Quit Being Babies

Thanksgiving is coming.

It’s a time for reflection on where you’re at and what you’ve been given. It’s about looking at where you’re at and being grateful. Life’s not always about being where you want to be and doing what you want to do.

So what’s the secret to having a great Thanksgiving?

Well, if you dislike your job, you can at least be thankful that you have a job. Especially in this disaster of an economy! It’s the little things to be grateful for, right? Or perhaps you dislike the fact that your house always seems to have something that needs to be fixed on any given weekend. And these things needing fixed escalate in importance according to whatever great plans you had for that weekend, like your hot water heater going out when you planned to go a football game or your furnace finally choking to death right in the middle of deer season. Well, you should be thankful that you even still own a house to live in – again, given today’s economic climate of doom.

But is there a fine line on just how grateful one can actually be? Can one reach a point where you’re actually too grateful? Perhaps even stupidly grateful?

What if you start giving thanks for ridiculous things? Say, for example, you live in fear of your basement flooding, especially during the annual central Ohio rainy season monsoons. You know that your basement could flood at any given moment should the pumps not keep up with the flow or, God forbid, should the electricity go out. Now say your basement actually floods. What is there to be thankful for? The fact that God just gave you an indoor pool? Couldn’t a flooded basement be the right place to begin a little grumbling?

Or is being thankful really about finding some way to be grateful for whatever it is that you’ve been given? Isn’t that the true point of Thanksgiving? Perhaps that’s the notion I need to keep in mind whilst gorging on turkey and stuffing. Even if I have a basement full of water, I at least have a basement, right? After all, not everyone’s fortunate enough to have a basement. I should be grateful.

Well, this year I’m especially thankful for the extra-dry fourth quarter we’ve experienced here in central Ohio. My sump pit’s been bone dry since late July – four whole month! I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to hear the sump pump go off every twenty-two seconds. It’s almost like normalcy!! I’m beginning to feel like I live in a normal house (or is it the calm before the storm?)

Yes, it’s been mighty dry around here. And for that I’m thankful. Although, since we are talking about Jackson Acre here, it will be my luck that our well will run dry in mid-January!


Thankful I Can Be Thankful!

Hole Digging

The floods have returned, much later this time, but with their usual ferocity; perhaps even more so than usual. But the floods came in June this time, which is very abnormal; at least, it’s abnormal for the three long, arduous years that we’ve roosted here at Jackson Acre. Normally we flood in March, which is an annual rite of passage here at Jackson Acre, much like the spring breaking of the pack ice in the Arctic or the annual return of the buzzards to Hinckley, Ohio (Carrion Capital of the World!).

But the monsoon rains came in June. Four and a half inches in less than twelve hours, to be exact. We awoke to the gurgling sounds of the sump pump going off every eight seconds. Waking up to this sound is normally NOT a good sign, no matter how you look at it. Although I suppose you could say that waking up to an absence of that sound would probably be a worse sign, indicating a complete failure of the pumps, backup pumps, backup to the backup pumps, and various alarms that we have established within and around our sump pump pit. Our sump pump has better hazard monitoring than some Russian nuclear reactors!

Ripping open the blinds confirmed the return of Lake Jackson.

It was a short-lived body of water and by five o’clock that afternoon half the back yard had drained out, leaving Jackson Swamp in Jackson Lake’s wake. Coming home from work that evening, the first thing I noticed upon exiting my car, besides the lower water levels, was the unmistakable stench of something dead. It was a road kill smell, the kind that wafts briefly into your open car window on a warm July afternoon as you pass a long dead and bloated raccoon rotting on the berm. And my first thought is, hmmm, there must be a dead raccoon drowned under one of my pine trees around here.

So I walked around the yard and surveyed the flood damage, fully expecting to find a dead raccoon wedged under a tree somewhere. Instead, I was surprised to find an extraordinary number of dead worms all around the yard. I’m talking hundreds of worms, everywhere! I can only assume that the water levels rose so high so fast that the poor worms had nowhere to go and couldn’t escape drowning.

The dead animal smell hung around for a few more days, but no dead animals turned up. So now I’m wondering if the dead body smell might be coming not from a single dead body, but rather from the hundreds of tiny dead bodies rotting about my yard.

Wait til I tell you about the “tadpoles” we discovered in our vernal pools here at Jackson Acre.

Wondering Where To Find More Worms?!

Gov’t 2.0

The Latest News From Jackson Press –

Man, has it been a wet spring here at Jackson Acre!

How do I know that, you ask? I know this because the sump pump continually reminds me of this. And the latest way it informed me of our wet spring was by dying on me.

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. I have other, non-Jackson Acre, flooding news to share.

Thursday evening saw torrential downpours visited upon Grandview, Ohio, about the same time I was enjoying a beer with friends at a favorite pub of mine. And as I was sipping my beer, admiring the tumultuous rainfall and watching the street fill up like a swimming pool, I noticed the water slowly rising around my car.

Ten minutes later the water peaked and within thirty minutes the streets were relatively clear. My car, however, had about a half inch of water sloshing about the floor on the passenger side of the car.

After shop-vaccing out what water I could (approximately one quart), the next three days found my car parked in the garage with the windows, doors, and sunroof open as I tried to dry the carpet. The sloshing noise and musty smells are rather annoying.

The rain gauge at Jackson Acre has recorded about four inches of rain over the last six days. The swamp in the back yard has returned and the mosquitoes are quietly gathering forces. The sump pump’s been pretty steady, going off every minute for the last three weeks.

In fact, the sump pump’s not slowed down at all yet this spring. Typically not a good sign. An even worse sign is when your sump pump decides to die when it’s been going off every minute. This happened last night.

The backup sump pump kept up with the flow of water long enough for me to pull the dead pump out of the pit and put the old pump (the one that was here when we bought Jackson Acre! Who knows how old that thing is?!) back in. I tightened all the hose clamps and we were back in business.

Fortunately, my sump pump has a lifetime warranty, and this is the second pump that will be replaced under that warranty. But I can’t return it to Home Depot (blatant plug!) until tomorrow, so here’s hoping the old pump can keep up. Late last night (or early this morning, depending on your perspective) I thought maybe the old pump had died, too.

It was about 2:30 (AM!) when the neighbor’s Great Dane began barking hysterically, waking me up out of my usual fitful sleep. I laid there for a moment, waiting to hear the sump pump, to make sure all was still well, when I heard a strange gurgling noise as the pump went off.

Strange. It’s never sounded like that before.

I kept listening, waiting to see if it still sounded like that when it went off again. I waited, waited, waited, and … more gurgling.

Not good. Especially at 2:30 in the morning.

So I ran downstairs, expecting the worst, and almost found it.

Water was spraying like a geyser out of the sump pit, drenching the basement floor and everything else nearby. I looked down into the pit of Hell and saw that a hose clamp had broken off the pipe coming out of the pump. And every time the pump went off, half the water sprayed around the pipe, not up the pipe.

And it sprayed all over my legs, in addition to everything else nearby.

Ten soggy minutes and one new hose clamp later, the problem was solved.

The neighbor’s Great Dane, however, was still barking hysterically.

So not only does my own puppy wake me up at all kinds of ungodly hours, so does the neighbor’s dog!

Wondering when I’ll ever get a good night’s sleep!