Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday was a marathon workday. Some things have to be done by Saturday; my departure on that day for Tanzania is like a hard stop. I have been able to stretch some assignments onwards from last fall, but this is it. I usually reserve Mondays and Fridays for thinking and writing work which I need to do undisturbed on my own. Staying home saves me the two hours of commuting time. These then get added to the workday making these days usually long, now that the doctors’ appointments and PT sessions are done with.

The only interruption yesterday was for what Axel calls the sanitation brigade. The brigade, which usually consists of Axel with neighbor Ted as his adjutant, is called into action when it rains cats and dogs, especially when the ground is frozen and there is still snow on the ground. That is when we have to be on alert for groundwater flowing into the septic system overflow tanks. This is a larger systemic issue brought on by the cutting up of old and large estates which used to have elaborate drainage pipes. Some of these have been cut or broken over the years as new houses have sprung up and installed mammoth septic systems. We are talking once more with an engineer to figure a way out of this predicament in ways that does not require building a new septic system. If you live on a piece of ledge the options are limited and expensive. But the constant dread of the system backing up into our cellars is not fun either.

I am a new member of the brigade. I always considered it manly business (try prying away one of the manhole covers) requiring brute force and engineering ingenuity. But yesterday morning the cats and dogs came down relentlessly and Axel was sound asleep. I donned my 99 cents poncho, which looks a bit like a brightly colored (yellow) whole body condom and armed with a shovel set to work to displace the manhole cover to peek inside the tanks. I could not do it and so I did get back into the house to wake Axel up. He saw me standing, dripping wet, in the bedroom in my yellow condom outfit, asking for help with some urgency in my voice. Later, at dinner, he compared my apparition in his semi-sleep state to Woody Allen in the film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), when the sperm get ready for action in their white outfits and Woody wonders what happens when he lands on the floor. Hmmm, I did wonder about the comparison, but it seems that he too believes there is something about manly business in all this as well.