Top o’ the week to you!
Welp, I whiffed last week’s life news post, and I started but didn’t finish this late Sunday night so it’s obvious I’m phoning in this one, too, but I am DETERMINED to get some kind of update posted. So here goes.
TL;DR version: It’s been a weird two weekends of House Surprises and all the disruption screwed with my head space more than I like.
I had a really good first week of March. We ate lots of pazcki to celebrate Mardi Gras, there was a not-on-the-actual-birthday downtown expedition with Frontera Grill lunch, I built a table, did some new writing, completed a bunch of house & life admin work, and recorded a podcast interview for Writers Drinking Coffee that went really well—or at least I think it did.
And then Friday the 7th the sump pump started to smell bad. Like, REALLY bad. To me. Spouseman could only smell it in the actual pump room, but I could smell it everywhere in the house. (The heater’s in the same utility room, so it kinda spread the stink everywhere.) And that made it pretty hard to do anything for a few days except think about the stink.
Smells are a huge sensory trigger for me. Bad smells can make life impossibly hard. As in ”hard to concentrate, hard to think about other things, hard to even sleep.” The wildfires a couple of years back taught me the part of my brain that processes olfactory input can send DANGER-DANGER-DANGER alerts 24/7 for weeks.
Since the sump stink was a NEW bad smell of unknown origin, that set off the “AAUGH something is dreadfully wrong” alarm full force. (This was probably a great survival trait back in the trees-and-tribes era, not so adaptive in the modern world. I do have coping mechanisms for recognized/known bad smells. They aggravate, they can set off anxiety, but mitigation is possible.)
Anyway. I should’ve called the sump pump people right away, but denial is not just a river in Egypt. I lost the weekend to wishing it would get better, which it sorta did, after I flushed it with a weak bleach solution, but it kept coming back, so it was not enough to say, “It’s fine, this is probably a rare thing I can fix.” So it remained there in my brain nagging at me because of the Unknown Cause.
Unknown always equates to Catastrophic, in my underbrain. Always.
I beat down the procrastination reflex by mid week, and a very cool sump maintenance tech came out Saturday, did a needed annual inspection while he was here and confirmed the bad news that the stink is coming from sewer outflow seeping into the groundwater that then rises into the drain tile the sump pump collects.
Which, yuck, but at least not a major sewage leak and not something that had come misconnected underground. In a way the whole incident is a coal mine canary good thing, When something’s gone wrong in the sewer line, it’s better to find out as early as possible. I mean. Yuck.
Anyway, the sump is smelling nearly fine since its cleaning and since the weather’s drying out, and we have an appointment with a plumber-with-a-camera to check our sewer line Wednesday.
So Wednesday we find out if we just need minor rodding work or we get a new driveway this year. (See, our sewer line is underneath the driveway, because THAT makes sense, right? I guess it made sense in 1929 when the house was built and the driveway was grass between concrete drive strips, maybe. I have my doubts.)
That wasn’t the only House Disruption last week, either. Last Wednesday we finally got the siding and windows professionally cleaned of all last year’s road AND house construction dust, debris, muck etc. So huzzah for being able to see the outside world properly again.
But surprise, that meant we learned the frost-free hose spigot we didn’t get repaired last year needs repairing this year. A few gallons of water overflow from the pressure washer came down the outside stairwell from the anti-siphon valve which made for some cleanup, but hey—sump pump prevented anything but the concrete stairwell flooding. Yay, sump pump.
Anyway. that repair is going on today. New hole in the brick wall to make room for a longer replacement spigot, which will put the shut-off valve further into the house’s heat envelope, and also put the spigot higher + at the slight slant it’s supposed to have which the old one, um, didn’t. (Very common problem, according to the plumber.) So, all good, in the end, but not fun here in the middle.
Other distractions kept my brain active and fed the creative well.
I finished Farscape (four short seasons and a 3 hour movie, lots of nights of insomnia) and started on Babylon 5.
Bab 5 is something else. I had a talk with another scifi nerd at work recently who could never get into it because the costumes and prosthetics put him off—but he loved Battlestar Galactica, which, okay, much prettier, but DAMN the pacing of a slug on a salt lick in January, plus a blithe disregard for any
I tinkered around with my website a bit, since it’s hit the 18 month mark and that means I want to Do Things. I set up a second private blog for myself where I can rant about life as much as I want and not clog up this blog with all the negative vibes.
I’m fighting the urge to give New Blog its own domain because it doesn’t need one. And because “It would be fun to own wtfallday.com or madeofwtf.com or actualwtf.com” is not a good reason to shell out $20 a year or more in perpetuity.
And I learned how to put together a Dremel tool. Futzed around with it for an afternoon, which is enough to say, yeah, I should probably invest in one of the little battery powered ones just for tinkering.
But not right now. I have enough projects going on. Today there will be baking. Because I have to make soda bread at least once a year.
And now, the best part of any post: Cat pics!
Pippin making sure I am comfy with him pinning my legs to the couch. Blue blanket edition.
Pippin being remarkably relaxed and fluffy while pinning me to the couch. Red sweatshirt edition.
The grocery box never stays empty long when Pips is around. It’s how cats help with unpacking.
Okay, that it until later.
What’s on your bookshelf?
This is the part where I talk about my books.
Relics From A Traveling Show
The newest of the new! A collection of all my short fictions in one handy volume, available now from your favorite booksite or local shop.
Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.
Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:
Title: Relics From A Traveling Show
Author: K. M. Herkes
ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)
Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.
If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.
I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.
All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.
Support your favorite independent bookseller! Find a local shop via Indiebound
Be a potato.
" Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."
Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)