The generator

I FINALLY got the 2 cords of wood out of the basement! The weather people say it's rained here for 17 of the last 20 days, and I think that all the nice days were when I was at work. So it's been pretty depressing - especially Monday when I sat at work all day looking at the sunny outside, thinking about how much I was going to get done. Then in the last 2 minutes of the 45-minute commute home it started raining. I was within a mile of home when it started - and it rained steadily all evening.

It's been bothering me because my home-made ramp is big and heavy and it's a real pain to move it in and out of the basement. So I left it in, meaning the basement doors have been open for all 17 of those rainy days, raining in the basement.

I finally got the other not-supposed-to-be-in-the-basement thing out too - the generator. We had an ice storm in mid-December that cut my power for 3 days, a thing I've never experienced in my life, ever. On the 3rd day (as far as I knew my power would be out for another week) I went to Home Depot and bought a generator. I got an electrician to meet me at home after work to hook it in. When I drove up the hill, generator in the back of my truck, my house lights were on. My water pump didn't start working again though, so I had the electrician fix that instead. (He jiggled the pressure valve on the water tank and ta-da I ha water again. 20 psi of it, which I now know is not nearly enough to have a reasonable shower. It was a month of that before I could get a plumber out to replace the valve with a 40-60 psi valve. There's some concern on my part that this pressure water might be straining my old pipes in new ways and water will leak in the walls. But I'll deal with that problem later. Probably when I'm least prepared to do it.)

So the generator sat, in its box in the front yard for several weeks before I finally figured I had to do something with it. I slid it down on a ladder into the basement where it sat molding with everything else until yesterday when it saw the light of day again. Now I have a hand truck and a helper (thanks mom!), and now the generator is in the shed. I still need to get that electrician out to hook it into my house. Hopefully I'll get that done before the power goes out for an extended period of time again.