Heaven help me, I just asked a guy I've never met if he has a long hose.

We are still struggling along with doing maintenance on our septic system and Mr. Troutbend has been locating the ports in the septic system so we can get it pumped.



Note to would-be murderers: That amount of dirt is from a 24 inch diameter by 24 inch deep hole. It looks like a lot and yet the hole would not be big enough to hold a body and have good dirt coverage. At the end of the Goodfellas movie where they are out in the cornfield with a deep pit, all I can say is they must have used a backhoe to dig it.

Back to painful reality: there is an exposed concrete cover in the yard but turns out that's not the tank that has to be pumped, that's just the lift station. We had the septic guy check that a couple of years ago, he said it was fine, and we figured we were in good shape for awhile. Then last week we discovered that's not where we should have been looking.

Mr. Troutbend tried to use a piece of rebar to probe the lawn and figure out where things are, and had several false hits due to rocks in the soil. Finally after about six hours he found one of the ports and dug that out completely even though I warned him that we need the other one because if the tank has two parts it doesn't do any good to pump the outlet side of it. So now he's working on the second hole after I showed him pictures on the Internet to convince him.

Meanwhile I found a video on Youtube: How to Locate a Septic Tank. We watched with bated breath because the darkest secret of the universe would soon be revealed to us. The guy strolls along describing the woods and then goes around to the back of the house. The septic tank is as obvious as the Welcome to Las Vegas sign: not only is there distinctive vegetation over it, but there are two standpipes for pumping plus a larger concrete cover with a smaller piece that lifts out easily for inspection. I'm still fuming because we thought we were really going to get some pointers.




The first hole Mr. Tbend dug down to the manhole cover was about two feet deep and the second one is shallower because the yard slopes a bit. It's also a smaller lid so doesn't weigh as much. The septic pumping guy is coming next Thursday, and he's the one I asked about the hose:

"Mr. Johnston, do you have a long hose?" It didn't even occur to me what I was saying. We had a bad phone connection, but I think he stuttered a bit and said "Well, I've got about 100 feet on the truck." What a relief, because we had Waste Management up here once and that guy's hose could barely reach.

Once we get all this resolved we can move on with our lives, but today and with other things going on around here, I'm just frazzled from the stress.

Here. Let's watch the birds for a bit and forget our troubles. This was taken at dusk, not as dark out as it looks, but using the flash allows us to see the birds in flight; otherwise they are just blurs.