Thursday, August 25, 2011

Misplaced Dust Pan

I ain't the kinda guy that spends time cleaning up. Fortunately, the cleaning lady is kind enough to come around every couple of weeks to shine up the kitchen and bathroom, dust and vacuum up the floor.

We had some gully washer storms come thru the BToS over the weekend and I noticed that the 3' deep walk and stair area outside the sliding doors of my basement rec room accumulated quite a bit of water in it. Granted, we had about 3" of rain over the spell, but over the years the drain for that well has always worked its magic.

I noticed quite a bit of dirt and floating debris had accumulated around and on top of the drain, so I found something I could scrape it off with. Fortunately, the water never got high enough to find its way into the basement that is about 4" above the bottom of the well.

With rain showers forecast for this afternoon, I figured that since the cleaning lady doesn't do stuff outside the house walls I might want to clean out the well and drain. I'm not going to mention all the clutter I had out there, but will say that there was quite a bit of dried tree leaves, broken pieces of ornamental grasses and just STUFF.

I found my broom and started sweeping and collecting everything into a pile when it dawned on me that I would need my trusty dust pan. Now where did I store that handy dandy dust pan last time I used it eons ago????

It was nowhere to be found. However, there propped up against the outside basement wall waiting for the first snowfall of winter was my trusty snow shovel!!!

That ol' snow shovel had no idea it wasn't a dust pan and before I knew it, all the trash was out of the well. I collected the dirt in a pile and the trusty 'snow shovel dust pan' worked its magic once again.

I won't go into detail about all the bugs and critters that ran off when I started sweeping nor will I detail the fun I had with the hose while squirting down the well afterward. Suffice to say that my trusty ol' snow shovel sits on a much higher pedestal today than it did even after those humongous snowfalls a couple of winters ago.

JD, keeping things clean here in the BToS...

PS - Sure hope the cleaning lady doesn't look out into the well on her visit next week. If she sees how clean things are...she might think I can do similar in the bathroom and kitchen every day...that would sure be a bummer!!!!!