Bad news.  The sewer pipe leading from the house has eroded and collapsed.  It has to be replaced, which involves major digging.  The estimate is $3,500.  It =has= to be done, but I don't know where the money will come from.

Saturday the basement drains started backing up, spewing sewer water onto the floor.  It required a lot of mopping up.  And we couldn't pour the water down the drain, see . . .

Naturally, this had to happen on a holiday weekend.  But the rest of the plumbing was unaffected; it only meant we couldn't use the basement bathroom or the laundry room.  An annoyance.  Kala called a plumber and scheduled one for Monday morning--today.

He's now industriously snaking out the main drain.

I have several friends who live in co-housing (or housing co-ops, as they were once known).  The New York Times is carrying an interesting article about them today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/garden/11cohousing.html

The maple tree in the back yard has been expanding its territory of late.  The branches have poofed out and down, coming lower and lower.  It makes negotiating the back yard a little difficult, and there's no clear path to throw a baseball.  Time to trim.

I got out my tree saw and figured out which branches would be best to trim.  Zipped them off in fairy short order, though I had to saw the biggest one twice because it broke off roughly and the bottom peeled away badly, so I had to neaten it up.  The littler maple also needed one branch nipped off as well, and I noticed that near the fence, my nemesis the black walnut was sneaking back to life.  The black walnut that set up shop near the house finally gave up after being hacked to pieces four or five times, but the one by the fence keeps coming back.  I sawed that one down as well.  Recruited the boys into carrying the brush out front.

Next I got out the caulk gun and the rubber caulk cartridge.  I don't want any diseases sneaking into my trees!  I spread rubbery black gooeyness over the exposed raw wood like  giant band-aids and stepped back to check the effect.

Oh yeah!  The back yard looks much bigger now.  Way more lawn space without sacrificing shade.

We keep dropping further and further under water with our house.  "Under water" is the current term for people who aren't in danger of foreclosure but whose houses are worth less than they owe.  The people one house down from us have just listed their place for $80,000 less than we paid for our house.

This is a huge problem.  Not only does it mean we're paying large amounts of money for something that is no longer worth the amount, we also effectively can't sell or refinance our house.  We aren't backed by Freddie or Fannie, so we aren't eligible for the federal bailout, either.

We're drowning in negative equity.  At least our payments never increase.

Finished with the kitchen today.  Hooked the boys into most of it.  Cleaned out the rest of the cupboards, went through all the food cans to make sure nothing had expired.  Cleaned the refrigerator and freezer.  Mopped the floor.  It took all morning and most of the afternoon!  Man.

I decided to try a different method of spring cleaning this year: pick one room per day and do it thoroughly.  It sort of worked.

The kitchen, I knew, would be hardest because it has the most ways to become dirty and the most stuff that needed sorting out.  So I went to work on it.  I made the boys help, too.

First we took down the curtains for washing, and I decided to get all the ones in the house at once.  Then it was wash all the surfaces and pull the dishes from the cupboards for washing inside.  I also pulled anything we hadn't used in a year and put it in the garage sale box.  This freed up a lot of cupboard space, and I rearranged some stuff to make things more accessible.  I also put some countertop appliances into the cupboards, freeing up more counter space.

The curtains were finished, and we put them back up, a laborious process.  The boys washed cupboard doors, though I had to keep pointing out spots they missed.  I attacked the stove and got it all clean.  Walls and windows and windowsill were also done.

But by 2:00, the food cupboards and the refrigerator were still not even touched, and I declared an end to it all.  Tomorrow!

Back in the house, the new shelves I'd bought to put under the sink were taking up precious cupboard space, and the only way to deal with it was to put them to use.

I got my harp stool to sit on and pulled out all the stuff from under the kitchen sink.  Sorted through it, tossed some stuff, combined some others.  Then I cleaned the surfaces.  And--cascade!--since I had a wet cleaning rag in my hand and I was eye-level with the lower cupboards, and since I could see various dirty bits, I cleaned all the lower cabinet doors as well.  And then I got all the corners of the floor that the mop doesn't reach well but which I could now see from my new vantage point.

Put all the supplies on their new shelves in their new, clean environment and turned to the catch-all counter.  You know the spot I mean--it's that place you toss stuff you don't know what to do with right now but will get to later.  And it piles up.  It's actually been slowly driving me crazy over the last week or so, and the Cascade Effect pulled right into sorting it all out.  Now the cupboard is cleared out and everything sorted.

Here I ran out of steam, and the Cascade Effect lost its power over me.  Tossed the cleaning rags in the laundry and declared that I was Done For the Day.

The weather was in the fifties, and I'd spent a lot of time inside at the computer using my mind lately.  I needed to do something physical and brainless and outside.  So I went out to the back yard, snagged a rake from the garden shed, and raked all the winter debris from the bush-and-flower border near the privacy fence.   I don't normally like yard work, but now it felt nice to be outside doing something mindless with my hands to give my brain a break.

It clouded up while I was working and spat a little rain at me, but I kept going.  Raked the debris out and stuffed it into lawn bags left over from last fall.  Then I caught sight of the altar area.  While I had the rake out, I decided, I may as well keep going.  Raked all that clean, and also trimmed back the bush that was invading the goddess grotto.  The bush in question had already burst into bright yellow flowers (no leaves yet), so I kept the trimmings and later put them in a vase on the dining room table.

The back corner of the fence tugged at my eye.  That spot needed clearing, too.  By now I was fully caught up in the Cascade Effect.  Maybe it catches you, too.  You do one small job, which uncovers another small job, which uncovers yet another small job, and each time you say, "Well, I may as well do this, too," and before you know it, you've spent the entire day doing what was supposed to be one small job.  This happens to me all the time.

Raked the back corner clean and scooped all the junk up.  I was hauling the bags to the curb when I passed by the basement windows at the side of the house.  They were clogged up.  The cascade continued!  I cleared the windows out.  The bushes in the front yard had collected leaves, too, and the bushes that grew beneath the living room windows were threatening to block the view once their leaves grew in, so I raked and trimmed there.  And then I looked around the other side of the house.  More dead debris, more cascade.  I kept raking.

During some stage in this, I realized I was getting blisters from the rake, so I went in search of garden gloves.  I know I have at least two pairs around here somewhere, but the only ones I could find were Kala's pink ones.  They were snug, but usable.  A sign of maturity--you don't give a shit about the color of the work gloves if they'll stop the blisters from getting worse.

At this point, Maksim came outside.  "I want to help you, Daddy."   I said that was very nice of him, and said he could scoop up leaves while I raked.

At last it was all done.  The bags were at the curb, and Mackie helped me put the tools away.  But wait!  The Cascade Effect wasn't done with me yet . . .