The last minute gang

I can't believe it. Here we are. Three days away from crossing over on the ferry and my husband is up to his neck in a trench that stretches all the way around the back of our house. It was put there this morning by a lovely young fellow from Lewisporte who owns a small bobcat -- a mini-backhoe, for those who are not up on their machinery -- whom my husband previously hired to dig the hole for our new septic tank.

Today's trench is an effort to ascertain as best we can whether the sill plate of the house, along with the studs and the wall boards are in any shape to undergo the process of 'jacking' which we had hoped to have done either this fall or early next spring.

I didn't bother going outside. I could hear everything that was going on through the walls which are now full of holes where hubby has been tearing off tar paper to look at the boards beneath. He's tapping and banging right now as I speak.

The back end of the house -- a kitchen extension, in local parlance -- is now sitting with its ass all exposed. This same ass, for want of a better metaphor, was previously buried by dirt and grass and goutweed, all of which did nothing at all for the well-being of the ass. All it did was hide the rot that was taking place below soil level, although, I suppose, it was keeping the wind from whistling around in the underparts.

A fellow is supposed to arrive this afternoon to survey the situation and give us his opinion on whether the house can be safely jacked. I suppose it would be more correct to say that he will say it can be safely jacked, but for a much higher price than he originally hinted at.

Neighbours came to watch the bobcat. Of course, neighbours are always interested when a hole appears in their cove. They bobbed their heads up and down, with their lips tightly pressed together, and then allowed as how it might be best to just tear the sucker off and start over. Build a new kitchen extension.

When I finally managed to get outside -- had to jump the trench no matter which door I used -- I was dismayed. There is a lot of rot. There was even a fly that was landing on the trench, on the house, in the trench, back on the house that sounded like a bee when it flew, but like a giant mosquito hen it was landed. For a few minutes it had us worried -- like there was air escaping from somewhere, not a good sign when you've just exposed the innards of your house, plumbing, water supply line, and the like.

So. We wait. Like we waited all this week for this day to come. Wait for the fellow from Twillingate to show up with his crew. Wait for him to pronounce whether we will have to pay a lot to 'jack 'er up', pay a lot more to replace 'er, or pay nothing and just abandon 'er.

And I've made plans to spend the afternoon in Twillingate with a friend -- ladies' day off -- and I may have to go before I find out anything.

I hate waiting. I've never been good at waiting. Really, I suppose, it's not the waiting that is tough. It's not having information that I need to make a decision. And I like to make decisions when I have to make them. That's it. I hate having to wait before I can make a decision.

And all this with only three days to go before we pack the car and leave. Hubby is talking about moving the boat reservation. That might mean I have to go get groceries because we have barely enough in the house to get us through until Sunday.

Sigh. If only we'd dealt with the sloping floors problem when we first arrived. But it was like the elephant in the room. We completely ignored it, hoping, I guess, it would go away. So now we're doing it all at the last minute.

Talk about getting hi-jacked. What's that? I hear a vehicle. Maybe the fellow has arrived.