clothes. The machine then goes into spin mode, which sends the water flying through a pipe and not out of the building as you would expect, but into a really old utility sink next to the washer instead. The really old utility sink then drains with the speed of molasses in January through a really long pipe that snakes behind the washer and dryer, around the dehumidifier, and into a randomly located drain in the floor. Why the house is set up like that, I will never know. All I know is I'm forever glad the machine isn't located on the ground floor because if it had pulled the prank it decided to pull tonight, it would be out on the curb looking for a new home and new job and I would be pulling up carpet and floorboards trying to undo a water damage.
As it is, the machine is simply too heavy to lug up all those stairs and through the garage (which is also set up like the basement) and onto the curb so it gets to keep its job through sheer luck.
Now, about the ghosts I mentioned in the Pac Man example.
This house is old. So old that the architecture of it reminds me of my great-grandmother's house, and she lived there for most of her adult life. She died at 92. This house was built by the old lady who used to live here. She and her husband lived here, raised at least two children, the children moved out, and the husband got sick and died (not in the house, but a few miles down the road at the Veterans' Hospital). The old lady is now in the nursing home.
So though there have been no deaths in the house that I'm aware of, I'm pretty sure this place is haunted. At first, I joked that there was a poltergeist about when I lost a few things. I mean, having your hairbrush disappear isn't that big a deal when you tend to leave stuff lying everywhere like I do.
But then a balloon migrated from my room to a room I never enter.
Doors I closed were open the next time I walked by.
Lights I turned off came back on again. They also flicker.
And then, one night, I was sitting in the living room and saw a whitish figure of a person come out of the hallway in my peripheral vision. When I looked up, it was gone.
So now I have my washing machine acting up for no particular reason.
And my house is extraordinarily cold. I don't know if I should blame the heating unit or cold spots due to paranormal activity.
I think my house is haunted. I think the ghost temporarily possessed my washing machine. I think, as long as I behave myself, I won't have a vengeful spirit on my hands.
I also think I've been watching too much Supernatural.
This is how my basement is laid out: You go down the stairs into the basement. You visually locate the area you are trying to reach. You then proceed to navigate your way through the maze of things on the floor in order to get there. My basement holds enough things to furnish a second house. If you go down there you will find books, records (of the vinyl variety), furniture (including nightstands, cedar chests, a dresser, an ottoman, a book shelf, a jewelry case, several tables, including one for ping-pong, and a chair or two), cloth, clothing, a sewing machine, a mattress and box springs, a guitar, a trampoline, arts and crafts of several varieties, Christmas decorations, mirrors, clocks, toys, an ironing board, jewelry, rugs, pieces of carpet, a cardboard box cut into a castle fort, movies, and those are just the things that I can name while sitting up here in the safety of my living room at two in the morning without going down to catalog the entire contents of that room.
Boxes are piled on top of each other, things are leaned this way and that, and the floor is only uncovered so to leave paths between all the piles. Going down there is similar to playing Pac Man. Go through the maze, move things out of your way as necessary, avoid the ghosts, and reach your goal.
So when I went down to check on my laundry, I discovered (by stepping on them) that the rugs on the floor were wet. Further inspection of the floor led to the knowledge that the cardboard boxes surrounding the washing machine had been attacked by an unanticipated flow of water. And, of course, these soaked boxes hold books that had now also become wet. I promptly began to empty the boxes, only to find another and another and yet another box affected by the flood. I then began to find more rugs affected as well. The rugs were easy. I put them in the offending washing machine on the spin cycle and then laid them out on an unaffected portion of the floor by the heater to dry. I then did my best to squeegee any standing water into the drain in the floor (yes there's a drain in the floor, more on that later), but when you don't have a squeegee, that's an incredible yet impossible feat to accomplish. Instead I used an old mop conveniently located right next to the machine that has a fine toothed brush on it for reasons unknown to me.
Now, this is how my washing machine works.
The water comes from a magical land connected to the washer via a portal in the wall. It washes the clothes. The machine then goes into spin mode, which sends the water flying through a pipe and not out of the building as you would expect, but into a really old utility sink next to the washer instead. The really old utility sink then drains with the speed of molasses in January through a really long pipe that snakes behind the washer and dryer, around the dehumidifier, and into a randomly located drain in the floor. Why the house is set up like that, I will never know. All I know is I'm forever glad the machine isn't located on the ground floor because if it had pulled the prank it decided to pull tonight, it would be out on the curb looking for a new home and new job and I would be pulling up carpet and floorboards trying to undo a water damage.
As it is, the machine is simply too heavy to lug up all those stairs and through the garage (which is also set up like the basement) and onto the curb so it gets to keep its job through sheer luck.
Now, about the ghosts I mentioned in the Pac Man example.
This house is old. So old that the architecture of it reminds me of my great-grandmother's house, and she lived there for most of her adult life. She died at 92. This house was built by the old lady who used to live here. She and her husband lived here, raised at least two children, the children moved out, and the husband got sick and died (not in the house, but a few miles down the road at the Veterans' Hospital). The old lady is now in the nursing home.
So though there have been no deaths in the house that I'm aware of, I'm pretty sure this place is haunted. At first, I joked that there was a poltergeist about when I lost a few things. I mean, having your hairbrush disappear isn't that big a deal when you tend to leave stuff lying everywhere like I do.
But then a balloon migrated from my room to a room I never enter.
Doors I closed were open the next time I walked by.
Lights I turned off came back on again. They also flicker.
And then, one night, I was sitting in the living room and saw a whitish figure of a person come out of the hallway in my peripheral vision. When I looked up, it was gone.
So now I have my washing machine acting up for no particular reason.
And my house is extraordinarily cold. I don't know if I should blame the heating unit or cold spots due to paranormal activity.
I think my house is haunted. I think the ghost temporarily possessed my washing machine. I think, as long as I behave myself, I won't have a vengeful spirit on my hands.
I also think I've been watching too much Supernatural.
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