News of Richard Bleil
What a day. It began with a, well, I guess a good deed. I woke up with a package delivery to the front door, very odd for me since I never have packages delivered here (I have them delivered to my mailbox). But, yesterday was my birthday (as of the writing of this blog which is a few days earlier than it will be posted), so I thought that maybe a friend had bought something and had it delivered. But, it was from a company that makes hats (let’s see if Glenn is reading this), but I very rarely wear hats except for the Renaissance fair as part of my garb. Still, it seemed “off”, so I looked at the package more closely.
It was shipped to the correct address, but sure enough, wrong name. Although it shipped from a huge online retail site (I’m sure you can guess), it was the product of a different company, so I called that company to tell them that the package came to the wrong person. The individual with whom I spoke seemed very appreciative of my honesty. As it turns out, the individual apparently used to live here, and obviously recently. Keep that in mind as it will come back up in a bit, but I made sure that the purchaser actually did get the hat. Sorry, Glenn.
It’s nice to start the day with a good deed. That set the right mood for a little bit of work I needed to do in the basement, then onto the smudging. This house was built, as I understand it, sometime around 1870, meaning it’s nearly two hundred years old. That’s two hundred years of love, laughter, marriages, children, play, joy and happiness. But it’s also two hundred years of death, disease, suffering and pain. This is really why I wanted to do something to cleanse the negative energy and spirits, and as I am a fan of the Native culture, I chose the smudging ceremony.
To smudge the house, as I understand it, you open at least one window for the spirits to get out. I spoke with the spirits of the house, telling them they are free, and created a mantra, “spirits be free”. I opened every door, drawer and space in the house. Putting the sage into an abalone shell, I lit it afire and, after burning for a bit, blew it out so it would smoke. Using a feather, I pushed the smoke into every corner of every room in the house while chanting my mantra. It must have worked, because my cat tried to get out through one of the open windows! (I’m happy to report she came back inside for her bribe.)
Then I decided to try to tackle the upstairs bathroom sink. This sink has been on my mind for nearly half a year now, since the day I walked in. The water runs, but the drain has been completely plugged. I’ve tried liquid drain cleaner, and even forcing the water through with a plunger to no avail. It’s not a very nice sink, and I tried taking it apart once before, but with no luck. After smudging the house, I decided to try once again.
I had purchased a drain snake but decided to try an experiment first. I removed the sink from the drain just after the elbow and filled the sink with water. Alas, no drainage. This means the plug had to be before it was connected to the house plumbing. I did pull out a rather large wad of really disgusting hair from the drain, but that didn’t clear the plug. I disconnected the trap and tubing from the sink itself, and sure enough the water began draining. Having them separated I could more easily examine those tubes around the elbow, and found something rather shocking. The plug was not the hair, but rather, a large plug of plastic. It looked like the kind of plastic that could have been poured into the sink and allowed to polymerized. I cannot say for certain, but it looked like sabotage to me, a plug that was probably meant to evade detection. This house was an HUD sale, so it was likely repossessed by the city (maybe failure to pay taxes). There’s a good chance that this person whose hat I returned in a good deed was the last person living here, and may have been responsible for this.
Well, that’s okay. If it was intentional that’s karma on him. I’m happy that the last piece to have two fully functional bathrooms is complete, and it’s been a great day. Tonight, I’m living in a spiritually clean house, with great success in my repair of the sink. It wasn’t easy, making it even more of a source of pride than had it been easy. Yep, it’s been a good day.
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