Mopping raw sewage in his cellar, the wolf regretted ever leaving the forest.
From where had it come? Had the sewer line leading out of the house clogged, causing in-house sewage to somehow overflow into the furnace room, or had some external problem caused outside sewage to flow back into the house and overflow?
And why did it have to happen on a Saturday night, maximizing the time he would have to wait before a plumber could come?
He imagined scenes from plague horror movies where a janitor mops contaminated water and you see a single drop, in slow motion, splash up and get him in the lip, or the eyeball, and then in even more extreme closeup, how the bacteria, or viruses, enter his bloodstream, etc.
Everything is a question of perspective, he told himself.
Accepting his fate to the extent that he mopped up everything and resolved, once it had dried, to mop the room again with some sort of harsh disinfecting liquid, the wolf nevertheless washed his paws for a long time, then clipped his claws and washed his paws again. And then again.
Good thing about a pandemic, thought the wolf, is at least you have lots of disinfectant on hand.
Then he poured a glass of whiskey, closed his eyes, and thought of tundra, and forests, and prairie.
Tag Archives: plumbing
A question of perspective.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Metamorphosism
Adulthood, part 239897490780981234
You may recall the Microsoft 3-D pipes screensaver. If you imagine that leaking uncontrollably from every joint, you have an approximate idea of what it looked like under my kitchen sink last week after I tried to fix a leak and then, as a test I guess? turned the dishwasher on.
I had two buckets under there catching the water, and still had to hold a dish to catch what they missed.
On the bright side our ant infestation is slightly better, maybe they had been taking a short cut under the sink.
I called a plumber and told the woman who answered the phone, I would try to fix it myself but my wife has forbidden that. She LOL’ed.
She said the earliest someone could come was the following day. I said, I’ll take it. Then I called a second plumber, and when he miraculously was able to come the SAME day, by NOON, I called the first plumber and cancelled (as I had warned them I might), AFTER the other plumber had finished and I was satisfied everything was okay.
“Two gaskets were in backwards,” said the plumber’s helper, when he presented me with the bill for signature. “That may have been me, but it may have been someone else,” I said, and signed.
When I checked under the sink, everything had new gaskets AND they had rearranged the pipes in a more rational order. I don’t recall who did the original plumbing, but it looked somewhat random, where the sink trap had been placed and the angles of the pipes. It looks better now.
My wife was impressed that I managed to get a plumber to come on short notice, and says I may deal with plumbers from now on.
I guess it was the desperation in my voice, combined with my generally jolly yet panicky nature.
Posted in Das Gehirn, Familie, Metamorphosism
Tags: adulthood, crisis, desperation, flooding, plumbing