Gracie and Bill -- A House Full of Holes

 

I dreamed I was with Gracie and Bill, helping out around the house with light cleaning and stuff. Gracie just liked having me around, but I thought I'd try to make myself useful by cleaning the kitchen counter, which had a bit of grease and grime on it (should have used 409). I left the water running in the kitchen sink and created more work for myself as it overflowed and ran down back of the counter and onto the floor. 

I noticed that the house seemed to have been designed for this type of eventuality, as there was a drain in the floor in precisely the spot where the water dripped off the counter. 

"Hey, look. They thought of everything. There's a drain on the floor, conveniently located right where I need one," I said happily.

"That's not the only one," Bill said. "Look around." 

He pointed to the many drains, spaced six feet apart, checkerboarded throughout the kitchen's linoleum tiled floor. Sure, enough, someone had put the little metal grates over openings strategically countersunk to provide maximum drainage throughout the house. 

"Why not?" I agreed. 

I supposed if they could have central air conditioning vents running under the floor, why not have a system of drainage? It would certainly make floor cleaning a breeze. But then I noticed that the grates didn't seem to have anything by way of piping under them. They were just covering holes in the floor which drained out into the dirt under the house.

"Do these vents drain anywhere," I asked Bill. "Or do they just drain out into the crawlspace? You do have a crawlspace, don't you?"

"Yes, we have a crawlspace, and yes, they just drain out into the dirt," he said, sounding a bit guilty.

I knew that must have been the case. There was no way they could have tied them in with the rain gutters, as I'd first imagined. The flow was all wrong. The house was on a hill, and the water would have to go uphill in order to get to the street. The backyard, likewise, had no place for the water to drain, other than a small cement patio. I saw no evidence that any drainage had been going on in that direction either. 

"But aren't you inviting mold, with all that moisture under there? And what about bugs? You're giving them a bunch of free access points with all of these openings." I continued to expose the short-sighted nature of the poorly engineered drainage plan.

We never I had time to discuss a solution, however. I had to finish up with the cleanup at hand, so I could accompany Bill to do some minor repairs on a few rental properties. Gracie wanted me to spend the afternoon with her, but I really wanted to help Bill out.

"You gonna be OK here?" I asked her.

"Sure," she said. "I'll be fine. You go on and help Bill."

There was an hour or so worth of driving to get to the first rental, so we said our goodbyes and got ready to go. For some reason I thought he'd said that the houses were on the east coast, so this was not going to be as big of a trip as I'd imagined. We could conceivably finish and get home before supper. Gracie always had a nice supper ready at six o'clock.

That's about all I can recollect. I realize that nothing much actually happened, and I included as much of the dialogue and minutia as I could recall without fabrication. These dreams may or may not have significance. I'm just recording them since I have nothing better to write about at the moment.