Cue Noah.  There's Been a Flood!

So, spring is here and I'm as happy as a housewife in garden dirt.  Finally I can get to all those gardening and yard care plans I've been brewing up all winter.  The inside of the house is sparkling. Took care of that with a couple weeks of intensive spring cleaning, so, for the next few months my time will be divided between tidying, writing and working in the great outdoors!  That was the plan anyway.

So, how did fate, that bitter hag, throw a big ole monkey wrench into my plans??  Well, May 12th was cruising right along according to plan.  I spent the day bouncing between computer work in our basement home office and, when that got boring, working outside in the yard until the old back started aching.  Repeat.

I was working on a long computer stint when I looked out the window and saw the old compost bin sitting there under a cluster of evergreens.  This bin was created by the previous home owners out of two old doors that they cut in half and screwed together to form a big box.  It was starting to fall apart a bit and, like so many things they did in the garden that were just wrong, it was situated entirely in the shade.  Well, this would simply not do.  Time for a computer break!!!  Outside to the sunshine to relocate and repair the compost bin.

On the whole it was a pleasant enough job.  Took about half an hour. Got to use my power drill.  The bin is now in a much better spot and has been repaired so that it will stand up to many years of composting yet to come. With the satisfaction of a job well done, and a bit of a well earned tan, I packed up my tools and headed back into the house.  As I entered the basement I realized it was raining.  No.  Not outside.  Inside.  The inside of my basement was raining.  Check that, pouring.  Honestly it took me a good thirty seconds to even comprehend what was happening.  I dropped the drill and box of screws and did one of those Macauly Culkin screams from Home Alone.

 

Water was pouring from eight separate pot lights and the smoke detector.  Not dribbling or dripping.  Pouring!  It was running down the walls where they met the ceiling.  Paint was bubbling up and the window and door trim caulking was swelling and breaking.  There was half an inch of water on one side of the room on the floor.  I ran upstairs.  Where was this water coming from??  What the hell was going on??  The living room and kitchen where completely dry, which was very confusing, but the master bedroom floor had an inch of water on the floor.  I ran into the mater bath, and there I found the source of the problem.  The shower stall had filled up and the water was spilling out all over the floor, out the door, into the bedroom and down to the basement underneath.

Oh my God!!  WhatdoIdo?WhatdoIdo?WhatdoIdo?WhatthefuckdoIdo?????  Well, I did what every other pathetically unprepared woman does in an emergency.  I called a man.  Yes that's right.  I'm not proud of it, but in my haste to make our house pretty since we moved in, it never occurred to my to figure out stuff like, you know, HOW THE FUCK TO TURN OFF THE WATER!!!!!  So I called my husband at work.  The following is a transcript of our conversation taken from my very accurate memory:

Jake:  Hello

Me (bawling):  YOU NEED TO COME HOME RIGHT NOW!!!!

J:  Why?  Whats the matter?

M:  THE HOUSE IS FLOODING!!  THERE'S WATER EVERYWHERE!

J:  Whaddaya mean?

M:  (Getting shrill) Whaddaya mean "whaddaya mean"??  There's water everywhere!  The shower overflowed and there's water all over the bedroom and its pouring into the basement!  How do I turn the water off???!!

J:  How did the shower overflow?

M (running around the house like a mad woman):  I don't know!  How do I turn off the water??

J:  Well, how much water is there?

I have just run into the laundry room in the basement.  Water is pouring out of the ceiling through a trapdoor and filling up the florescent light covers.  The floor is underwater and all the laundry is soaked.

M: OH MY GOD!  HOW DO YOU TURN IT OFF!!!!!!!?

He did not seem to be understanding the urgency of the situation.  Since none of his myriad of questions were able to help me I decided to hang up on him and go get some real help.  I dropped the phone and ran for the neighbors.  Now, living on a two acre lot is fabulous, until your house is filling up with water and you don't know how to stop it and you have to sprint across those two acres searching for help.  I made like Usain Bolt over to Randy's house only to discover nobody was home.  Shit, shit, shit.  At this point I really wish I had taken the time, when we moved in, to meet more of the neighbors. I "Usain'ed" over to the neighbor across the road and rang the bell.  By the time I got there I was so out of breath I could hardly talk.  Really gotta work on that cardio.  A lovely couple answered the door.  I was literally bent over gasping for breath.  I looked up at them with tears in my eyes.

"Hi! (gasp, pant, pant).  I'm Michelle, (huff, puff) your neighbor from across the road,(huff, puff). Do, (huff, puff) either of you, (huff, puff) know anything, (huff, puff) about water? (pant, pant, pant)  Because my house is flooding (huff, puff) right now!!! (gasp, pant, pant).

Well, lucky for me Mike did in fact know something about water.  He grabbed his shoes and toolbox and we raced back to my house.  His first question to me was, "where's the water shut off?"  Well, Mike, if I knew that I wouldn't need you now would I?  He identified the water pump, but it had no on/off button and no plug so we didn't know how to turn it off.  Finally I yelled, "circuit board"!! I am a genius.  So, while we never did shut off the water, at least we shut off the pump so it stopped filling up the shower.  Then we dashed back through the rainstorm and headed for the bathroom.  Mike asked for a plunger and started plunging out the shower drain.  He was standing with his jeans rolled up, up to his ankles in cold water, in his bare feet, plunging away when the hubby called back. 

J:  What's going on??

M:  We shut off the pump and drained the shower.  You need to come home!!  

I looked at the bedroom floor covered in water.

M (sobbing):  I can't do this by myself!!!

J:  Well, I can't get a bus at this hour. (1:30 in the afternoon)

Well, I can see your problem dear.  It's not like the bus runs 24 HOURS A DAY!!!!!!!  My inner indignant black woman came screaming out.  

M:  What the hhheeeelllllll are you talking about?  You can't get no bus in the city, in the middle of the day!  YOU BETTER GET YO ASS HOME SO I CAN WHUP IT!  I cannot do this by myself!  The basement ceiling is frickin' raining!!

Then my loving spouse comes up with this super idea.

J:  Just get a little saw and cut a whole in the ceiling so all the water drains out.

Clearly I have not effectively communicated to him the scope of the problem. 

"There is no need, dear", I said, "to cut a hole in the ceiling.  The water is already pouring out of all the holes that are already in the ceiling!!!  Another one isn't going to help!!!

I hung up on him again.  I can only take so much ya know.

I ran back to Mike and the plunger.  We heard a big clog break loose.  Sounded like a groundhog was stuck in there.  Suddenly the water started to drain.  Hallelujah!

Mike and I stood there for a few minutes just watching the water recede into the drain.  It felt like we'd just disarmed a nuclear bomb.  Mike packed up his tools and headed home now that the threat was over.  Relief was flooding through me.  Until I looked around.  There was still and inch of water on the floor.  I could still hear it pouring into the basement.  How does a person clean something like that up.  I only had one roll of paper towels left, and I think this a little more that Bounty could handle.

I called the hubby for advice.  He offered this fine nugget:

J:  Get the dustpan from the kitchen and scoop the water into a bucket.

A dustpan.  And a bucket.  And just like The Champ I looossee it!  I aggressively suggested to my beloved that if he wished to remain my ever loving spouse, he would immediately take his person over to his friend Steve's desk and kindly request an emergency ride home so that he might assist in the clean up effort.

Turns out, the dustpan was an ok idea.  I used it to shovel water out the bedroom door and onto the deck.  I stuffed about twenty bath towels under the bed to soak up the water, and twenty pounds of dog hair and dust bunnies, that was pooling there.  I squeegeed water off the bathroom floor and back into the shower and I called a friend to bring me her shop vac so I could suck the water up in the basement.  My friend helped me drag all the wet carpets, towels and clothes outside.  She walked by me carrying a huge basket of soaking wet clothes and said, "it was very smart of you to put these on the floor to soak up the water".  Riiiiiiight.  That's why they were there.

All in all, by the time that my hubby got home the bedroom and bathroom were dry and the ceiling was only dripping a tiny bit.  He walked in, looked around and said, "doesn't really look that bad to me".  His funeral is on Wednesday.

Michy