Break out the kazoos and confetti, the basement’s starting to resemble a basement again! Our project’s timely completion is a blow to anyone who hoped it might run long, thus affording me time to explore an array of uncomfortably personal topics here later this week: the deafening roar of my biological clock as my 41st birthday approaches, the irritation I feel about being a lesbian every time I need a man’s help around the house, and the wrenching heartbreak I’ve experienced daily since the discontinuation of Carnation Breakfast Bars more than 25 years ago.*
With any luck, we’ll get to those things eventually. For now, I’m happy to have a little peace and quiet again so I can watch a terrible movie tomorrow. And in the meantime, let’s check in on everything that’s happened over the last 10 or so days. You’ll recall from a previous post that I had to clear out half of the basement and that some flooring had to be torn up and wall paneling removed to accommodate the work. Here’s a bit of what that looked like. There were three big piles of dirt once the digging was through, and 12 holes:
Piers and poles:
Then the dirt was (mostly) returned whence it came and the concrete patched.
I’ll do several more rounds of dusting, sweeping, vacuuming and mopping once the concrete’s fully dry; so far I’ve only done one. Then we’ll be ready to restore whatever paneling was salvageable and put the carpeting back in the main area of the basement and on the bottom steps. More foundation work might be in our future, involving the other half of the house, so there’s no point in making any changes down there right now. All that matters is that it’s clean and usable and we’re free to move on to the next thing.**
* People with male partners assure me it doesn’t work that way. It’s not like I’m asking for a master carpenter; I’d want a guy who could clean gutters, dig holes, move heavy things, replace a garbage disposal, and enter the attic without shrieking. If he wasn’t otherwise motivated to help, I’d pull a Blanche Devereaux and offer to pay with nature’s credit card. My lesbian aunt’s butch partner would say “Women can fix anything men can fix.” Unfortunately, I’m attracted to women with soft hands and impractical heels, who only own one screwdriver they can never find — and they aren’t sure if it’s a flathead or a Phillips. (Crankenstein is also useful for translating German, explaining memes and identifying potential drug interactions.^)
** If you’re wondering “Why are you doing all of this if your marriage is on life support?”, there’s an easy answer. Regardless of whether we continue living here together (as a married or separated couple) or choose to sell the house, it has to be maintained at the minimum, and preferably improved.
^ The dumbest questions I pester Crankenstein with often involve drug interactions. “Can I take an allergy pill and ibuprofen with my Zofran?” I’ll ask, and she’ll either look at me like I’m an idiot and say “Yes” or (dryly) reply “No, it’ll kill you” without looking up from her book. But it would be really on-brand for me to die by misadventure or land in the ER with a weird reaction after combining the most innocuous-sounding medications. “We always knew this would happen,” my parents would somberly remark after hearing the news. “We always knew she’d irreparably damage her liver by combining pills any five-year-old knows not to mix.”