Tristan has a bit of a colic history. At some point, I got into the habit of praising him every time he poops. I usually say something like “Good job! Ponies who poop are my favorites!”

Yay home ownership!

This was stage 1: Wednesday night into Thursday morning. The water was coming from the wall in the front of the basement, where there is a crack that we already knew was problematic. We knew, from the inspection, that the slope of the grade all around the foundation was wrong and would need to be fixed.

A few minutes with a shop vac took care of the worst of it, and then I turned the dehumidifier on to turbo and headed off on a work trip.

At about 2pm on Thursday, I got back in town from my work trip and it was WAY WORSE. The wet spot you see above was gone, BUT!

See, it was still raining. And the ground was still frozen, except in places where it wasn’t. And one of the places it wasn’t was the ground around the well that surrounded the outside of one of our basement windows. The water pushed the well away from the foundation, and then filed it up. Completely.

Result? Water literally pouring in like a waterfall through the frame of the window, which is nearly 100 years old and was no way tight enough to prevent that.

(Sorry, no more pictures, things got very busy and hectic from here!

So yeah. Way, WAY worse. And luckily I was home to fix it before it genuinely flooded the basement.

First things first: set up the shop vac again to start siphoning the water, and then I left it running while I sprinted outside with a plastic cup and then bailed out the window well by hand, pouring the water into the street about 15′ away so it would not just drain back in. I have no idea how many trips it took. Several dozen, until the water level was below the frame of the window. I checked back on the basement periodically – which required circling most of the house – and the shop vac was still going strong.

Finally, the water stopped pouring in, and the shop vac reduced the standing water to just a broad wet spot. The dehumidifier was going strong and had already made good progress. I finished by pushing some mud around to fill in the gaps around the broken well – ineffective, but at least something – and then got a sand bag from the basement to brace the mud and hopefully divert the stream of water stil coming down the hill.

Then I changed into new work clothes – the old ones being muddy and sweat-soaked, awesome – and headed to work for 2 hours. When I got home, the window well was muddy but empty of water, and the basement was well on its way to drying up. By Friday night, there were only a few damp spots left in the basement.

So, that bumps our summer landscaping projects way up the priority list!

We interrupt this regularly scheduled horse blog to tell you that home ownership is THE WORST.

aka Vermont is seeing torrential downpours of rain that ought to be able – and the ground is still frozen, so it’s not draining as it ought.

sigh.

It’s not *bad* bad, as these things go, but it is still worrying and moved the foundation regrading project further up the priority list this summer.

Also the new shelving & reorganization projects are now in high gear. Because I needed more to do.

Some years ago, maybe seven or eight, I had a standing weekday dinner with friends at a dive bar in Boston. They had a selection of mediocre chicken sandwiches that were 50% off on Wednesdays, so we went and paid $2.50 per sandwich because we were broke post-college twenty-somethings. There could be anywhere from four to fifteen people there.

One night, conversation turned to a “what if” scenario: would you give up your cell phone permanently if someone paid you a large sum of money to do so?

I didn’t even hesitate: yes, I said, I’d do it, but I’d want to have a pager or beeper or some other method of receiving emergency messages in case there was a problem at the barn with Tristan.

One person at the table rolled her eyes and said, “Or you could just fucking let him die. He’s a goddamn horse.”

Which should tell you basically everything you need to know about that particular individual. (Plot twist! She’s now my sister in law. That’s among the milder things she’s ever said to me, but it sticks out, for obvious reasons. The universe is a cruel and fucked up place sometimes.)

So what I want to know is, are there people like that in your life, who go above and beyond the usual “I don’t get it, horses do all the work and can’t you just give them the night off”? They’ve actively said nasty things, or judged you unnecessarily harshly for the time and money you spend.