Where are my crocodiles and where is my drawbridge?

HA!  I thought I'd been totally negligent and not mentioned the flood in the basement AT ALL yet, but I definitely did.

SO!  Flood in the basement = we have a moat.  This is not a euphemism for something less medieval, we have an honest-to-goodness moat.  I could put crocodiles in it to eat the prowlers and any fractious serfs. 

I do not understand the ins and outs of house repair, but something something draining something ok, I can't even pretend but apparently all the things that have to be replaced are right hard by our house, and a good bit down.

So.  A moat.

It goes around the whole house and is about half as deep as I am tall and as wide as maybe three of me and the other day there was a guy in there with a blow-torch (also not a euphemism.  Seriously, a blow-torch, and he was torching things).

There are dudes all over the lawn all the time now.  And the other day the house shook and whatever machine was machinating stopped and there was a bunch of general cursing and then someone who sounded managerial swore AT someone and now there is a hole in one of the ground pipes so that when we flush our toilet, you can look out the window and watch it go.  I try not to have the poops when the lawn-dudes are around, but I refer you to above: they are here all the time.

Also here was a wood chipper, because apparently if your house floods you need to cut down the tree that is furthest from the problem, and chip its ass.

I imagine that for the basement troll (who is now the swamp troll, due to the basement's swampy nature) these past few weeks have been hell on wheels, but aside from the near-constant noise, the inability to walk around our curtainless kitchen in my ratty jammies, and my chronic need to furtively photograph the vehicles, we haven't been too inconvenienced.  Sometimes I dream about owning a house, but in times like these I am only too grateful that renters aren't responsible shit.