Gotta Get My Mind Outta the Gutter

Our midnight mopping sessions have continued. The day before yesterday I mopped up two giant Fresh Step kitty litter buckets full of basement water, and then my husband mopped up another half bucket when he got home. The good news is that we think we have figured out the source of the problem: our gutters.

The gutter above the spot where the basement leaks seems to be leaking. There's a slow, two-day drip after every little rain, and during a major rainstorm, the water just pours out over the edges of the gutter. We cleaned the leaves out late last fall, but apparently something still isn't right. We decided the downspout must be clogged.

So I added "call gutter people" to Monday's to-do list. I found the number for a handyman service that does gutters. When I called, I spoke with a very sincere-sounding man who, I immediately detected, stuttered. I have a stuttering radar. I can detect a person's stutter before he or she so much as repeats one syllable. It sounds mysterious, but after reading the book Blink, I am convinced that I am just "thin-slicing" and recognizing in other speakers the same teeny tiny stuttering (or trying-not-to-stutter) behaviors that I myself exhibit.

I don't remember the journal or the article or anything else, so feel free to accuse me of making this crap up, but when I was in college, I read about research in which brain activity was scanned for stutters and non-stutterers. During speech, the brain activity of the two groups was drastically different. The fascinating part, however, was that even during non-speech activities such as wiggling the fingers, the brain activity of the two groups was very different. So if stutterers do lots of stuff just a tad differently from other folks, it does seem logical that I might subconsciously find some other stutterer's actions familiar. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm off on a tangent. I know.

Anyway, the sincere stuttering guy, who didn't actually stutter until very late in the conversation, and then only enough for most people to think he was "just nervous" (a pet peeve of mine and another blog entry entirely), quoted me a fair price, promised a free estimate, said he could get gutter covers for me for 10-15% less than the price at Lowe's, and told me one of his workers would be here Tuesday morning. Um, Tuesday was yesterday. I'm still waiting. Wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt, I called back late Tuesday afternoon and asked if there had been a mix-up, and sincere stuttering guy's wife assured me that the guy who was supposed to give me the estimate would call with an explanation "as soon as he comes in the door." That was yesterday afternoon. It's Wednesday now. I guess he's still not back.

So, highly irritated that I couldn't give sincere stuttering guy my business, I did the next best thing and called a "handylady" who was advertised in the phone book. She charged fifteen dollars more per hour and said I would have to buy the gutter covers myself. I told her I would think about it.

Grumbling and frustrated, I put the kids to bed this afternoon, got out the Gorilla Ladder, which I have to admit makes me feel all-powerful, the water hose, a straightened wire hanger, and a pair of rubber gloves, and went to work. The downspout had a few leaves in it, but not many, and when I put the water hose in, I saw the water come out the bottom. That was a good sign. I checked the gutter right over the basement leak, the place where the drip occurs, and it also seemed mostly clean except for a think layer of silt. Then I squirted some water in . . . and it flowed the wrong way . . . as in away from the downspout. Uh-oh. What causes that? I do not know. Even with the awesome power bestowed upon me by the Gorilla Ladder, I cannot answer that question.

Am I going to have to call in the Big Guns, the gutter salespeople? I'm sure they'll tell me the whole thing needs to be replaced, even if it's a minor problem. Grumble, grumble, grumble. I'm stumped.

Oh, and I was wrong. Those aren't calla lilies after all. That's gotta be a baaaaaad omen.