Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Oh, Floody Hell (or "Lord, Oh the Flies!")

Labor Day has always - traditionally - marked the passing of summer with a somewhat melancholy tone.  Autumn is near; winter is right around the corner; and it's time to get serious about whatever I've put off being serious about.  While I pack away the shorts and white shoes, I think back on the joys, the regrets, and the memories that will set this summer apart from the rest.

This year?

I wanted to throw a party, celebrating the drop-kicking of this summer to the curb, down the drain, into the sewer and out into Lake Erie.

Speaking of drains and sewers ... anybody else living in Lake County want to guess why this summer wasn't one of my faves?  I mean, besides the fact that it seemingly rained every other day, and our backyards look like the Amazon barfed all over our flower beds?  I have tulip trees that now think they're oaks; one is threatening to engulf my patio.  I have green, spiky things growing in-between my rose bushes that are completely unknown to me.  Are they plants my Dad planted 20 years ago?  Are they weeds?  Are they something my brother would smoke?  I have no clue.  And -- if he couldn't smoke the weeds -- I'm betting he'd have a great time with the mushroom patches that appear in the backyard overnight.  I just hope none of my foliage is illegal, because I wouldn't be able to afford the fines.

Which leads me to the main reason why I hated this summer.

In July, we had a bit of a rainstorm that caused toxic sewer water* to back up into everybody's basements.  The flooding happened overnight, so I didn't find out until the next morning that something Pretty Bad Had Happened.  When I looked down the basement steps and saw my dehumidifier (which had been standing in the rec room) lying on its face by the bottom step, I knew only one force could have moved it.  One ugly force.  One ugly, crappy, pain-in-the-ass force.  The water may have receded (along with a good chunk of my money, it would turn out), but what was left wasn't pretty:  peeling floor tiles, soggy drywall, buckling paneling, water-logged boxes and everything covered in filth.  I tried to not pass out from the stench and stumbled back upstairs, telling myself, "It's okay - I'm lucky.  My main floor wasn't touched.  I wasn't hurt, and the animals weren't hurt.  Nobody's homeless." 

But ... the noble feelings passed when I turned on the kitchen sink and no hot water came out. 

Like a lot of folks in Lake County - and especially here in Willowick, which was one of the hardest hit suburbs - most of my high-ticket items were fried.  My washer and dryer were ruined; the dehumidifier was dead (which didn't discourage one garbage-picking scavenger in a pick-up truck from snatching it off my tree lawn).  As my nephew and his friend helped me drag the damaged remnants of my past out onto the lawn, I kept wondering why this had happened?  Willowick had experienced a similar (and somewhat less severe) flood several years earlier.  What was causing this?

Several possibilities had to be seriously considered, including:

1)  The area has become over-developed, too much for an ancient sewer system to handle.

2)  The natural run-off lands, consumed by the building craze, are gone, so the poopy water can't get to where it needs to go.

3)  It's an act of God, and there's nothing anybody can do about it.**

4)  Our mayor is a poo-poo head.***

5)  Our congressman is a big poo-poo head.  ****

6)  Our president is the grand poobah of poo-poo heads. *****

Bottom line ... because we couldn't show the state enough structural damage, our county couldn't get federal aid.  So, most of us had to just suck it up (literally and figuratively) and accept being poor.  Most of us had thousands of dollars worth of damage.  The five grand Allstate sent me paid for new appliances...but the extra ten grand I'd need to restore the basement itself isn't coming from any government entity or insurance company. 

And yet, I know many folks have it worse.  Not everybody had some sort of insurance, and I feel for them.  I especially worry about the seniors in our community; where will their money come from?

After the initial shock, I think I held myself together pretty well until Best Buy showed up to install my new gas dryer.  The nice young man took one look at the copper pipe hooked up to my old gas dryer and said, "Ma'am, we can't touch this, it isn't 'code'."

I looked at him as if he were the biggest idiot to ever escape the idiot farm.  And then I burst into tears. 

"Well, of course it isn't code..." I sobbed, "My DAD used to live in this house."  My father was the king of Getting By.  He didn't give a floating turd about codes, regulations, or anything else that suggested he should live by somebody else's rules.  Ever since I moved into the house three years ago, I've been finding - and fixing - stuff that was either jerry-rigged******, outdated, corroded, disintegrating, or all of the above.  I can still remember having conversations with Dad where I'd point out problems and say, "Gee, Dad, don't you think we should fix this?" to which he'd cheerfully reply, "Oh, I don't care, I'll be dead soon, and then it'll be somebody else's problem."

I did manage to call a very nice plumber who got everything hooked up without blowing up the house.  Having a working dryer was a good thing, because hanging my clothes to dry in the backyard wasn't.  Forget all that noble, green blather the environmentalists love to spew about saving the planet by drying clothes outside.  For one thing, the last time Dad had hung clothes out, he hung them on a clothesline that spanned the length of the driveway, and it worked pretty well.  Sadly, I couldn't mimic his efforts.  First, because when it comes to the simplest tasks that can be done inside or outside a home, I'm a complete idiot.  Second, I - in my infinite lack of wisdom - had since turned that part of the backyard into a bird sanctuary.  And not just birds ... I was constantly feeding wildlife back there, and the thought of some blue jay crapping all over my freshly laundered nightgown wasn't too appealing.  Worse, I often have deer in the yard, and the mental image of some doe running into my delicates - flapping in the summer breeze - was sobering.  I had visions of a psycho Bambi frantically leaping over the back fence with one of my bras hanging off its antler.  Then I'd be embarrassed, have to move, have to sell, and who in their right mind would buy a house in a sewer flood zone?  I did eventually manage to string up a clothesline between two of my giant tulip trees, but not being a small person, I encountered a slight engineering problem:  The weight of my wet clothes was dragging the line down into the grass.  I couldn't tie the line tight enough to prevent this, so my only other option was to drag a step ladder out of the garage and use it as a fulcrum to prop up the middle of the line.********   It worked, but it looked ridiculous.

Once my dryer was successfully installed, I thought I was mostly out of the woods with the immediate flooding issues. 

Of course - as usual - I was totally wrong.  And, had I reviewed my handy Bible, I would have remembered that most plagues are, traditionally, followed by pestilence. 

Mine?

Sewer flies. 

Actually, I don't know if they're called sewer flies, drain flies, fruit flies or gnats on steroids ... but shortly after the flood, I noticed these itty bitty black flies buzzing around my kitchen and bathroom sinks.  Having just thrown out some rotten bananas a few days earlier, I assumed they were fruit flies and would eventually go away.

That was a month ago.
And ... I still have flies.

They are small, and they're pretty harmless.  But for someone like me who tends to obsess about ... well ... EVERYTHING ... they are a curse that must be erased.  I've Goofled how to get rid of them.  I've set out traps. I've hung up fly paper.  I've killed a few, but like the Union soldiers in the Civil War, for every one I killed, 10 more would show up to laugh at me.  "Ha!" they would scoff (telepathically, of course, because flies can't talk ... unless they're Jeff Goldblum and turning into a really BIG fly), "We spit on your pathetic apple cider vinegar traps and that silly zapper that looks like a tennis racket!"  Actually, the zapper (see the link below) works pretty well, but even Serena Williams couldn't kill every one of these rotten little house guests. 

http://www.walmart.com/ip/BiteShield-Electronic-Racket-Zapper/11988154

I've tried other remedies as well.  My brother (who is an expert on vermin) suggested I pour bleach down the drains.  The Red Cross had passed out plenty of bleach, so I tried that ... but the invaders have been seemingly unaffected ... I think they're using it for their laundry.  My plumber suggested I plug up the bathroom sink and drown them in bleachy water, but that just turned into a fly frenzy free-for-all frolic at the beach ... the bleachy beach.  My niece's mom suggested I pour the apple cider vinegar down the sink to entice the flies to follow, eventually causing them to drown.  Of all the suggestions I've tried, that seems to be the most effective.  I like to think the swarms are shrinking. 

But I honestly can't figure out if there are really fewer flies ... or I'm just gradually adopting an "I don't care anymore" attitude about the whole matter.  I mean, what else can I do?  I've scrubbed every surface I can find (not with bleach, of course ... I used all that).  I still have nightmares that somewhere ... behind the stove, refrigerator, or some other Huge Thing I Can't Move ... are the remains of a bad banana that has become these critters' Camelot.  I imagine their queen ... a fly the size of a field mouse ... holding court back there, instructing her legions to swarm outward and terrorize the silly human who flails at them with helpless curses and useless zapper rackets.  What if I never find their secret breeding place?  What if I am fly-infested forever?

I do have two other back-up plans.

Winter is coming, so if I wait it out long enough, maybe they'll all freeze to death. 

And, if that doesn't work, what the heck ... I'll be dead soon, and then it'll be somebody else's problem. 

*As opposed to sparkling clean sewer water?

**This was my mayor's opinion.

***Oh come on, Mayor Bonde, I don't mean it.  I said the exact same thing when you were my algebra teacher in 1976 and tried to explain why I sucked at math.

****Would you believe, out of frustration, I wrote to our Congressman, David Joyce?  His office's response was, "Sorry, there's nothing we can do, but keep reaching out to your elected officials." (????)

*****Would you believe, out of frustration/stupidity, I wrote to the White House?  I got a letter back from FEMA today that basically said, "Hey, sorry we can't help you guys, but give the Red Cross or United Way a try, and keep reaching out to your elected officials."

******Or is the correct term "jury-rigged"?  I looked it up on the Internet and Goofle ******* was no help whatsoever, thank you very much.

******* "Goofle" isn't their real name ... I changed it to protect the guilty. 

******** See, Mr. Bonde?  Maybe I didn't do well in algebra, but at least I learned enough basic physics to dry my damn clothes.