SEPTIC VIRGIN

Lucky for you blog readers, all three of you.  Charlie has written another post!  I think he should start his own blog; then again, every one would read his not mine, and who would write for me?

If you have never lived in South Carolina or any state that does not have sewer systems, consider yourself lucky.  This is the only difficult thing we have found about living in the South.  Charlie is a little, shall we say, PARONOID, regarding our septic.  He has calmed down a little, enough so that the shower schedule has gone out the window.  So, our house is smelling much nicer these days and the kids are being allowed back into school.

Here is Charlie's take on living with a septic.  It is a bit long, but well worth the read.

I have a septic system for the first time ever. Prior to this, I was not anti-septic, just a septic virgin. So far, the system seems to work, but I have questions, and a few notes. Here they are:

· Question: Do I still have to fertilize and water my lawn? According to an article that I read, solid waste settles to the bottom of the tank; oils, etc., float to the top; and only water, albeit dirty, makes its way out. I understand that if I see lush, green grass, it probably means that this dirty water is moving up instead of down, and that is not a good thing. Being environmentally sensitive, I don't need a lush, green lawn. Will the water that flows out of the tank, and generally downward, keep my lawn at least a shade above brown? If my lawn gets really brown and gooey-looking, does that point to a septic problem? I guess that is more than one question.

· Question: Where are the leeches? My drain field is supposed to be a leech field, but I don't see them. Since the system seems to work well, I assume that the leeches are underground, doing their thing. I thought that leeches sucked blood. Are these specially bred to live in soil and suck poop? Well, my only comment is that I am happy not to be a thirsty leech.

· Note: My contacts and jewelry are theoretically retrievable. I haven't worn contact lenses in several years. By the time lens makers fixed the astigmatism issues with contacts, I had moved on to decafocals. I tried wearing one lens in one eye for distance, and nothing in the other for reading, but all that did was slow me down enough so that I didn't do much damage when I ran into something. When lenses hit the drain, they were history. Now, though, they would only travel as far as the septic tank buried in my yard. Between the leeches and the sludge, though, they might as well be at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Jewelry is different. If a ring or earring or whatever makes it beyond the trap, there is still hope, slim though it may be. Do the trucks that suck stuff out of septics have screens that can sift jewelry? If they do, how do they charge for this search feature; maybe by the pound? If I owned a septic sucking company, I'd screen every truckload that came back to my facility. I'll bet that septic searching is a nice little side business.

· Question: What will archaeologists find in a few thousand years, and how will they interpret their results? If I were an archaeologist, I might have to take note of the fact that during the Poop Age, humans buried their dead far away from home but kept their excrement nearby, in a sarcophagus. From there, it is only a hop, skip, and jump to a connection with the ancient Egyptians. And how would you explain all that jewelry if not as the result of human sacrifice?

· Note: Septic systems are designed for 20 - 30 years of service. What? Septic tanks have been around since the 1870's and that is the best we can do? Granted, life expectancy back then was pretty low, which is probably why septic systems were invented. But today, life expectancy is almost 80! Surely we can invent something that will last as long as I am expected to last! Just another way we sock it to our senior citizens; let'em get old, then charge extra for toilet privileges.

· Note: If the grass is greener, don't go there. My neighbor has two lush, bright green lines of grass running across his yard. At first, I thought that maybe he was trying to make something visible only from space. Thanks to the internet, I now know that his effluent is rising, not sinking, which will make him less affluent. How do I tell him? I don't even know his name (shame on me). "Hi. My name is Charlie, and you are in deep doo doo. I'm serious! Your leeches have stopped driving your poop water down, so it is floating up, and you are in deep doo doo!" I guess I could wait until the day everyone comes outside trying to figure out what that smell is.

· Question: Is the earth's core really iron? Not! It doesn't take rocket science to figure out where all that stuff flowing down is going. Jules Verne missed that in 1864 when he wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth, but septic tanks weren't invented yet. What if there is intelligent life down there? Up top, we only have to worry about space junk, hail, and the occasional meteorite. Those folks down below have much bigger problems.

Clearly, the owner of this septic tank has problems, but I'll bet there are leeches aplenty!