Day 20 - Writer's Block

Image by Tony Dowler via Flickr

I am having a lot of trouble getting started today. I turned to the Writers Exercise Generator for ideas and tried several of them, looking for inspiration. But none of them worked. So I'm going to have to try just writing for the sake of writing, without great hopes for the results.

There was a lot of banging around our house today as Henry and his plumbing crew began their work to replace the sewer pipes below our house. Not surprising, given the age of our house, the task is not entirely straightforward or a simple as it looked yesterday. The fact that our house was built in stages explains why the plumbing is really three segments joined together in an expedient, but not necessarily the most efficient manner.

The pipes under the main house have all been replaced. So we have water and drains for the kitchen, laundry and two of the bathrooms. But sewers leading from the master bath to the main house go under the garage and all our efforts to find a hatch failed. And in the course of replacing the pipes that could be replaced, Henry found there are roots in the pipes outside the house. So that means those pipes need to be replaced as well, and that will require trenching through out yard.

Henry did solve one mystery that has nothing to do with plumbing. He noticed clumps of dirt in our yard and explained that we have a gopher - or two. Our yard is very lumpy, not nice an level like I am used to.  He also pointed out one area of our lawn that appears to be in so much better shape than the rest. The shape of the particularly green patch suggested to Henry that there may be a a break in the underground irrigation system pipes. That system was put in place by the investors who bought the house and then renovated it, so it is not at all old. Unless we see our water bills growing unreasonably, we'll probably just accept that some of the lawn looks in better shape than the rest. The direction that the trench for the sewer line will have to go won't give us any clues to the status of the irrigation system.

We did find one mystery that I'll have to explore further another time. Henry noticed the floor in the closet in the laundry room was wooden and there was a hinged hatch with two holes in it that looked just right for opening it. After we moved all the items out of the closet and Henry lifted the hatch, all we found was an underground cavity, a little like a safe built into a wall, without the security of a metal door and lock. But more curious was that the portion of the floor next to the hatch had holes in it, holes that appeared to be air holes for whatever living thing might be put into the cavity. Each one of us when we saw the holes had the same reaction - what are they for?