More Stinky Adventures at Mitchell House
April 27, 2006 by Veronica Mitchell
I have terrible springtime allergies. The trees that I love are my biological enemy. Fortunately drugs work, though I settle for surgical masks when I’m pregnant. Since this is the first spring in years that I have not been pregnant or nursing, I decided to drug up and attack the invasive plants in our woods.
The native forests of our part of the Midwest are being taken over by invasive plants. Our particular plot is overrun with honeysuckle, wild grapevine, english ivy and euonymous. The honeysuckle produces a chemical at its roots that prevents new trees from successively growing so that it can form freestanding groves of honeysuckle. The grapevine strangles the trees that are already grown. Attacking them with big clippers can’t kill all the invasives, but I can slow them down a little. It’s my own little Alamo.
So I was marching back toward the house after a sneezy job well-done, when I almost fell in a hole. A big stinky hole. I never would have noticed it if I hadn’t been back there pruning. It smelled like, to use the word appropriately, shit. So I called the the sewer district. They came out and gave me some dye tablets to flush down my toilet. The hole turned neon green.
So all you homeowners know the sinking feeling I got in my stomach. The hole was too far away from the manhole to be the city’s responsibility. It was mine. So I got a recommendation from a contractor friend for a good plumber, and called.
$1700 to dig up and replace six feet of sewer pipe. Our neighbor told us that the previous owners of our house laid “new” pipe four years ago. We discovered the hard way what that meant. Instead of replacing a pipe that had broken, the previous owners wrapped the broken pipe with sheet metal and then surrounded it with concrete. In case it’s not clear to you, that method doesn’t work. The concrete broke, a big piece got stuck in the pipe, and the back-up from the clog made the hole. We were lucky it didn’t back-up into the house.
I sometimes think about the expense of home ownership, and whether we can really afford it. Stuff like this hurts us, and hurts our pride even more, because it often means taking help from family. But then I think about how happy I am here, and what it was like to live in an apartment. I love our home. It is a simple place, and I am more at peace here than anywhere in my life. Even with a few sacrifices, it is a place that brings us joy.
As long as we keep the shit under control.
Ugh. Nothing worse than plumbing problems, yet you write about them so eloquently! Should this not have been in your home’s disclosure? Just wondering…
I’m not sure who would disclose “I am a cheap, incompetent, wannabe mister-fixit and I snuck this by the metropolitan sewer district and the health department but I am disclosing it to you.”
Either way, I don’t think there’s much I can do about it now. It’s ours. Fortunately we’ve never had any back-up problems inside, unlike many, many people in our city.
Owning a home is like raising children. Unepxected situations arise, but you wouldn’t trade it for anything. I hope you find a relatively inexpensive way to fix this unexpected event!
You just made me a little less envious of the homeowners in the world. Apartment ownership–or more accurately co-op living which really means owning shares in a corporation–is not without its problems. But I do appreciate the fact that there are no stinky holes to fall into in our common areas. Then again…no yard in which to make stinky holes. Maybe what we really need is a home and a bazillion dollars in the bank and a staff of twenty with which to keep it all functioning.