Sewer work begins

We came home last night to a very large dirt pile.

It's somewhere in the 8-10 foot range. Here are some children for scale.

As you can see, we also have our very own digger.

Right now, the work is on the neighbor's house and on the shared line between our houses. I think we got the dirt pile because they have more trees in their yard. Here is the trench leaving the neighbors' house, complete with busy workers, trying to get as much done as possible before the rain starts again. 

Here's the view between the houses, first from the backyard and then from the front.

Zooming in on the busted-up pieces of excavated pipe, they seem to be full of gravel.

Self-portraits

Report from Aaron's class. What amazing drawings! As always, click to enlarge.

Sewer line investigation

Less than one hour after the door job was complete, our new neighbor to the east came over with a somewhat unfortunate neighbor matter to discuss. They are having bad sewer-line problems over there -- water coming in where it shouldn't, and now sewer gas entering the house. Mostly this has nothing to do with us; the last owner of their house did some weirdo things with the plumbing, etc. But part of the problem is on the shared part of the sewer line. They're going to have to do some fairly invasive work very soon. The reason to talk to us is that part of the problem is along the 23 feet of sewer line that is shared between our houses. Not only is it going to impact our property - they'll have to remove the fence, dig a big ditch, that kind of thing - but also it's our sewer line too. We have consented to the disruption and agreed to share the expense.

We decided that while we're waiting for that work to start, we would invest in having our own sewer lines inspected, in case there's work we should be doing while everything is all torn up (and maybe also to establish the state of the system before it's disrupted). We had a guy out this morning who inspected our sewer line with the underground camera thingy. We got a DVD of what the camera saw -- and popcorn! We haven't watched it yet.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there is bad news: He couldn't get very far before the pipe was obstructed by gravel. There is an erosion hole in the concrete pipe, and after that point, the pipe is full of rocks. They can poke their camera through a fair amount of gravel, and he did so, getting around this bend and that bend, but finally the gravel was just so wedged in there he couldn't get any further even using all his tricks. There's a flag marking the spot he got to; it's in the raised bed nearest the house. There's another 10-20 feet to go before it meets the shared line (I'm not sure where the shared line picks up exactly) so that part has not been inspected but it's probably full of gravel.

The inspector was a little mystified about the source of the rocks; he thought maybe there used to be a storm drain on the back of the house that they removed when the put in the kitchen addition, or something? Then when we went outside together, he found our Mystery Hole. We have this odd hole next to the house that keeps re-opening itself anytime we fill it. We figured it is some animal. Our guy said "AHA!" Quite likely, what we have there is a hole that goes right down to our sewer line. The gravel falls in and the water washes the gravel down the line. So far, it has washed through enough that we're not "under duress," as they say. But we really ought to get that taken care of. Among other things, the erosion is right under the side of the foundation of the kitchen addition, and if the ground washes away there it can cause other problems.

When I said the neighbors are in a big hurry due to their own acute problems and had already lined up a contractor, he said we would definitely be doing well to get in on that; it'll be a lot less work to do it all on the same job. He asked what contractor they were using, and when I told him, he said "Oh that guy is super. You're going to want to have him over for a barbecue when it's all done. He's just a great contractor, does great work, very fair, very easy to communicate with. They picked a good one." That was nice to hear. The other thing that was reassuring to hear is about the disruption to our household -- Dale and I had started having nightmares about what we would do during 5-10 days of no sewer line. Our guy said no no no, the actual time during which your line is off is just short bits here and there, maybe half an hour to a couple of hours at a time. "That's just the part where they say 'Please don't start the laundry while I'm standing in this trench in my boots replacing the pipe,' " he explained. Most of the time is spent moving the dirt. People who have sewer line horror stories are the ones whose line stops working, and then they have to spend all that dirt-moving time with no operative plumbing.

I spoke to the contractor that our neighbors have lined up today, and he'll be glad to include us in the job. The work will start a week from today. Dad will be here visiting so he will get to see the excitement. Thank goodness the service disruptions will be short... we like to be able to offer our guests a flushing toilet at least.

The boys are pretty jazzed about our yard being a worksite. What could be better than diggers in your own yard, digging a trench so deep that if Daddy stood in it it would be over his head? They will have a great view from their bedroom windows. It happens that Jordan is studying the water-permeability of soils in science right now, so the whole question of what blocks water from flowing through pipes is right up his alley. He wants to discuss it with the workers. And of course when I explained that the water going through those pipes is poop water, they couldn't get enough. It's boy heaven over here.

Soccer and swimming

Saturdays we have soccer lessons first thing in the morning, and then swimming lessons in the afternoon. Soccer is at Lil' Kickers at Magnuson Park, indoors thank goodness. Jordan is crazy about soccer and has gained quite a bit of skill. Here he is during drills with his current class and his coach, Aubrey.

Class is a little less than an hour, about half drills and half scrimmage. Jordan's is the first level where they actually play something a lot like soccer, and Jordan could not be more proud. The atmosphere is very friendly, with a big emphasis on being a good teammate and having fun. The field Jordan plays on is one of about twelve in the same giant hall, each one-quarter of a full soccer field. The hall is a converted airplane hangar - Magnuson used to be a military base. Other buildings host mountaineering clubs, theater groups, and kayaking organizations. Talk about beating the swords into ploughshares. 

Aaron tried a soccer class for a while, but he was never really on board. He prefers to doodle around with whatever he can find. 

There's a break in the middle of the day (today we had a painter over to check out the kitchen), and then in the afternoon, we have swimming. This is over at the Mercer Island JCC, where Jordan goes to summer camp. We have to be members anyway as long as Aaron is in JCC preschool, so we may as well use the pool. It's never crowded.

Swimming lessons are with the magical Melissa, recommended to us by friends whose kids were similarly cautious in the water. Jordan has absolutely thrived with her. He is now crawls several strokes and is learning side breathing. He also delights in horsing around underwater, which is a huge change for him. He found out today that it's almost impossible for him to swim down to the bottom of the pool, even where it's only three feet deep, because he's just too buoyant. He found this out by trying about a hundred times.

Here are a couple little movies of him trying to 1. crawl with giant arm strokes, 2. keep his arms pointed out in front of him between strokes, 3. keep his head down in the water with his chin tucked, and 5. after three strokes, turn on his side to breathe. It's a lot to coordinate.

Swimming is incredibly symbolic for Jordan. He was terrified of it, and now he can do it. It means to him that things that are terrifying might actually be not only possible, but awesome. He also recognizes that part of what had been getting in the way before was his own anxiety. He says, "I realized that when something is scary and I can't do it, sometimes if I can relax, I can do it." Is that a life lesson or what?

Home improvements

Two wonderful home improvements lately. The most delicious so far is the gas fireplace. It makes the living room incredibly cozy! And we care, because it has gotten chilly all of a sudden.

There was a wood fireplace there before, which we had never used. 

Then, just today, we got a new back door. We use the back door as much as the front, and the old one was drafty and hard to open - I was always leaning hard and kicking it to get in. Now we have a smoothly operating, well-built, weathertight door with a window that opens. (Not that we are opening the window currently.)

Now I suppose we need some paint. (The patches on the walls are from when we had lighting installed in, um, 2009? Time flies when you're not noticing the paint.)

More bubble Q&A

Aaron and Jordan were in the bathtub again and asked me to record their conversation as I did before.

J: How is a lego thing built?
A: You just make it.
J: How is a real lego brick built?
A: I don’t know.
J: How do you say a brick is blue?
A: It just is it. How do you say a brick is black?
J: A brick is black. A brick is black.
A: How do you get a cheetah furball?
J: Where’s the petunia?
A: In Colorado.
J: How does it get that far on feet?
A: I don’t know.
J: I don’t think it actually uses its feet. I think it uses its roots.

The vacillation between serious sensemaking and total absurdity is typical around here.

Class photo

Loving this class photo. Aaron's buddy Clementine is above him in the pink kimono top, soccer buddy Halsey is above her in the fabulous eyewear, and Emanuel is in the front in the Superman shirt. My favorite, besides Aaron's sidelong look, is Finn on the upper left. What a puss. And Bennett next to him. I love it.

Oxbow Farm

A week or so ago we took a little drive out to "our" farm, the one that has provided a box of vegetables every week all summer.  It's a 20-acre farm about 35 minutes east of there, called Oxbow Farm because it includes an oxbow lake.  We went because we needed something to do on Sunday afternoon, and thought we might as well get a pumpkin.

It was very much the kind of farm where you chat with the farmers.  We learned about all the different kinds of squashes and gourds.

 

Here is the warm greenhouse full of tomatoes and something, some kind of sunflower, maybe sunchokes.

Apparently this way of growing tomatoes -- as vertical vines, with the bottom branches pinched off -- is crazy productive.  But it was a short summer for tomatoes.

Jordan saw this fabulous tiny house and said, "Look at the little sukkah!"  If you look closely you can see that it has an itty bitty chair, table, teapot, and teacup.

Outdoors, the "living playground" was in an autumn mode, but still fun.  There was a "sorghum spiral" (a very small corn maze), a gourd tunnel, and a "creepy teepee" made of scarlet runner beans, containing some display worm bins.  This is a different tunnel, not sure what, maybe grapes.

A sitting area was decorated with these beautiful little gourds. We bought a big bag of them to dry and pain for next year's sukkah.

Gourds also decorated the tractor.

We decided this guy is the tractor driver.

And last but not least, here is the pumpkin we brought home. Jordan drew the design, and I did the cutting.

BTW all of these photos were taken with my new phone. How do they look?