(NOTE: This a follow-up to my 2011 blog post, "I'm Getting That Sinking Feeling," which explains the situation in detail. Click here to read:
https://sallybreslin.blogspot.com/2011/03/im-getting-that-sinking-feeling.html
A few things have happened recently that are causing me some concern...um, make that a lot of concern.
First of all, I had the semi-annual maintenance done on my automatic generator system two weeks ago. Usually the electrician shows up, does the outdoor task and then leaves. Sometimes I never even know he was out there until I receive the bill. This time, however, he rang the doorbell.
Years of experience have taught me that when the person who is mowing your lawn, plowing your driveway or making an outside repair rings your doorbell, it means either he or she needs a bathroom break...or something is wrong.
In this case, it was the latter.
"The concrete pad your generator is sitting on has sunk below ground," the electrician said. "I barely could change the oil because I had a lot of trouble reaching anything under the unit. You're going to have to get a new pad and raise things up."
The news caused something I had been trying to ignore for years to resurface...my property still was sinking. No big surprise there. I'd been told back in 2011 that my house needed to be jacked up on piers because the ground underneath the foundation was basically mud, thanks to an underground spring.
The piers and their installation, however, cost more than I earn in a year or two.
I smiled and thanked the electrician for the information and said I'd get the new generator pad installed soon.
Like maybe in 2035.
If I win the lottery.
Then the other night, I was curled up on the sofa and watching TV with my two dogs when suddenly a loud crash came from somewhere down in the bedroom area. The dogs and I both jumped.
Imagining all of the worst-case scenarios – an alien invasion, a burglar, an escaped convict hiding up in my attic and falling though the ceiling – I sent my dogs down to the bedrooms to check things out (while I hid). To my surprise, they ran straight into the hallway bathroom, which is smaller than a closet and doesn't even have a window.
I inched my way toward the bathroom and cautiously peered in through the doorway. I couldn't figure out what I was seeing. The shower-curtain rod, which resembles a metal pipe, was lying on the floor. The curtain was totally detached from it and lying in a heap in the tub. It looked as if someone had been standing in the tub and yanked on the shower curtain, causing the rod to come crashing down and the curtain to tear off.
A thorough search of the house revealed no naked, soapy intruder or any other forms of life. So I was puzzled...until I tried to put the shower rod back up where it belonged and discovered it no longer reached.
That's when I was forced to admit that the prediction I'd been given by a structural engineer (about the house splitting in half in the future if I didn't get it jacked up on piers) finally was coming true. I'd been ignoring the fact that my inside doors had been closing by themselves for months and the basement was getting darker because the windows were letting in less and less light and more and more scenes of earthworms tunneling in the soil.
But I can't ignore the generator sinking and my shower rod falling off the wall. In fact, I now kind of feel as if I'm living on the Titanic.
Therefore, I thought I'd better write about what's been going on lately so if I wake up one morning and discover the house and I have fallen into a giant sinkhole, someone might come searching for me.
And bring a crane.
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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.
