Tuesday, May 20, 2008

In the Hole

So, if one piece of heavy equipment in the yard is a good thing, it would stand to reason two pieces of heavy equipment in the yard is even better.

Wrong.

That second piece of equipment would be the emergency backhoe brought in to assist the emergency plumber with making the emergency repairs to the neighbor’s (?) water lines the first piece of heavy equipment unsuspectingly pierced.

Go ahead, ask the question out loud. No, the real question. The one that is the subtext of the first question that came to mind.

The answer: I swear, we are not idiots. As evidenced by the inordinate amount of time spent preparing for the heavy equipment, we attended to every detail. We checked with the water company, the phone company, the cable company, the electric company, the propane company, every imaginable city and county office of: zoning, planning, platting, plotting, a daydreaming.

And as for the first, more socially appropriate question: we do not know why the neighbor’s (?) water line runs down the center of our property.

The defense presents as exhibit “A” this crude drawing:




Wherein MisFit Farm is the area in red, Steve and Carolyn’s homestead is roughly represented by the area in yellow, and the property owned by the neighbor (?) is grossly underrepresented in green. The brown area represents the house, which is not even close to scale or proportion. The left side of the image is south-oriented, and the neighbor (?) is located to the north of us. Steve and Carolyn are to our west.

The point I am trying to make is that this isn’t a “neighbor” in the conventional sense. We actually rarely see or interact with this person, since the part of our property that abuts hers isn’t even accessible without the use of a machete, anti-malaria serum and hip-waders. The access road to her home runs on the west side of her property.

The neighbor’s (?) water line, as it turns out, runs smack-dab down the center of our property.



To answer the second socially appropriate question: We have no idea what we are going to do. Our contractor was super – he had someone out this afternoon to “repair” her line so she wouldn’t be forced to bring her rubber ducky and bathrobe here to the trailer to bathe in the morning. But I shudder to think what the extra two miles of pipe will do to her already challenged and inadequate water pressure. And I shudder to think of the “who pays” and “how much” questions which will likely face us tomorrow.

Stay tuned: we can’t wait to see how this saga ends.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh my crazy aunt?
What the... how the heck?

AND...
I would NEVER doubt the
pre-check-phone-calls
made by the ever detailed A...
with the 110% support from K...
What a weird chance event!
At least that's how I imaged it to go.

I have not read up to the latest post yet.
[breathing... and here I go.]
Ev.