Our Olde House: July 2022
I finished my new fence and started thinking again about going back under the house to finally fix the sagging floor; in the meantime, I caught and relocated two more little possums from under the house. I was unable to raise the floor significantly using the lift points I identified before, but I thought that I might be able to do better with a different lift point. I used my Sawzall to trim a small shim so I could access the edge of the sagging floor, hoping that I could lift the entire floor from there. I was able to get my little jack under the edge of floor that was sagging, and with a few pumps on the handle I was able to raise the floor an inch or two, plenty to close the gap and render any remaining sag insignificant.
I put three supports under the floor, all resting on stacks of stepping stones to keep any termites away from the wooden house. I was going to remove one temporary support but instead decided to declare it permanent and get out from under the house as soon as possible. I rebuilt my outside wall, much more solidly now, and even put in an air vent to help with circulation under the house. No more possums, or rats, since putting up the wall. I was feeling pretty good because my new gate was still not sagging, but once again all good things must come to an end; this time it actually was not my fault. Ms. Sherry was in the kitchen when I heard her shout, “GIT HIM, GIT HIM, HE’S GOT A PURSE”. When I heard the first GIT HIM, I thought she was encouraging the cat to pounce on a roach, but the purse reference threw me off, so I went to see what was the matter.
As I reached the windows looking out to the backyard I could see ‘him’, a thief carrying a purse who had jumped our fence and was running through our yard; I did not say an ‘alleged’ thief because his shoes clearly did not match the purse, so it obviously was not a purse he purchased. As he approached my new still-not-sagging gate in my fence, he did not simply
unlatch the gate and pass through, oh no, he decided to try to leap it like a superhero in a single bound which turned out to be a crash and burn. Since he failed miserably to clear the gate, his entire weight fell on the gate as he momentarily teetered on top of it and then fell to the ground with a thud on the other side. Yes, so now my new gate sags from the unnecessary weight of his carcass, but as I said before, it is not my fault that the gate sags.
Ms. Sherry and I have come to accept the weird and ridiculous types of problems we have encountered while working on this house, but I absolutely did not see that coming. He continued to hop the neighbors’ fences and run through their back yards, never a rottweiler around when you need one, as I ran out to the street to give chase. He had a fifty yard head start (and a 50 year advantage) as I ran up the street in my flip flops to the sound of police sirens all around. At the top of the hill I saw he was now running south down the street and I had a cop on foot shortly behind me.
Every cop in the pueblo was there as I shouted to my shadow cop that I saw the thief go into the parking garage; this went out over the radio and instantly a swarm of at least twenty police cars converged on all sides of the garage. Luckily for the cops it was a Sunday so the parking garage had very few cars parked in it. The thief did not have any luck, plan or clue that day, trying to hide in an open area, and was very quickly located and apprehended. This was a different kind of success, and very unexpected, but appreciated by all, except the thief I suppose.
Oh well.
