It happened again.
The basement flooded.
Some of you will remember this happened to us exactly three years ago.
For us, April showers don't bring May flowers. It brings a flooded basement.
It was another freak happening: Brian woke up to find water in the
basement and the sump pump not working. He discovered in the main circuit
breaker box, that the switch for the sump pump had tripped to "off". It
was the only switch that had done so. And why? No one seems to know.
So, here we go again with a restoration company and drying out the basement.
The owners of the restoration company - a family of 7 - worked their
tails off, carting load after load of years of stuff that somehow accumulates
in basements, and stacking it all neatly in our garage.
Some of the major furniture items were able to stay in the basement, like the
couch, the table, and treadmill. The couch got a little bit of water on the bottom,
but it's being dried out. All my bookcases were ruined though, and had to be
thrown out. Some books were ruined, too. The restoration people took our area
rugs and are treating them and drying them out in their warehouse. Hopefully,
they can be salvaged.
Not only is our garage filled, but the top of the bar has things piled
all over it, too. It's amazing how much "stuff" one accumulates after living
in the same place almost 23 years.
They ran out of room to pile all my books, so some are piled in the living room.
Even the poor kitties are discombobulated. Normally, their cat boxes are
downstairs, so we had to bring them upstairs. I didn't exactly want a cat box
in my living room, a bathroom, or our bedroom, so they went into the spare
room/office.
Believe it or not, that's not even all the stuff we had in the basement.
There's also the unfinished part of the basement, AKA, the dungeon.
Huge Sterilite containers of out-of-season clothes, the cat tree, baby toys...
Shelves full of paint cans, tools, home repair stuff; a couple of
garment racks full of coats and sweaters due to lack of closet space.
Egads, how to start all over and clean all this stuff out and put it back together?
We sure have out work cut out for us.
But, that's not all. On top of the stove breaking the other day and having
to get a new one - which will be delivered on Tuesday - and now our
basement flooding, Brian went to open the garage door, and one of the
main springs broke. The garage door guy will be here Monday morning.
And if that's not enough, when the restoration man was here today to
check the humidity levels in the basement, he asked me if I knew that my
water softener was leaking from the bottom! I told him, no. He told me I'd
better call the water softener company immediately, as it could actually
explode if it malfunctioned. Talk about a high anxiety level! A serviceman from
the water softener company came out and looked at the softener and released
the pressure valve and turned the whole machine off. They will be installing
a new water softener on Monday.
Trying to keep a smile on my face and breathe. I know things could
be worse. We shall get through this. We somehow always do.
