Year: 2016 (Page 2 of 6)

It’s raining again. When storms start arriving close together, it makes us nervous, even though we are in a drought. We love the moisture, but it’s best if the downpours are spread out. When the ground gets saturated, a little stream starts to flow under our house and flood our crawl space, eventually overflowing into the downstairs bedrooms. We can tell when the water is rising because the normally dry earth under our house starts to darken with moisture.

It usually starts with a little trickle down the concrete wall, which turns into small water fall, and then a gushing stream. It pools at the bottom of the stairs, and eventually spills over the threshold into the living space.

There was water running through the lower level when we first looked at the house, and it’s probably part of the reason we were able to afford it; I’m sure some potential buyers decided not to pursue it after slogging through puddles and tracking water through the lower bedrooms.

This house has a drainage problem. We talked to a woman who grew up here–she was selling it after her father died–and she remembered having water down there every winter. I’m sure it used to be worse, before rain became scarce in California.

We’ve tried sealing the wall, but the water just pops out somewhere else. We’ve piled sandbags, and added concrete to guide the water out and around instead of through. The previous owner tried to redirect the water too, with sloppy concrete gutters around the side of the house.

During a storm, the water started flowing and we had to start bailing. It was a team effort, with one daughter scooping water with a big plastic cup into a bucket, another shuttling and emptying buckets, and another using a broom to swish water out the door. My husband dashed out while we bailed and  rented a pump. We  had to keep it running as long as the water did, a few days after the storm.

After that, we called in a contractor to combat the flooding with a sump pump. He put in a concrete-lined well to collect the water, and a pump in it to move the water out and away from the house. It works beautifully. When the water level rises, we can hear pump start and the water gush out of a pipe and away to the street.

One very stormy night, though, when the rain was falling and the wind was howling, the power went out, taking our pump out of operation. We were back to bailing–by candlelight this time–for hours until the power came back on. If that happens again, we’re ready; we bought a manual pump that we can operate with a foot pedal if the power goes out during a storm.

Unless the drought gets even worse, we will need to eventually dig french drains six feet deep around the foundation in the back of the house where our creek runs. Those  will intercept the water before it gets to us and channel it around the house and away without passing through our lower level. We’ve known that we need to do it since before we moved in ten years ago, but the expense and disruption of tearing up the back patio has kept us from taking care of it at the source.

Living in an old house, there are probably a hundred projects like this; they need to be done, but we live with them because the solution is more trouble than we can manage. We patch them up as we go, treating the symptoms without solving the underlying problem. It seems like the right thing to do would be to dig everything up, get to the root of the issue and fix it.

I’ve wanted to do that, but I’m reconsidering how much proactive work is really wise. Less intervention can be the better action; keeping things stable and waiting until the right time to do an overhaul minimizes the pain of it. The back patio is starting to need some repair, so when we redo that, we can revisit the french drain idea.

Taking one thing at a time is a fine approach for an old house.  If we tried to address all the problems, we’d never get to enjoy living here. Yesterday, we toured a new house that was built down the street; it’s perfect and gorgeous and free of issues. I left there feeling jealous of the ease of that.

This is our house, though, with all its problems. It’s full of memories and life. The quirks are part of its character; it has personality and charm that a new house hasn’t had time to develop.

The summer months–June, July and August–are known for being cool and foggy in Berkeley. We do have some warm days, but the most reliably warm, clear weather comes in the fall. During these months, I wear summer clothes and sandals because of the calendar, not the weather, and I bring a sweater everywhere.

September and October feel like summer. On the clear, bright mornings, the deep orange color on the Golden Gate Bridge stands out against the deep blue sky and bay. The city and the bridges look close enough to touch. Most days are pleasant, in the 70’s, but we have hot spells when the temperature gets too warm for comfort.

Since we don’t have a lot of hot weather, most houses and buildings don’t have air conditioning. My Riverside upbringing taught me to open the windows at night, then seal up the house and close all the blinds to keep the house cool until the evening. On warm Indian Summer days, our house gets up to the high 80’s before the sun finally stops beating on the front windows and the air cools down.

If there are several hot days in a row, the house gets heated up; the wood and the stucco and the attic hold the heat and radiate it back even after the sun goes down, and we can’t get the inside temperature under 78 degrees.

On those days, we long for the fog. The high temperatures to the east of us pull the fog in from the ocean. It comes pouring through the Golden Gate and bathes the bay and Berkeley in cooling mist. On hot afternoons, I scan the horizon for any trace of fog; when I see it coming, I can bear the heat, knowing sure relief is on the way.

Water is the best way to cool off.

As a young child, I lived near Chicago, in Evanston. The hot, muggy summers there stand out in my memory. I remember wanting to go with my dad on errands, hoping he would go to the bank, the only air-conditioned place I knew. Sometimes we would seek out coolness in our basement, even sleeping down there. Our favorite relief was to fill up the little kiddie pool and sit in it. My dad put the end of our backyard slide into the pool, propped the hose at the top of the slide, and made a water slide for us.

The hottest days in recent memory come from living in El Dorado County, east of Sacramento. Our first summer there, we went to a Renaissance Faire in a downtown Sacramento park. It must have been 110 degrees–so hot I couldn’t even think. We walked around, amazed at the heavy costumes people were wearing and trying to look at the booths, but we felt terrible. We couldn’t stay long; it was just too hot.

One of my daughters was beside herself from the heat. She sat down on the grass on the way to the car and couldn’t go on; she was completely overheated. The park was on the American River, so we coaxed her down to the bank of the river where people were swimming. We all took off our shoes and waded into the cool water in our clothes. It was wonderful. It saved our family trip from being a miserable disaster.

Last summer on our way home from the cabin, we took a detour to visit Arches National Park. From an air-conditioned Starbucks in Colorado, I found a place on the internet called Moab under Canvas and made reservations. It seemed like fun. I saw the forecast for 106-degree days, but I told myself the desert nights would be cool, not realizing that the cool temperatures did not actually arrive until about 3 in the morning.

We stayed in a wall tent that was like a little cabin, but with canvas sides and roof and a zipper door. It had regular beds, and there was a large trailer nearby that had eight individual bathrooms with real showers and toilets. Some people call this type of accommodations glamping–glamorous camping–but I’d say it’s more like clamping–clean camping. The neat, lit pathways and the rugs on the floor of the tents minimize the dust that usually goes along with camping. It was comfortable, or it would have been if it wasn’t so hot.

Water to the rescue, again.

The tents had hoses attached to the ceiling with nozzles that put out a fine mist. We had it going the whole time we were in the tent. Everything got wet, but we did not care; as long as the mist was going we felt cool and comfortable. For some reason, the misters were turned off by 10 pm even though it wasn’t cool yet, so we poured water on ourselves to keep the evaporative cooling going until we fell asleep.

Arches National Park was amazing. The beauty made the discomfort of the heat worth it, and the misters kept us from being too immobilized by the heat to discover it.

The other day, my husband and I were weary of the afternoon heat at home and decided to take the dog and go down to the marina. We walked around by the pier and cooled off in the breeze. It doesn’t take much water to make a difference. A little fog, some mist, wading into a river up to your waist, or even standing near it can be enough to change your personal climate.

It makes me think of the phrase that describes the extremes of possible obstacles: Hell or high water. 

Hell, I imagine, is hot and dry–the absolute lack of water. Biblical images of hell include suffering residents begging for even a sip of water. The opposite extreme is too much water: seeping, flooding, drowning amounts of water.

Somewhere in between the extremes is the happiness of being cooled by water.

I’m home from the hospital. It was a good day there today. My husband seems to be feeling better and will likely be coming home in the next day or two. I feel like we’re going to get through this.

I didn’t start out feeling that way today.

This morning, I loaded myself up with a bag of garbage, a bag of recycling, my coffee cup, a plate of Babka to bring to the playgroup I lead, my computer bag and my purse. As I tried to give the dog a treat before closing and locking the door, I remembered that I had left the back door standing open.

I put all my stuff down, went in and closed it, and came back to pick it all back up again, and that’s when I realized it: I’m going to drop everything. It’s almost certain. I readjusted my load, put the recycling down for later, and left for playgroup.

When I got in the car and saw that I was already late, I had the sense that I might drop not just the things I was trying to carry down the stairs, but everything–all the responsibilities at home, at work, at church, at school, at the hospital.

I thought I was taking all the hospital stays and uncertainty and disruption in stride, but today I was seeing my life from the outside. Watching all the moving parts, I was like a kid jumping into a game of double dutch, trying to time it right, trying not to stop the jump rope.

It felt like walking on slippery ice, taking every step  deliberately, trying to keep my balance.

As I drove down our street, I passed the Cal student who lives with us as he was coming home, and stopped when he rolled down his window to ask me a question. He wanted to take Tie with him to a meeting and to hang out with some friends. I said that was fine, except that Tie really needed a bath since he had evaded it the other day.

‘I’ll do it,” he said. I told him where I take Tie and gave him the wash token that was still in my wallet from the other day. That’s one thing I could let go of.

I skidded in late to playgroup to find the coordinator setting up and greeting the participants for me. When I told her that my husband was back in the hospital, she offered to take over for me, even at the last minute if needed. There’s another thing I could let go of.

It was enough to help me find a little solid footing.

It’s not that I don’t have people helping me. The support we’ve received has been amazing.

I was unconsciously holding on to everything, and trying to hold everything together.  Letting go was not about checking items off my to-do list. I just couldn’t hold on anymore. It was like releasing muscles that I’d been tensing without realizing, or taking a deep breath after forgetting to breathe for a while.