You Buy It, You Break It

So, my wife and I bought into the American Dream. We moved ourselves out of the city and planted our flag in an old established suburb. We got just about everything we wanted in a house - a big back yard (complete with white picket fence, natch), a two-car garage, and a quick downhill walk to the commuter train.

Unfortunately, we got even more - after a fierce rainstorm the night we moved in that lasted into the next day, our basement let in about a quarter-inch of rainwater. Welcome to the suburbs, indeed. Richard Ford wrote in Independence Day something about how, the moment you actually pay for and move into a house, you begin to hear things and see things that just weren't there before the money changed hands. Now I know what he was talking about.

Our sump pump kicks in about once a minute, routing water away from our house (and actually towards the neighbor's house). Its whirr is at once comforting and mortifying.

We'll get this all taken care of, of course, and hopefully the storms can stay away for a little while. I'm told that, in some cultures, rain is viewed as a blessing - an omen of prosperity. If that's the case, then I think we'll do quite well here.