The Summer of Drainage

Yesterday I spent a few hours cleaning the rain gutters at my mom’s house. I was on a ladder for the first twenty minutes or so. Then I found a chunk of wasp nest/honeycomb floating in one of the gutters. Then I moved after being swarmed by a couple of insistent wasps. I moved the ladder to a thoroughly plugged downspout and while climbing up, noticed four more disparate and distinct chunks of honeycomb, each with a wasp or two working on it. I had my nephew hit the hose and I blasted the wasps away, but the water really only served to upset them. Kind of like when Leta says “Watch Elmo?” fifty times and then it turns into demands “WATCH ELMO!!” At which point I respond.

With the wasps nests decimated, I cleared the downspout and decided that I need to forego the ladder altogether and get on the roof with the hose. But the wasps keep returning. And I had the heebies pretty fiercely. So imagine a nearly translucent white skinned beclogged geek, high pressure hose in hand, shooting random wasps and sending sprays of water into the neighbors yard and onto my nephew, cursing the whole while. It took a lot of affirmation to be calm assertive with the wasp situation.

I’m still creeped out about the wasps just typing this.

Besides the wasps, I had the joy of using the techniques I learned from the sewage line replacement to clear the downspouts on the rain gutters. I had to remove the high pressure sprayer from the hose to get it to fit in the downspouts, but there was a certain satisfaction to hearing the gunk clear and the drain beginning to work. This was an unexpected perk. Not unlike plunging a nasty clog in the commode. Or being able to flush with impunity.