Thursday, September 6, 2007

Love Thy Neighbor

We are very lucky to have two sets of neighbors who are also our close friends. The three families have spent many a warm day around the pool, which fortunately is not at our house. The neighbor who owns the pool will probably rethink asking either family to watch their house while they are on vacation.

Let me explain. It all started with a "quick" trip by the house to check on the dog. The dog was fine but so was the giant ant population that had gathered in the basement. They had discovered a Cherry Coke left by one of the vacationing daughters. Coke may not realize that they have an untapped customer demographic. We, however, realized that this was a bad case of PESTILENCE. We looked around for some kind of bug spray. We couldn't find the Raid®, but we did find some hair spray. Being creative, we found that this stuff works!! The ants died, but they looked good. This might work on head lice! But I digress. One problem solved.

Then we noticed that the basement had one inch of water! Now we realized that we had a FLOOD. We figured out the problem (OK, John figured it out) was the condensate pump. John volunteered that we had an extra one at our house (OK, this really random--who stocks extra condensate pumps for heaven's sake?) The womenfolk set out to find the fuse box while the men were drying out the basement. We never did find the fuse box which was cleverly disguised behind a picture. Our brave husbands fixed the pump anyway. We later found out that the pump was the wrong size. But I digress.

Then Tim, the neighbor in charge of the pool, noticed that the pool had turned a horrible shade of green. It seems that the vacationing couple's married daughter had stopped by to take a dip and she wore a swimsuit that she had used in a lake. The pool was now infested with algae that would make any biologist proud. The pool doc had to make a house call and recommended a protocol that was very labor intensive. We nursed the pool back to health.

After this adventurous evening we called the neighbors. They asked about their house. We lied. "Things are fine," we croaked (none of us are good at this sort of thing but we knew they shouldn't cut their vacation short over ants, a flooded basement, a broken condensate pump and a green pool) They wondered why we were all gathered at their house. We told them, "You know how a pool brings people together." They replied that they were happy that we were enjoying it while they were gone. Yeah, right. That's our story and we're sticking to it.

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