The water curse

Now, see, I have a theory. I have been painting water. I wanted to write about VISITS to water. So somehow or other water has suddenly gotten the idea that all I want to do is deal with issues around water. It is mistaken. I need a medium or someone who specializes in communicating with water to set the record straight.

Water is a nice place to visit but I don't want to live there.

We had the leaks around the windows and people on the roof eliminating frozen varieties of it so the liquid would get the bleep out of Dodge. At that time, as I changed containers and towels, I sang, "You and me and rain on the roof..." (Or maybe THAT'S it. I Sang to water it mistakenly took that for worship. hmmm.)

We discovered from that that we, in fact, must put down a new roof on that side of the house in order to sell. Cha CHING, $4200. Good thing I got that disability settlement, huh. Okay. I'm chill. I'm cool. I'm a grown up after all, and accustomed to chaos what with my rediscovered sense of humor and all.

Then we have the "Old Black Water" ten days.  The failed sump pump and wet vaccing. I Called the chain of cleaners cutely named after a child's locomotive, when the rug was fully dried, proud of myself and of Jay because there was NO mildew or yucky smell. We kept on top of it all. I explained the situation and they arrived THursday. The guys asked me about it, looked at one another and said, "Oh, ma'am, we can't touch this. There might be mold. You should have had the mold remediation people here within forty-eight hours."

"What good would that have done when the water table was still rising? Have them come every day to use the fancy wet vacs?"

"Well, until this environment is certified as mold-free, we will not do the carpets."

"Why didn't your person who asked me all these questions and set up the appointment tell me this? She asked whether we'd had standing water for forty-eight hours and the answer is NO. EVERY day we wet vacced three or four times a day and at night there was no standing water, and in the morning I vacuumed it up."

"But you and your son are not professionals. And the phone people are not trained the way we are.  Sorry to have wasted more precious days for you, but you need someone out here right away."

Okay, so I call the mold folks and tell them all about it, after having kicked pillows around because of wasting this "precious" week and entertaining visions of dampness behind the sheetrock and fungii and horrible things that grow in old water. They said, "So. You had total mold remediation in 2007 and that part of your basement had none. You had water for a week to ten days and wet vacced at least twice--no, THREE times a day every single day?"

"Yes."

"Does it smell bad or something? It's all damp now?"

"No."

"Well, why would you think there is a problem for a professional cleaning?"

"Because the company won't touch it."

"But you wet-vacced three times a day."

We went round and round and finally this company said they would come and give an esitmate of whatever work might need to be done, but that it would probably be just a cleaning. I said, "Fine. You have the job, as long as you will sign a report that says it's fine and clean my carpet."

"Sure. We charge for an inspection, but not when you decide to use us even for a straight cleaning."

Which brings us to the septic system... Yes. You guessed it. Shot. Supposedly. Although, I have spoken to four men with four different opinions, two of whom seem to think they can come on a weekend and fix the problem and I won't have to hook up to a sewer that is above grade.  They ALL agree I'll have to shell out the seven hundred bucks to have the septic guy use his spyware little camera scope thingy to find out what the problem IS. Sludge I believe is the word.

There is no song for that.

And so, dear readers, the further adventures of Jeannette tries to sell her house continue. One of my friends had said the other day, 'Well at least you have a roof over your head."

I just stared at her and she blushed. "Well. I mean you'll HAVE a roof over your head soon." We both laughed. "AND you have a brand new toilet!"

Today she called and said,  "Somehow even the toilet comment doesn't set right today."

I am watching my disability settlement slip away so fast. And these are not glamorous changes that make most people buy a house. BUT they are the last BIG things that were on the list of stuff a homeowner might have to address within a couple of years. Yippee.

Sludge rhymes with Fudge. Now that's just NOT RIGHT. I leave  you with that thought for now.  ALTHOUGH, maybe if I start painting pictures of fudge and of money, things will change.

Right.

I'll get a gold mesh bag of chocolate pirate coins...

What now you may ask?

Water, water everwhere, nor any drop to drink.
Water, water everywhere, and MY how it doth stink!

Yes, dear readers, I have been wet vaccing in the basement, three times a day. Ah, the glamor of it all. But the song "Workin' in a Coal mine, goin' down down down" Keeps floating through my brain, which sort of takes the onus off.

And moving furniture to polish my wood floors and my kitchen floor. Climbing on stools, reaching above my head to get books off the shelves so that I could Murphy's oil then lemon oil all the wood. Hey. I mop n glo'ed with a TOOTH Brush to get around the wood of the banisters. Somewhere in the last two weeks, the nasty little demon in charge of turning perfectly sloppy women into anal housebodies who walk around with Swiffers singing, "Wake up your room!" (Sorry to you who are younger, it's a line from a simply horrid commercial from the sixties where a bedazzled housewife sang as she dusted, "Wake up your room, wake up your room, with natural wood-scent Pledge.)

Anyway, this disgusting demon told me that I must do the corners. That I must be on my knees getting that waxy build up from the floor, that nameless gray goop that accumulates. And I did.

AND rode my exercise bike.

I would sit at the computer to write and my mind quite simply went, "Duh? Arrr?" Think confused Scooby Doo. Then I had to tutor Adam about rhetorical devices in two essays, by Elie Weisel and Alexander Solzhenitzen. And then come home early from his house to wet vac the basement again.

My house is once again officially on the market. I look over the last year and realize that nothing has changed except me. My financial situation remains precarious, but the fight for social security is done. That brought me a peace I cannot measure.  I go through weeks like the last two and continue to accomplish what should be impossible for my back to bear, but I do it... and my back cannot bear it so I pay dearly.

However, then I come out of the payback and there is humor. THAT is the change. I rediscovered my sense of the absurd and my sense of proportion and perspective.  And somewhere or other, I've lost the ability to worry about it all. A loss for which I am grateful beyond words.

Truth be told, the last two weeks have been simply horrible. I could not walk yesterday more than about five steps at a time. When I say I could not walk, it is a literal comment. I had to hold onto things or I collapsed. The pain has been beyond my ability to cope at times.  I could not stand up straight no matter HOW I tried.

I finally took this as a sign that perhaps it was time to lie down, although I did not read the sign until I'd been up stumbling around with a Swiffer and my can of Pledge for an hour. There is no twelve-step program for stupidity. Not really.  I've been looking... obsessively of course.

All I wanted to do was write a little story about my travels to Red Bank. My part two of what could be a freaking novelette, probably. But those words do not come just now. Too much sludge and not enough metaphor just now.

Hey, but  I DO remember the winter after my husband walked out.  It was the only other time my basement flooded. Only then it was so bad that we had lovely little waterfalls falling out of the fireplace, glistening in the light. The water was deep enough so you could hear the splash. I had thought of turning the heat off altogether and perhaps having an indoor rink. I had a sign on my front door that said, "Welcome to Cliffwood Falls." (Cliffwood Drive is the street.)

I was determined to succeed, however. I had survived the hundred year old oak falling in the middle of the night three days after Mark left. I didn't ask for his help then. No. I was mighty. I would handle this on my own. A shop vac. I can just vacuum this stuff right up. I'll get me one of them.

Now, ya gotta understand that on those dumb tests where they determine what your aptitudes are, I was in the bottom twelfth percentile for mechanical ability. When I went off to college it took me FIFTEEN minutes of experimentation before I gave up and asked someone to show me how to use one o' them old-fashioned hand held silver can openers. To this day, it takes me two tries to use my nice slick Scandinavian black hand-held can opener to remember how it works.

So for me to go to Sears and buy  myself a shop vac, come home and put it together all by myself? Please. Applaud. Bow before me. I did it. I READ the directions and laid out all the little pieces and put it together without a hitch. I broke for dinner, but had it done before the eleven o'clock news. And it WORKED.  And I think I had to put together at least eighteen, maybe even TWENTY moving parts.

After the fourth day of using the thing three times a day, and hauling it out the garage to dump it, Mark happened to call and ask whether I could use some help that night. His mom had told him about the water. I was going to say "no" but for once in my life, realized that pride is just, plain, stupidity sometimes. He came over and went downstairs and did a long stint. I went down  after an hour to ask if he wanted some supper, and he was busy swearing at the machine because he could not move it over its own wire.

I said, "Mark, it's super full and is sloshing out the top, you gotta be caref--"

He tipped over the sixty gallons and it flew all over the only parts of the carpet that had remained dry. Black, stinky water.  It also got me in the face as well.  I started to sing, "Old black water, keep on rollin'." And then I wailed, "Well keep on Shinin' your light, gonna make EVERYTHING, pretty mama, gonna make everything all right. And I ain't got no worries, cause I ain't in no hurry... at all!" (Doobie Brothers, some time in the early seventies)

Mark looked at me, silent, my giraffe of an ex husband, a hint of a smirk playing at the corners of his straight lips. "Well. My work here is done. I always have known JUST what to do to make things right. Care to throw the Hoover upright Beats as it Sweeps at my head again?"

The memory of my heaving that at his head, there in that very spot in the basement, when I got him to admit he was NOT considering staying but had been waiting to leave until the kids left... the memory of my having the strength to do it, the look of surprise on his face.

The laughter came, to the point where we sat on the steps and held one another until the tears came. At which point I got up and said, "NO MORE WATER!"

***

And these are the things that leap and cavort through my brain as I slog on through this business of "getting the house ready to show."

• It is not a tsunami in my basement. It's annoying yuck.  
• I am alive, and my home is fine. And my back is better today, so I was able to pretend I was born to polish again today.
• I rode my bike for an hour and a half, singing rock and roll the whole time.
• I have money to pay my bills.
• In these times, in this country? I have everything I could possibly need.

Well. Except, perhaps, a brain capable of coherent thought. I wrote tonight because I was sick of NOT writing. It's what I do, how I enter the world. And bad or good, specious or profound, I write what happens in my little teeny world. The sign that last year is behind me for real is the fact that I am willing to blither publicly, to share how I DO process this life.

Today I move through sludge. Tomorrow I fly. One day I throw a vacuum cleaner at my ex's head. Another I stick a fondu fork through my hand. One never knows.

***
That's what I loved about the Jersey shore. You could run into someone who looked like Burt Lancaster one day and sounded like a dockworker, and then be approached by someone who clearly was stuck in "Stayin' Alive," wearing speedos, gold chains that glistened here and there, lost in the fur blanket of his chest, with the short-sleeved shirt buttoned by one button, straining over the not-twenty-year-old belly ... the man who would walk the forty yards to where you  had clearly removed yourself to draw and sit on the rocks, who huffed and puffed his way there to say, "Youse look like ya need company. I got a porsche wit cher name on it."

And I would think, "Why me? Am I wearing that sign again?"

I just wanted to write about my adventures, but nope. For now, my life is wet vaccs, mops, and chasing dust rhinos around my house.

Just wanted you all to know I am here and I Miss my blogging and others' blogging. Sometimes real life--SURREAL life will intrude.

Forgive this entry, if you can. Perhaps tomorrow I can write about the forking incident--although, perhaps I already have. I'll check.

If you celebrated St. Patrick's Day, I hope you had fun. If you did not, I hope the same. For now? I think Jeannette needs to sleep. Perhaps, in the night, the tooth fairy will, since she has no further business with me, find my brain and leave it under my pillow. One can hope.

Working on Part 2

I'm here. I've been painting, getting the house ready to go back onto the market. (Oh joy, oh rapture.) AND I have been working on Part 2. I think I have to break it into two parts. It would seem that I am rambling.

Wait. Control your surprise. I went off on a Portugal tangent. Then I meandered into some other thing about traveling alone and how freeing it is. Clearly I was a tad too free as I wrote. I found some pictures I took.

What I need to say is that nothing is wrong. Not even remotely. Just busy being my butterfly-attention-span Jetty.

Did I tell you all how I got my nickname? When I was about three or four, I could run around UNDER the dining room table, as well as tearing in circles through the dining room, into the kitchen, around the fridge and washing machine, into the living room, PAST the 9000 foot long couch, sharp left through the arch, back into the dining room, quick tour of the den, back under the table, and do the circle in the opposite direction.

There was a cereal called Sugar Jets, and in the commercial a little girl would put her arms out and run around going, "I'm jet-propelled!"  I thought that sounded nice, so that is what I would shout while I did this.

I was a charming child. Easy on my mom. My dad watched me one day, and I was beginning my fourth or fifth tour of duty, from out of the sky came the long arms of GOD and I swooped up to the ceiling, squealing. My father brought me down to his Old Spice chest and said, "Slow down, Jetty, slow down.  The world will keep spinning fast even if you don't."

And that was that. I was Jet and Jetty from then on...

SIDEBAR...

Part 2 of Runaways to Redbank still doesn't say much, if anything about Red Bank. I simply TOLD everyone I was headed to Red Bank when I left home--either from PA or CT.

It's more about West Long Branch, where there was a wonderful, long boardwalk that had a row of those marvelous old places--a diner, arcade, fudge and candy type store, and gee-gaw place.  All of the places were boarded up the last time I went there. I had lost my brother by then and was feeling rather lost.

Here is a picture and a poem I wrote back then.

I'm not going to include the poem!

It DOES express something of what women over fifty often feel, when the beauty men found so irresistible has nearly disappeared, blurred by wrinkles, weight, and, in my case, the debilitating spinal disease that had taken hole.   But, you know what? I just don't feel all that BAD.

I love this picture, though, with my clogs all alone there. I was free, unencumbered, and just beginning to find my eye, to realize that I HAD an eye for art.  I had so little confidence seven years ago.

So. Dave. Does this answer your question for now? I love to ramble, but there are limits.  I have mentioned to a couple of friends a comment made by you and someone else, picturing me or some other woman onstage, telling my tales. The woman who followed your comment imagined that I must use my hands when I speak.

Two days ago I was telling my best friend some ridiculous story and forgot, when I got to the climax, that I was holding my coffee cup... I'll leave it at that. I DO use my  hands. When I was in high school, I was in the drama club.

AGAIN with the control your shock.  I played Katrin in Mother Courage and Her Children by Brecht! Our new, very young drama adviser had seen that we had done only plays like "Corliss Archer Goes to the Prom," "The Mouse that Roared," and "Mousetrap." He told us that the play WAS a real stretch, but he wanted the seniors to have a real acting experience. I tried for Mother Courage, but got the mute who dies. He said, "Trust me. Challenging as I know it will be for you to shut up, you will steal the show."

I learned to tell a story without words from him. I never did learn to shut up, though. I'll be back!