You see, our house has a crawl space. A god-damned, hell-inspired crawl space. And it's not just a crawl space. It's a crawl space that houses our heating/AC unit. Who the heck put this thing in a crawl space under the house? Or more pointedly, how the hell did they put this thing in our crawl space? I mean the crawl space is only about 3 feet high at best, and the opening to the crawl space can't be more than 2x2 feet.
Lucifer Lives HereI have no idea how they put it in, but I know they did it somehow, as the unit is newer than the house. Perhaps they followed some old Mayan-inspired approach, dragging the pieces one by one to the site and slowly, methodically putting them together, drums beating in the distance.
But this is about more than the just the crawl space. This is about going in to the crawl space. You see, as a homeowner, Damon and I have the responsibility to maintain the home. One we gladly accept. One we did not think included frequent descents in Hades. And recently, both Damon and I have had the pleasure of going into the crawl space on more than just the rare occasion.
Now with the recent possum-raccoon-cat-possum debacle, we got a bit more familiar with the crawl space. Damon handled that one (thank god!), but during all that we discovered that the sump pump that lives down there was not working. It is very likely that it had not been working for months, as neither of us can recall the last time we heard it run.
The demise of the sump pump presents a rather interesting set of circumstances. Mostly: having to fix the sump pump. But even more mostly: having to go in to the crawl space.
But before I go on much more about this, let's take a short walk down memory lane. Back to the year 1986. This was the year our family moved from California to Maryland. It was also the year I saw this movie (probably only days before our move):
Yes. Critters. Probably not exactly the scariest movie on the planet, but no one told me back then. Now this was the era of Gremlins, Goonies, and Ghostbusters. Seen them all. No bother. And really I wasn't all that scared of this movie until the last scene, where after they had killed all these human-eating balls of evil, they flashed to a scene of some sitting in a chicken coop, waiting to "hatch." Oh no! That did it for me. Not so much at the moment, but more of a delayed effect. I remember being in the hotel rooms on our drive out East, freaked out at night that these things (notice I can't even refer to them by their name) might eat my foot on the way to the bathroom.
This soon festered to an irrational fear of our basement, and the underside of beds, in our new house. But only at night. I was fine going into dark spaces, or walking by a bed during the day. But come night, I was absolutely beside myself at the thought of going near the basement or letting my toes go under the bed.* (It probably didn't help that I also had a playful cat who liked to swat at my feet - from under the bed - as I walked by.) My parents tried all kinds of tricks to help me get over it, including posting signs on my bedroom door saying things like "Critters - Go Away!" I know they tried to help, and it got better over time, but still to this day I carry a bit of it around. If I get up at night to use the bathroom, I am very quick to get back to bed with as little feet-near-the-edge-of-the-bed time as possible, and I'm still skittish around cellars.
So, this brings us back to the crawl space. For me, going into creepy places is a massive mental undertaking. When Damon was less than willing to go down there after all the animal adventures, I volunteered for the job. Only the actuality of going down presented quite a challenge.
With the sump pump seemingly not working, the first step was to assess the situation. I mustered as much anti-fear as one could, opened the crawl space door, and looked in.
See! It doesn't get much creepier than this! (And there you can see the AC/heating unit thing lying on its side, just as its Mayan Masters left it.)
I sat there for a good five minutes, peering in, scanning with my crappy little flashlight (not much brighter than a lighter) to see if I could see any little pairs of eyes flashing back at me. (Are you chuckling? Because I'm serious here, people!) When nothing came charging in my direction, or moved when I suddenly clapped my hands (see - that's how you scare alien monsters...), I went in, traveling the 10 feet over to the pump. Indeed, the pump was not working.
Now our first approach at dealing with this was what most people would do: ask someone else to do it. With no takers, we asked a company to come out for a "Free Inspection" hoping that they would sense our fear, take pity on us, and just go ahead and fix it for us for no other reason than to be our heros. Alas, they are not our heros. In fact, they wanted $2100 to fix it. (Ha! Yeah, I laughed at that, too!)
So Plan B. Fix it ourselves. Now since Damon dealt with all the vermin earlier, and was also immersed in a brick reconstruction project (more on that later), I took it upon myself. But this meant going back down there to get the sump pump out in order to asses what replacement to buy.
Did I do it? Was I successful? Oh, yeah! I went down there, unscrewed the pump, went to Lowe's, got a new pump, and installed the new one. Now, make no mistake: this was no 15-minute project. This required multiple trips into The Hole, followed by measuring, cutting, and reattaching the appropriate length drain pipe, testing the new pump, and checking on it. But yes. One new sump pump, fully installed and working thankyouverymuch!
And by the time I was about done, I was going down there without a flashlight. I have to say, that while I still don't ever want to spend any quality time down there, I feel awesome that I was able to go down there and successfully conquer (manage?) my fear - oh, and also fix the sump pump. Arrrrgh! Bring. It. On!
(*I'm sure one day my kids will read this and laugh at me, and then wait for me hiding under the bed.)
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