Inventory of Weirdness

My fur is shedding so much that F vacuum cleaned me today.  It's ages since I got a good vacuum cleaning and I reckon at the rate my fur is shedding she should be doing it a couple of times a day.

She messes about and makes a sort of mohawk hair-do in the black stripe that follows my spine, but I flatten it down before she can get the camera out.

I don't want that around the internet.

The basement is flooded.  I reported that a while back - wet to the elbows I was when I went down there to inspect.  F reported it to the landlord, but no one has been to overhaul the bilge pump and float switch that is installed in a sump in one of the store rooms down there.  F finally went down with a bucket and mop and tried soaking some of it up that way - a bit of a Sisyphean task if you ask me.  After a couple of buckets a day of that it finally occurred to her to bail it out of the sump around the pump, and the rest will run from all over the basement floor into the hole she is trying to make in the centre.

Boating people know about bilge pumps and float switches, but as their lives might depend on such things they seldom let them get into the state this one appears to be in, so an overhaul might not be enough to bring it back to life.

Good thing we aren't sinking.

I think we aren't sinking.

Our basement has been carved out of solid rock.  That's why it gets flooded; its a hole in a rock, with no natural outlet for water.

We shouldn't be able to sink.

We have a natural cistern - somewhere to collect and store rain water.  I'm not sure anyone would want to drink or wash in it though.

Still, if you were under siege........

F has been suffering from sleep deprivation.  We are under siege from noise.  All curfews have been lifted and the boomcars and exhaust-less motorbikes continue all night - even at 4am.  We have a fantasy - that we could unite all the people who live on this road and who get really annoyed with 'boomcars' and noisy motorbikes.  It's a one-way street, so we could form a whatsapp (other communications apps exist) group, and someone at the start end could send us all a message that a noisy offender is on the way and we could line up on our balconies with all the rotten food waste we've been saving for just such an occasion and bury the boomcar in a deluge of fetid, slimy,  stinking, sticky mess - cartons of sour milk, watermelons that didn't fit in the fridge (they eventually stink), rotting tomatoes, cucumbers that have been in the fridge too long, old custard, past it's best yoghurt.... F rather fancies blowing eggs (so as not to waste the egg), patching holes with bees wax and filling them with red paint.

It's amazing where fantasy will take you when your brain is screaming out for some undisturbed sleep.


Comments

  1. Hope you don't sink. Got any life rafts at hand??
    Poor F and all residents of that street. Throwing rotten food waste would be a good start and then turf them into your sinkhole to finish them off.
    I know just how you feel, on a slightly smaller scale. When we lived in town our house was at the top of a very steep and narrow lane. Motorbikes would roar up there, especially after 4am when the bars closed and all day there be the screech of brakes as they descended. I thought a handful of tacks might make a difference. Thank goodness we moved to the 'country'.

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    1. It will quiet when wveryone can beggar off to their island or village in the mountains for holidays. I thought it was just me but now that I'm getting to know neighbours - some long term residents 40+ years - it turns out they hate the loud music cars too.

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  2. i can't stop smiling, you are another ME.. not you T, but F is. The 3 nights in a row I could not sleep because people were for HOURS and hours setting off loud booms of fireworks, she did the fantasy thing too. One was at 4 am when we get up and they are all just then asleep driving up and down in front of their houses or park in front of their houses and play loud music, as in boom box, or beating drums, marching up and down the street. she also had a very secret fantasies hope that oneof them would blow thier thumb off and have to stop doing it. F must have dog ears, I hve been known to say I have dog ears. i can hear a gnat sneeze. and anything loud wakes me up... in the past we had a neighbor who played an indoors boom box music that made our windows shake. once i called the police at 1 am and the 911 on the line said where are you standing. I said in my kitchen with doors and windows closed. He said I can hear it through the phone. that was the last time we had a problem with them and then they moved.
    my hubby had sump pump and my friend does too. we don't have them here becasue there are no basements. can't dig one because the water comes in the hole they dig to make one. Sand, lots of sand. I do know about them and that they are needed to get that water out. We had a friend at a marina 30 plus years ago, that put a sump pump in the bilge of his boat, and blew himself up. there was gas leaking in the water. sooooo be careful down there messing about with the water.. start thinking of the fantasy of what to do to the landlord. 😁

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    1. Gas in boats is something F knows all about. It's heavier than air so collects at the bottom. In boats that aren't sinking that means it can't get out. Here's a tale for you: about 4 men in a sailing boat. They went for a meal ashore and came back to discover that their boat had a gas leak and was full of gas. Because it's heavier than air you can bail it out with a bucket. So they stripped naked to ensure their clothes didn't generate any sparks and set about with a bucket eack to bail out the gas.
      Try to imagine seeing 4 naked men emptying buckets apparently full of nothing over the side of their boat.....

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  3. Hari OM
    Crikey, that is some amazing creative thinking going on in the wee small hours for F... after long thinking I cannot even come up with a silly solution for your flood sitution, never mind an actual useful one. I am glad that sinking is not an option though... hugs and whiskeries, YAM-aunty xxx

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  4. I think you have way too much time to think about these things lol
    Good luck getting the landlord to do anything about the basement
    If I know Greek time, and I think I do, it will take years!

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    1. Shated apartment building. We thought he could let the building managers know - you know - pass the buck...

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  5. Funny to think of a basement flooding in Greece - our stereotypical notions are all of sun and parched land. Leave it to others I'd say. Oscar would not be pleased though, anything with water is basically bad to him....

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    1. Tigger not pleased either. He loves the basement, but stepping into wading depth water must have been a shock in the dark down there. He is of the view that the devil invented water.

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  6. You're lucky that F does that for you, if I tried that with our 3 they would run a mile. We've had Bunny in hospital this week, being a manx cat and not having a tail she is only on a strict wet food diet as the tends to get blocked up easily. She's now on anti biotics and painkillers.

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