Thursday, April 15
Amid the pandemic lockdown, my household to-do list is slowly getting winnowed down.
On Tuesday, the gardening guys came, performed their spring clean-up of removing the winter branches and leaves debris, then spreading mulch around the various shrubs.
Wednesday saw the arrival of the Quackenbush cesspool service. (I didn’t really think they’d look like Groucho Marx from A Day At the Races…but maybe!) These guys first looked for and found the location of the septic tank, then dug a three-foot deep hole and removed the manhole-like cover. Then another guy came with a big tanker truck and pumped out the gunk that had gathered there over the past twenty years. Astonishingly, it only took 15 minutes to do this. And after all that bathroom-going!
Today, I was half expecting some guys to come and lay down a new layer of pebbles on the increasingly bare driveway. Maybe tomorrow or the day after.
Each of these tasks costs a bundle, taking a chunk out of our stimulus money. But that’s what it’s there for—to prime the economic pump, no?
Priming the pump by pumping out the septic tank. Must be a Beatles song there somewhere.
We also spent a bundle on having the plants fertilized. Soon, the same folks will come to spray away the ticks and turn on the sprinkler system.
And then comes a real expense: fixing another leak in the roof that’s behind a drip in the bathroom ceiling. Recent rains haven’t let me forget that the problem exists.
The Democrats would be proud at how we’re frittering away their stimulus dough—and none of it went to those exploiters at Amazon!
Dinner: chicken salad with apples, walnuts, and mini peppers; corn muffins; and tomato-red pepper soup.
Entertainment: more episodes of the end-of-the-cold-war thriller Deutschland 89.