The Dark Murky Abyss

This past week-end my husband had full intentions of building an ark but was consumed with the flooding of the basement.  In a past blog I mentioned that my basement was the scariest place on earth and I stand by that statement.  Sometimes when I am up to my elbows in dishwater and laundry, I find myself grieving for those days when I only had myself to look after but then the sub-pump kicks out in the basement and I am reminded why I can never live alone.  I cannot go down into the basement at all.  When I first viewed the house before buying it, the realtor took me down to the basement and there was an extra large painting of Jack Nicholson peering through a crack in a door he had made with an ax( The Shining).Of course the painting reinforced that the basement was haunted or housed a serial killer. I bought the house with full intentions of never having to step foot in it. How foolish I was.  The basement is not only home to goblins, ghouls, ghosts, and killers but also home to every spider on the planet.  Occasionally one will make its way up the drain and present itself as I am stepping into the shower. Screaming has become quite common around our house. I have often wondered if I am responsible for all this rain considering I have washed several large hairy spiders back down the drain and flushed a few down the toilet.  When it does rain the basement begins to fill with water.  Water scares me for some reason. I am not afraid to swim in it, wade in it, or walk in it but if it over flows it frightens me to death. We have two sub-pumps that make a loud whirring noise when the water table becomes high enough for it to kick in and then it sucks the water out.  My husband takes care of any sub-pump maintenance.  He went away recently for a week-end fishing and I was responsible for plugging in the cord of the sub-pump located at the top of the basement stairs twice a day to drain the water.  The task did not require me to step foot down the stairs.  The first day he was gone I dropped the cord and it tumbled to the bottom of the stairs into the dark murky abyss. I had to fashion a large hook made of four coat hangers and black electrical tape in order to retrieve it.   Apart from the sub-pumps, the basement is also home to a large furnace, a water tank, and copious amount of pipes that travel up, down,  and around the basement ceiling.  If something were to go wrong with any of those things, I would probably pack a bag and run away allowing the house to perish in the disaster. I never gave these basement issues much thought when I bought the house.  I was single, needing my own place, and able to purchase my own home.  I fell in love with the house and pretended that the scary place below did not exist.  Thankfully I met my husband a few months later and he moved in shortly after.  I cannot imagine what would have become of the house had he not come along. My knight and shining armor fights off scary spiders, fixes loud sub-pumps, and takes care of the things I fear the most.  I am lucky to have him.

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