Laundry night derailed

(Warning... kind of gross photo below)

I watched Lost tonight, then got ready to do laundry.

My laundry set-up is a bit unusual. The water from the first rinse is pumped into an adjacent sink, where it is stored and can be pumped back into the washer for a second load. If it's not needed, there is a little pump that pumps the water up into the outflow pipe out to the septic system.

On Monday I did one load of laundry, and left the unused water sitting in the sink for the past couple days.

Tonight I went down, saw the gray water and decided I didn't want to reuse it after two days, so I flicked on the little motor and the sink started to drain as I sorted clothes. After a couple minutes, I heard the suction sound that indicated the sink was empty, went to flick off the pump and saw, to my horror...

Nooooo! 

I knew there were mice in the basement - they had scarfed up some spilled dog food before I had a chance to clean it up, and thwarted my attempts to catch them in a live trap. I wanted them out... but not like this. My used laundry water became a water-filled pit of doom.

So I've hit the brakes on laundry night, and I'm stalling and stalling going back down there to deal with the carcass. I know it's just a mouse, but I'm squeamish about these things. I'm about to go out to the garage and assess my garden tools to see what might be the least-gross way to get this thing out of the house. Garden shovel into a box into the trash container outside is the likely choice.

I'll never be able to look at the laundry tub the same way again.

I'm on their list

I was sitting in the recliner around midday earlier this week, reading a book, when there was a knock on the door. It startled me, because someone knocks on the front door of my rural home maybe once every two months, if that.

I didn't bother running around to the side window to see who it was; I just opened the door.

"Hello - remember us?"

"Oh, God," I thought to myself.

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Let me go back a few months. It was sometime in late summer or early fall. There was a knock on the door. The conversation went something like this:

"Hello. Are you troubled by all the strife in the world, by the negative ads in the election?"

"Um... I guess."

"What are your hopes for the world?

"Um... Peace and prosperity for everyone?"

"Well, all that is possible and will happen when God returns. Are you ready for that day?"

"Um... I guess?"

Jehovah's Witnesses. This went on for about five minutes, with me too polite to ask them to leave, and them clearly too used to "Um... I guess" responses to be thrown off by my mounting discomfort.

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A sidenote... I have nothing against Jehovah's Witnesses, or any other religion that respects my beliefs as I respect theirs. It's just that, well, my beliefs are kind of undefined, and I've always felt that I've got better things to do with my time than ponder the issue. And I certainly am not going to delve into the topic with strangers standing on my doorstep.

And a second sidenote... In my childhood home, we had a "front" door that was never used, and in fact was sealed up with insulation year-round except for the little window that allowed quite a view into the heart of the house. Our "back" (or, more accurately, "side") door was the one we always used. As a kid, without fail, the only people who knocked on our front door were Jehovah's Witnesses. When they came knocking and I was home alone, I hid. Sometimes, I got caught in the living room with no exit other than to use the hallway where anyone looking in the front door window could see me. So, I used military special-ops maneuvers to dash and roll and cower behind furniture and door jambs as I made my way back to the safety of my bedroom. Eventually they would give up, stop knocking and leave.

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Back to my visitors.

It was a father and son. I did not take photos, but I think I have come up with two good representations by digging into my pop culture memory. The father looked like actor James Cromwell. The son looked like an autistic kid from New York named Jason McElwain who was made famous a few years back when he got in a high school basketball game and scored a ton of 3-pointers (that was back when I had ESPN and they played that story over and over).

The father (image from Wikipedia):

The son (image from Today Show Web site):

The son took the lead in the discussion, but he stuttered and stammered quite a bit. His dad was providing backup and assistance as needed. I guess the son was a proselytizing trainee. Eventually they asked if I'd like some literature. I said sure. They gave it to me and left. I set the booklets on top of the TV. They sat there for a couple months because I felt guilty about throwing them away.

Then, in November, I came home from running errands during the day to find a couple Jehovah's Witnesses brochures tucked in my front door. I overcame my guilt in about a week that time, and they ended up in the trash, too.

Then, the visit earlier this week.

"Hello - remember us?"

(Pause) A drawn-out, hesitant "Yeah"

"Did you watch the inauguration last week?"

"Yes"

"Are you hopeful about the future and what the president will do?"

"Um... I guess"

"What do you hope for in the world?"

"Um... Peace and prosperity for all?"

"Have you thought about all the wonderful things that will happen when God returns?"

And so on.

They asked if they could leave some literature again. I took it.

Only this time, before they left, the father said, "Read it over. Maybe we can discuss it in the future."

Oh, no. Do they have a list? It seems I'm on it.

Home during the day? Check.

Does not display a gun or sic the dog on us when we arrive? Check.

Takes our brochures? Double check.

So I face a dilemma. 

They are not hostile or pushy. If they were, I'd have no trouble telling them to please leave and not come back. But they aren't, and it seems wrong to tell them that. I haven't and will not invite them in the house, but to tell them to stay off my property seems unduly harsh.

Maybe I'll have to resort to my childhood special-ops maneuvers next time they come, and hope they go away on their own.

In the meantime, their latest booklet was sitting next to the TV until the dog, while snuffling around, knocked it off and in back of the TV stand. It'll probably be there for months.

Semi-detached

I did a bad thing a year or so ago.

I watched "Duel."

Stepping back for a moment, I am a person who has issues with horror or suspense movies. It's not that I'm scared. Actually, if I watch one, I usually enjoy it. It's just that sometimes the disturbing characters and images contained within those films kind of stick with me, and, say, pop into my mind as I head into the dark basement.

So, "Duel."

Screenshot of the truck from "Duel" (image from Wikipedia)

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I had heard of the movie before. Released in 1971, it was Steven Spielberg's first feature film. The basic premise is a man driving on a remote stretch of highway in the Desert Southwest gets into an ongoing brouhaha with an ominous, unseen tanker-truck driver (you see the truck, not the driver). The unseen truck driver keeps trying to kill him.

I caught it while flipping through channels, and proceeded to watch the whole movie. It was a good thriller. But then tonight, as I was driving home from work, it came back to me.

I was about to turn up Mesaba Avenue when a plain, unmarked semi came barreling up the boulevard. It was kind of jarring, because you don't often see full-size semis tearing up Mesaba, and because it was 1 a.m.

The truck had to stop at the next light, and I passed it in the left lane after the light turned green. I saw it in the rear-view mirror - anonymous, big... and "Duel" popped into my mind.

I found myself driving kind of fast, and actually felt a bit of relief when I made it through the light at Mesaba and Central Entrance - and watched it turn red before that truck could get through. I was safe... from what, I'm not quite sure.

My own mini-"Friday the 13th"

One of the things I like about going back home to West Bend to visit is that I know my family's land and the surrounding area well enough to walk it on a dark night without a flashlight. There is a plot of about 12 acres of woods I can traverse - on or off-trail - on a moonless night, and another several hundred acres surrounding it in which I know all the trails by heart. It's something I'm quite proud of - and it's something I'm working on at my home in Duluth.

Even with all that knowledge, though, there still is a sight that puts a tinge of fear into my mind:

It's a motion-sensor light atop a shed maybe an eighth of a mile from the house, at the far end of the yard, on the edge of the woods. Its purpose is to light the way if you need to get something out of the shed at night, but every so often when I'm home alone - and it happened again while I was visiting earlier this week - the light flicks on when I'm in the house.

"It's just a deer," I always tell myself. And there is a 99.9 percent chance it is just a deer that tripped the light. But there's always that one-tenth of one percent chance that it is a homicidal maniac skulking around the woods on a dark night, or a lone mountain lion waiting to pounce should I go out to investigate.

I was never a big fan of the Friday the 13th movies, and I've only seen bits and pieces of a few, but looking out the kitchen window and seeing those bare light bulbs flick on in the distance, when I'm home alone, on a pitch-black night.... it always makes me think of those films.