Stepping carefully

The hot water heater, the washing machine, and the dryer live in our walk-in basement – on a platform to keep them out of the water that invariably seeps in when a hard rain falls -- along with other stuff, like the barrel full of sunflower seeds that I feed to the birds. There is a room attached to that, which we call the fruit cellar, where our freezer lives.

In my dreams, I imagine the room where our son used to sleep before he moved away has been remodeled into a new home for the washing machine, drier, and freezer, so that multiple times a day we do not have to walk down the porch steps, around the house, and into the basement.

And even if we don’t have to go down there for something out of the freezer, or to do laundry, or to get seeds for the birds, invariably, Richard will have moved something I am not using routinely “down to the fruit cellar,” and invariably, within a day or two I will need it.

It is cool and damp in the basement, and a lovely place to be on hot summer days. There are lots of crickets in there and other insects, and snakes… who knows what else. A huge spider lived in the basement for a few weeks last summer, and this summer a small toadlet has taken up residence.

The little toad is very hard to see against the concrete and the thin film of rust-colored dust in certain spots left by water seeping in when it rains. Richard warns me to “be careful” so you don’t step on it.

I do not have a picture of the toadlet, but I do have a picture of a lovely sign.

It would be fun to change the wording slightly and put it on the door of the basement. I borrowed this, with permission, from Non-Working Monkey who took this photograph when she went on a holiday to England.