Monday, December 13, 2010 | By: Slacker Mom

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

After some encouragement from friends, I've decided to add a new feature to my blog. I thought I would share little slices of life that may have occurred recently or even anytime in the last say 20 or so years. While I consider myself an average, normal person, I seem to be a magnet for slightly disastrous events. For some reason, my friends find them amusing. I find them mildly annoying at the very least and for the most part just life as I know it.

One thing I can't seem to get away from is a flooding house. My first house was in TX and it had a tendency to flood when the spring flash floods would hit (but that's a story for a different day). Here in WA it rains.a.lot. And I'm lucky enough to live in a house with a basement. Not every basement floods but mine does. If it's just the typical drizzly rain that soaks everything but never collects, we're fine. But I happen to live in a neighborhood that has worthless drainage systems that somehow find a way to empty into my pipes when they get too full. Just outside my back door, there is a drain that is supposed to funnel all excess water out to the ditches. Instead it acts as a faucet that pours all the water in the neighborhood right to my door and into my basement. After 5 years of living here, you would think I would be on alert whenever it rains but no. We usually discover the flooding when we head downstairs and find ourselves ankle deep in ice cold water.

The last time it flooded (before last weekend anyway) Hubby was away on his monthly trip to TX. I came downstairs to check on the kids and stepped right into water. I hollered at the kids, "Why didn't you TELL me it was flooding!?" They had no idea what I was talking about as they were lost in video game land and oblivious to the real world. So I pulled on my rubber boots (I keep them close to the back door for just such an occasion) and went to work--after I called Hubby to complain about his being away, leaving me to mop up by myself.

Unfortunately, we've been getting ready to move and that means serious purging. Being the smart, efficient woman that I am, I'd been piling all the garage sale stuff by the back door, as well as some of the boxes I packed for moving. So the first order of business was to move all those boxes out of the way before anything else got ruined. Sloshing back and forth through the water, I moved everything away from the door and into my craft room--scraping my finger in the process hard enough that 2 months later I still have a scar.

In order to get all the water out, I have to hook up a pump and run a hose around to my bathroom shower for drainage. Great--except the shower was full with even more garage sale stuff--had to empty that out next. As I'm rushing back and forth with arms full of junk that I just don't have the heart to see ruined (hey, that game might bring in a whole dollar at a garage sale!) water is still pouring in and making it's way under the stair case and into my closet. I kick it into high gear when I see this. Reaching into the shower stall for another armload, I accidentally hit the faucet and TURN THE SHOWER ON. I scrambled to get it off but still managed to now get my top half, as well as an odd collection of paper dividers and throw pillows, wet. Because that's what I need when dealing with a flood is more water.

In spite of myself I got the shower emptied, got the pump and hose in place, and started rerouting the water. Eventually that kept anymore from coming in but I still had the water in the house to deal with.

During Hubby's previous TX trip, I'd finally gotten around to laying out the 10x10 carpet piece we had, even going so far as to make sure it was laid out underneath our freezer and bookshelves that were downstairs. Now this rug was a sopping mess that had to be taken out before it started to mold and stink up my house. Let me just tell you that a rug that has been doused in about 75 gallons of water is VERY HEAVY. But I drew on my inner Wonder Woman and managed to not only pull the darn thing out from under the furniture but to drag it into the bathroom where I shoved it into the shower stall so it could dry out (well, as much as it could dry out with all the water coming in from the pump). The rest of the day was spent literally sweeping water out the door, mopping up the floors, drying out what I could and spraying everything with Lysol in an only mildly successful attempt to kill the mildew smell.

Eventually I got it all done and things went back to normal. Until it rained again.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for sharing the struggle with us.

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