When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir? — John Maynard Keynes

Tyler Durden's House

smarties — Sunday, 15 April 2007

by Donald W. Taylor II

I feel like I live in Tyler Durden's house from Fight Club.

Last night was a big rainstorm. S. and I live in a basement unit and as with every first big storm of the season, we find out the hard way that we have neglected to snake the stairwell drain for too long. I got out of bed this morning and my first foot-fall met with the squish of water-saturated carpet. Squish, squish, squish to the bedroom door. The hallway and entryway are linoleum tile so it was all standing water out there. The cat was obviously more pissed off than me about the prospect of walking across the sopping wet bedroom carpet.

Step one is to stop the problem at the source. I went out and bailed water out of the stairwell until I had enough of a margin to go up the street to the hardware store and buy a snake and a sponge mop. When you buy those two items together, the clerk at the hardware store doesn't have a hard time guessing what's going on back at your place.

We moved all the furniture out of the bedroom and set up fans and heaters. The furniture had to be moved because like all people of my generation and income level, it is that cheap fiber-board stuff from Ikea and already the ends were starting to swell.

The fans and heaters lead to Tyler Durden-esqu in the second way: the electrical system of this house was wired by a lunatic.

The entire kitchen, plus the kitchen of the upstairs neighbors are all on one circuit. But the single outlet in the bathroom is its own circuit. Because how many appliances could two households really use between them in their kitchens? But you can never have enough power to the bathroom. I might be brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush (the 1970s kind that you plug in instead of setting on its recharging base station), drying my hair and sitting on one of those toilets from Japan with the heated seat.

Since there is so much competition for kitchen juice, we run an extension cord from the kitchen into the bathroom to power anything other than the usual appliances.

Our bedroom is on the same circuit as I don't know what upstairs, the whole damn rest of the house, all three stories. When we blow that one, we can hear stomping and shouting like mobilization for war. And everything blows it. I think we have a television, a PC, a lamp and an alarm clock in the bedroom. We have to run an extension cord out to the entry way outlet to run a space heater in winter. Like the bathroom, the single entryway outlet is its own circuit, because — I don't know — maybe we'll put an industrial strength air compressor in there to inflate out bike tires.

The two fans and a heater that we are using to try to dry out the bedroom carpet after the flood are taxing the house electrical system — even with the alarm clock

As if all this wasn't enough, S. and I finally broke down today and bought a half-sized rollaway dishwasher. I have been opposed to dishwashers as too bourgeois for years now, which would be one thing if I was consistently getting the dishes done. But instead I let them pile up in the kitchen until there isn't a single clean dish left in the house and not a square inch of available work space in the kitchen. Finally it occurred to me — actually it occurred to S. first — that since the 1950s they have been manufacturing a labor-saving miracle machine that washes dishes while you enjoy you after dinner time and that I have been ignoring the advance of modern science to my detriment.

We bought the model that doesn't fit anywhere so the kitchen is all upended with the monster machine in the middle. Plus the cords coming out of the bathroom to the kitchen and the portable unit's hookup to the sink faucet. The faucet hookup doesn't work right so water is constantly dripping in the sink. My computer was hastily moved out of the bedroom and set up on a table in the living room. More cables to plug it into a circuit that that won't blow a fuse. The fans are going full bore in the bedroom. All the lights are off in a careful load balancing act to prevent another fuse blow. S. and I will probably sleep on the pull-out in the living room. The place is a chaos of improvisation.

Plus the Internet connection went out today so I probably won't make this post until tomorrow. I should probably have Comcast's support number programmed into my contact list.

Don't come over to see us: we will kick you ass.

URL for this article: http://www.goodleaf.net/smarties/?eid=356

Donald W. Taylor II Washington, D.C. United States of America taylordw@goodleaf.net