In The Garage
My sister is no longer permitted to travel to Mexico. Now, your first thought upon reading that might be, “Wow, what did she do to piss off an entire country?” You might think that she’s some kind of criminal, like those animals that help people illegally immigrate to the US – what are they? Weasels? Ferrets? Coyotes!
Or, you might think that she has committed some sort of tourist-related infraction, such as excessive parasailing or too many drinks out of coconuts. The truth is much less sordid and yet more tragic, at least to me. She can’t go to Mexico anymore because whenever she goes there, I have to watch her house. And that never goes well.
We won’t even talk about the last time, when her burglar alarm went off, scaring her Japanese exchange student, her sump pump stopped working, her sink leaked, and her cat died.
I want to talk about this time.
She asked me to water her tomatoes. She showed me which faucet to use; she was very specific, demonstrated how far to turn the knob, and made sure I was clear on the concept. She asked me to come by and water every couple of days, maybe pick a snap bean or two, and check on the cats, and then she went on her merry way. How selfish! She didn’t even leave me beer.
Shortly after she left for her fun-and sun-filled vacation, I went over to her house to do my chores for the first time. Confident that I knew how to water plants, I turned on the faucet she had indicated, and walked over to the other side of the house where the tomatoes were growing to check that I’d gotten the water pressure right. My sister had cautioned me that if I turned the water up too high, I’d irritate the extremely large dog next door. And I’d make the vegetables afraid to come out. And I’d waste water.
When I got to the vegetable garden, I was puzzled to see that there was no spray at all. I walked back to the faucet; I was sure I had heard running water when I turned the tap on. Then I realized I was indeed hearing water, but it was coming out of the hose without the sprinkler – I had turned on the wrong faucet, for which I blame my sister, because otherwise I just look stupid.
This would have been a minor mishap, trivial really, not worth mentioning, if that hose had not been left outside the door leading to the storage room at the back of the garage. You see, the entire time I was staring at the tomatoes in all their dry glory, baffled at the lack of sprinklage, the hose I’d turned on was pouring water into the garage. I didn’t realize this immediately, of course. I’d stepped away from the tap to find the end of the hose and seen its unfortunate location. I then noted that some of the water gushing from the hose seemed to have leaked under the door. Acting fast, I swore a little bit and then turned off the water. Knowing my sister’s pack-rat tendencies, I figured I’d better take a few minutes to check out the storage room to see if anything had gotten wet. Ha Ha! Did I just say If?
Confidently opening the door, I stepped in to more water than I would have thought possible. My shoes made ripples in the storage room lake. Due to some mystery of floor slant, don’t ask me as I am not a floor engineer, if there is such a thing, all the water had gone into the storage room, and none had gone into the actual garage. Cursing a bit more than before, I grabbed a broom and began sweeping water out toward the back yard, where there was a convenient drain, although if it was really convenient the hose water would have gone directly into it, but there it is. The more I swept, the more water appeared from under things. Finally I had to give and admit that I was going to have to move stuff. And that this storage room had quite a large spider population.
First I moved the pink bicycle to the garage. Then I moved the black bicycle, but its kickstand didn’t work right, so even though I tried to stand it up and the kickstand was down, it rolled of its own volition into the trash cans, then toppled over with a crash. That suited my mood perfectly so I left it there. At this point my sandals were getting quite soggy and slippery, so kicked them off, not wanting to add any extra hazards to this particular job.
Next I had to move the fertilizer spreader, the footstool, and the dining room chair with the circular saw perched on it. By now I had cleared a 4’ x 4’ area, and found 19 large spider webs, but still more water appeared. And the spiders were getting antsy. (I cannot resist puns. So sue me.) I moved the scrap wood, the barbeque tools, the empty charcoal bag, and then the full one. More water. I swept and swept and finally seemed to be getting ahead of the tide. I ran upstairs for some towels to begin drying things off, and to check for spiders in my hair.
As soon as I bent down to dry the floor, I saw that there was much, much more water to deal with, and I used the towels as skates instead, to safely get to where I could move still more stuff. I pulled a metal shelving unit away from the wall, which turned out to be a mistake, as the wall had been a major and necessary source of support for the shelves. The thing twisted around like a giant slinky, threatening to drop a hedge trimmer onto my head (no, I didn’t empty the shelves first. I just wanted the job to be done.) I found several more large spider webs behind the shelves, and a couple of spiders that could have taken on a mouse in hand-to-hand combat, except neither mice nor spiders have hands.
Next to go was the stroller (my niece is 16, mind you), the Halloween decorations, two large tarps (in case my sister needed to wrap a body?), and a computer monitor and keyboard.
The room was almost cleared out now, except for the exercise bike, the dresser, a computer box with a printer box on top of it and a monitor perched on top of that, and the large steamer trunk with a wardrobe on top of it. The floor around the bike looked dry so I left it alone. The dresser’s feet were wet so I knelt beside it and lifted one foot at a time, quickly drying the floor underneath and the foot itself. I felt like one of those cartoon characters who can lift heavy things like safes, anvils, and locomotives by one tiny corner, usually with just one finger, except that I needed my shoulder and both hands and a lot of swearing. By this time I was making up new curse words because the old ones weren’t doing the job.
Once the dresser was dry enough, by which I don’t mean dry, but that I was tired of holding it, I looked at the trunk hopefully. Dry? Hell, no. The water still lapping up against the edge of it made it clear that I’d have to pull it out and dry off the bottom. So I laboriously lifted the empty wardrobe off of the trunk and put it in the garage with everything else. Of course I was extremely gentle with it, and I don’t have any idea how it got that nasty scratch. And I’m pretty sure the car was already dented. Whatever.
I tried to lift up the edge the trunk without moving it so I could dry the underneath, the way I had with the dresser, but no luck. Because, of course, it was full, and very heavy. And it was wedged in between the wall and dresser. So, I dragged it out as best I could (I’m sorry about the scratch on the dresser. And the one on the wall. But it’s just the garage, right?) And I opened it up (fearing I actually would find a body) and checked the inside for dampness. Lucky me (first break that day) it was still dry inside. So I toweled off the bottom (sorry about those stains on the towel) and dried the floor, then left the trunk sitting on top of a dry towel instead of the wet floor.
I stood back to survey the fruits of my labor, covered in sweat and spider webs, and that’s when I noticed the unmistakable signs of water seepage on the bottom of the computer box. I peeked inside the box, hoping it was really not a computer but something useless, like old socks, or something that would appreciate the water, like moss or more spiders, but it was actually a computer. Apparently I’d found the Secret Computer Graveyard.
Of course, in order to get to the computer, I had to move the printer box sitting on top of it. In order to move the printer box (which indeed held a printer) I had to move the monitor stacked on top of that. When I picked up the monitor, I quickly was alerted to the fact that the keyboard and mouse were still connected by the fact that they were both swinging freely through the air, neatly smacking me in the face. Perhaps I picked up the monitor with too much gusto. I had plenty of gusto by then, let me tell you. At least the mouse had knocked a few spiders out of my hair. After corralling the computer parts, I piled everything on top of the trunk, looked in the computer box, and was relieved to discover that the actual machine was packed in Styrofoam, so that no part of it had touched the floor or the water.
I hastily stacked everything back on top of the box and headed for home. Well, I wanted to head for home. Trouble was, I couldn’t find my shoes. Seems I’d buried them somewhere between the third and seventh loads of stuff, and they were nowhere to be seen. Exhausted, I drove home barefoot, asked my husband to check me for spiders, and went out to dinner.
I had to go back the next day to put everything back in order, and to find my shoes, but fortunately no more mishaps occurred, unless you count the very large hurricane that headed for Mexico later that week. I'm sure there was a lot of water and swearing involved in that event, too.
I’m telling you, she should just stay home.
