Monday, November 9, 2015

Day 2155

Maybe this is what hell is like. Being trapped in a house with no working toilets while caring for a sick dog who poops all over the place whenever she's barking at the crew of strangers digging a giant hole under your house certainly isn't my idea of heaven. I knew today was going to be a mess, but I was still surprised at how chaotic it actually turned out to be.

I thought the environmental cleanup people were coming back to remove the big dehumidifiers today. I never heard from them. The noisy machines are still running. The foreman on the tunneling crew doesn't like dogs. Apparently, even crippled dogs that can barely walk make him nervous.  I had to wait until the crew left for lunch before I could even take the dogs out in the back yard to pee. Even then, I had to keep Dash on a leash, because he immediately wanted to dig his own hole in the enormous pile of dirt that had been excavated from under the house. I don't know how long the tunnel is by now, but it appears that they're digging to China.

Dot and Dash were actually pretty good, especially considering all the commotion that was going on a few feet away.  I taped butcher paper over the windows in the areas where the dogs usually sleep so they couldn't watch all the activity outside. This seemed to work. The plan worked great with Dot, since she is almost deaf and is a little senile. As soon as she lost sight of the tunnelers, she quickly forgot about them. Dash was curious for most of the day, but he didn't bark much. The problem with Dash was that he always wanted to go outside. This wasn't going to happen because I knew he would either start digging in the excavated dirt and get filthy, run away through an inadvertently open gate, or fall into the huge hole under the house and break a leg. I couldn't even take Dash on a walk to burn off some of his extra energy because I didn't want to leave Dot alone with the unpredictable tunnel crew. She can't hear well, but she can still feel vibration. She wasn't happy about the jackhammer at all.

Breakfast today was just a couple of Jimmy Dean microwave sausage biscuits and three toaster waffles. It wasn't great, but there were no dishes to do. Paper plates and plastic cups are the order of the day. The only concession I made to real dishes was my favorite coffee cup. I've got to have my morning coffee in my regular cup, no matter how much bottled water it takes to clean it.

There was plenty of work to do today, which was probably a good thing since I was trapped in the house anyway. I finally made some real progress on the new mobile friendly website I'm currently working on. I haven't done enough of these responsive sites yet for the procedures to permanently embed themselves in my brain. I still find myself re-learning tricks I'd used on a previous mobile site. Eventually, all the new things I've learned will stick, but apparently not quite yet. Today I had to re-learn how to get background images to resize properly when viewed on a tablet or phone. It took about five tries, but eventually I got it right.

Tomorrow the tunnel grows longer and deeper. Hopefully they will find the broken pipe soon. Today I was a little worried that they would end up tunneling completely through the house and my car, which is located on the other side, would fall in the growing hole. I hate to even think how expensive this is going to be. I have a whole new appreciation for water now.

Dot is today's Dalmatian of the Day
Watch of the Day