Staying Out Of The Basement

Dishes piled high on the drying rack, toys for the most part put away, teeth brushed, it was shortly after 10pm and Andrea and I were making our final preparations for bed (you know, filling the water filter and stuffing the towel under the crack in the door to prohibit entrance to any scorpion visitors). Suddenly, out of nowhere there came a loud crack in what sounded like something large hitting our tin roof. Then it was silent again. Andrea and I made eye contact, maybe shrugged a shoulder and went to bed without a word. My thought – earlier that week I had been up on our roof pounding in the nails that had wiggled their way loose over the years. Well, I figured that one of those secured nails lost its battle again as the tin popped and scrapped up to is more comfortable resting angle. No big deal.

I thought nothing of it again until the next morning when Andrea and Grace headed out to the outhouse to make a deposit of last night's disposable diaper. Not five second later I saw them re-appear and call out to me through the window screen, "Hey do you want to see what that sound was last night?" And sure enough, what once was a nice building perpendicular to the ground, now appeared much more like a cheap version of that famous tower in Pisa.

 

Apparently, the cement pad had decided that it was done holding our weight in keeping our feet (and likely our ankles, calves and knees) out of the "miry clay" below. And so, it was granted its early retirement as neither of us have been willing to step foot on that now slanted floor.

To be honest, we will greatly miss the convenience of that maintenance-free outhouse (a bucket and pile of sawdust was suggested in its stead), but we are grateful for one thing – that the concrete slab picked a very appropriate time to submit its letter of resignation. In general basements tend to be dark, damp and smelly, but this particular one might need its own set of adjectives to do it justice.