Okay. The deal with the house falling over into a swamp is this: calcium sulfates in the soil chemically react with the bonding agent in concrete, disintegrating it. Apparently this is a big problem in California, where foundations are now poured exclusively with type 5 (sulfate resistant) concrete. The structural engineer who confirmed the diagnosis we had come to on our own with web research said ours was the worst case he had seen in Denver. He knows of cases in Park Hill, immediately to our northeast, and in Montclair, immediately east, but he's more familiar with its happening in Highlands Ranch, the massive, soulless suburb in Douglas County to the south.
The basement floor is not structurally necessary to the house's remaining intact. The three supporting columns supporting the upper structure are, and two of them are severely chewed. One, behind the furnace and hot water heater, we had noticed; the other, behind a seasonal rotation of screens and storm windows in the coal room, we had not. The third is in my study, and our current hypothesis is that my study is sunken a step below the rest of the basement because someone already dug out some bad soil, installed a vapor seal, repoured the floor, and installed a steel supporting column.
Replacing the other two concrete supporting columns with steel is what we have to do. So we will do it.
The other two problems, ppor drainage on the north side and the resulting uneven settling of the house in the northwest corner, leading to the porch separating from the house, are in the engineer's eyes in more immediate need of correction. He and RDC brainstormed a fix for the porch that RDC can probably do himself, and discussed what we need to do for the drainage--which he said was better than many bungalows', though still insufficient--and that I can do.
So we will do those too.
I enjoyed, I pondered, I was inspired by, Roger Shattuck's Forbidden Knowledge, so when I saw this on Jessamyn's reading list I found it in the library.
Smithsonian magazine has the trick of taking a subject, however arcane, and making it interesting to the common reader. Shattuck does this with the Wild Boy of Aveyron, who emerged from a forest in southwest France in 1800. I read it expecting more about the nature of feral children and their ability to learn and use language--Victor spent his first several years of civilization in an institute for the deaf--than I found but it was interesting enough and a fast read.
Dr. Bob graduated. The brazen debauchery was several people in a hotel room, a lot like high school, though unlike high school in that everyone (else) had a baby. Nearly: I gave CGK a backrub: she's got almost two months to go but is huge and uncomfortable. One baby stayed home with a grandparent so I still haven't met him, conveniently the one I am least personally interested in. I can't believe we were thinking of joining No Kidding: if you like your friends, surely you like your friends' children. Conversation flitted between DU gossip and children and teaching and reading--children being only the newest, not the only, topic of conversation.
And I just talked to my mother. She ran into my childhood friend's father, who reported that HPV had twin boys in late May, and also into Michael's grandmother, who said that that childhood friend just had a son. Last I knew about him, he and B were still dating, ten years after high school, so I wonder if she's the other parent.
Apparently my mother and HPV's dad didn't talk long--only long enough to establish that HPV's partner is female, big news for my mother and confirming my longheld guess, but not long enough for anything about the children, like their names or exact birthdays. But I'm glad to know as much as I do and must dispatch essential books immediately.
Also I talked to Nisou a bit this morning. Emlet has discovered how to scale the couch, and she went swimming for the first time last weekend and loved it. Thank the gods. I remember how much she enjoyed her bath at four months, how her body elongated and how she smiled and wriggled. My beautiful little girl.
And in most excellent news, my youngest child and a friend (whom I remember but didn't babysit) are roadtripping home from Arizona to Old Lyme and will stop here Monday night. It will be a tight fit, because we have another friend arriving tonight for several days, but they're young and a night on camp mattresses on the living room floor instead of the already-spoken-for futon won't kill them. I haven't seen her in five years and am most stoked.
I have been missing, I always do miss, the sort of broad community of friends and acquaintances I had in Connecticut--that I still have, though scattered to the four winds. When a friend says he and his family camped with the other families from daycare, when I see the photographs of Nisou's four godchildren--each from a different family--in frames, I feel that lack.
It existed for me only in latter years at UConn. I left Old Lyme when I called it escape. I never belonged to the circles I admired, of the intelligentsia library board members, the patricians of town, my babysitting's family broad reach of school and library and church involvement. Even at UConn I was an outlier, but I knew so many pivots I felt included.
Eventually last night or really this morning, we left the hotel room for the three-year-old to sleep, and RDC and Dr. Bob and SPM and, uh, Alias and I sat around the lobby and talked for another while. The talk was more DU gossip and fantasy baseball and Six Feet Under and someone's boss who was "an insane cunt--no offense" (because I'm an insane cunt? I let that go) but also someone's feeling every June when someone else, but not he, graduates. Of the four DU students, the non Dr. Bob three are ABD and have been for some time. It's been on my mind and I had brought it up to CGK as well: almost eight years here and for what? After eight years I call the fourth Alias because I don't know him well enough to give him an alias?
For a strong marriage and a great house and a garden from scratch and Blake, SPM pointed out, not letting me pity myself. Yeah. But his confession about June was the first personal statement I have heard anyone I'm not married to make, in person, in months.
I want to be quite clear here: I do not ache for or crave a child, I do not hear ticking, I experience my friends' children with affection and amusement but not desire. I do recognize that parenthood would likely hurl me into a community, but it's the community I want, not the child.
It's in my hands, to volunteer or join a bicycling group or open up more among coworkers and RDC's classmates.
It's always surprising to me how a task expands to fill the time available. I managed to be showered and and dressed by the time RDC's coworker arrived, with the house as clean as it ever gets. But barely.
We bussed downtown and had bison burgers at the Wynkoop, again filling all the space available. Except I ordered the pasta salad alternative to french fries and I am very proud. RDC has a theory that french fries are almost never good but that you always order them because they ought to be really good and you continually hope not to be disappointed. There is also the It Will Still Be There Tomorrow rationale of food avoidance that I haven't quite grasped yet.
I bailed soon after dinner and left them to their pub crawl. I bussed home and read Bleak House until Blake and I were thoroughly asleep. Meanwhile, RDC and Denton worked their way home from My Brother's Bar by way of tequila and a 3:00 breakfast at Pete's Kitchen. Speaking of filling the space available.