Earl, Jamie1 and I were just finishing up supper last night when I decided to start clearing the table. I got up and picked up a few plates and walked across the kitchen toward the dishwasher.
“The floor feels a little squishy”, my technical talk is always appreciated. The tiles felt a little bouncy when I was walking across the floor.
“Don’t jump on them”, Earl replied. I guess I’m a little bouncy when I walk.
I deposited the plates in the dishwasher and started walking back towards the table. I took one step. On the second step there was a loud “bang” and two rows of the floor tiles were heaved and now shaped like an upside down “V”.
“I didn’t do anything!”, I yelled as I automatically defended myself. I think there’s a childhood trauma buried in that auto-defense mechanism I have. Something about locking the keys to the safe in the safe, but that’s another blog entry.
There we were with our own continental divide going down the middle of the kitchen. Upon further inspection, these two rows of tile were over the water pipes that lead to the dishwasher and sink from the hot water tank. There’s no water leaks or anything, it appears the heat from the pipes being used for the past 13 years finally took their toll on the glue holding the tiles down.
This morning Earl smashed the tiles so we could get them off the floor and we put a throw rug over the whole mess. The continental divide has turned into the continental canyon. It looks I know where the tax refunds are going.
1 Jamie is our friend from Buffalo. He was visiting for the weekend.
