Soggy...

Ahhh... I love a good rainstorm. Don't you? The lightening, the thunder, all that rain pounding down.... the raingutters overflowing... the water pouring down into the back stairwell... the flooding of my laundry room and family room. Awesome.

We had quite a fabulous storm today. It started at about 12:00, and at about 12:05 I realized that it was coming down so hard that it was over-flowing the rain gutter in back and pouring down into our stairwell. Unfortunately I was supposed to leave at 12:15 to take Sammi to Primary Children's for her follow up doctor appointment. Hmmm... what shall I do?

I'll tell you what I did.... I ran into the house screaming at Riley and Sammi to grab every towel they could find and run downstairs to jam them up against the back door. They took every single towel in the entire house including dishtowels and dishcloths. We even ended up using a couple blankets too. The big bummer is that I had just washed, folded, and put away most of those towels the day before!

And why is it that when you are screaming your kid's names in an I've-lost-my-mind sort of way... they don't hear you? And you're in such a state of freaking out that all you can think to do is scream their names louder until you get their attention.

Ok, so towels in place... I send Riley out to begin bailing out while I call Matt. "Matt the basement is flooding and I've got to leave in 10 minutes to take Sammi to the doctor! Come home!"

Now Riley and I are running around with giant pots to do the bucket brigade and bail out the stairwell. By this time the water level is above the bottom step. We're running up and down the stairs filling buckets as icy cold water dumps down on ours heads about twice as fast as we can bail.

It starts hailing.

Fill bucket... run upstairs... throw onto lawn... run back down. Meanwhile, Riley has her shirt pulled up over her head and is yelling, "mom, this hurts!". Yep, hail does not feel nice... but it's not like we can stop bailing... we're losing the battle. She runs and grabs her bike helmet.

We FINALLY get the water level down to about the bottom of the door so I leave Riley to continue until Matt get's home (it seems like it's already been an hour... what did he do? Stop for a cheeseburger?) and I go in to change clothes. Mind you I was soaked to the skin within about .2 seconds of going outside.

I change my clothes... the hair is a TOTAL loss, and forget any make up. I look like I just got out of a freezing cold shower and my mascara is smeared down my face.

Meanwhile Matt has arrived and Livie is bawling. All Matt can see (now that the downpour has abated) is that for some stupid reason we let all this water run into the basement.

Now.. I'm REALLY not hoping to have this experience again.... but it would be nice if he were actually at home some time when it does! He only ever sees the aftermath and not the raging battle. Do you get the impression that this is not our first stairwell flood? Well it's NOT.. it's our THIRD. How do you think I knew to check the stairwell in the first place?

So Sammi & I take off and leave Matt to the shop-vac. We show up at her appointment and I look like a drowned rat with my hair still completely wet. Thank goodness for baseball hats. Here's the silver lining.. Sammi's ultrasounds look good and her kidneys look good so as long as she doesn't get any more kidney infections.. that chapter is done!

I come home to piles of towels & carpet pad outside, and all our Christmas decorations piled up in the spare bedroom. The door is off the hinges in the under-the-stairs storage spot and there are 5 fans blowing like a hurricane.

After a lot more cleaning... guess what I'm doing tonight? Washing all those towels again.

The water came in through the laundry room on the right, came into the family room, the storage and the furnace room on the left.

Looking out fromt the laundry room.. the carpet is soaked all down the left wall to the bookcase.

Nice.

I'm wierd, but isn't the lighting in this picture good?

The Pit of Despair

Riley showing how high the water got. We should have let it fill up! Didn't you always dream of doing that with the shower as a kid and having a swimming pool?

Hanging all the towels out to dry. Look at that stupid sunshine.

More towels and the two lovely bailing pots.

More towels and some blankets. You can't see it but there are more on the other side.

The various hand towels and dishtowels. You can't see it, but there are more strung over the top of the netting.

The Christmas tree box was all wet so we set up the tree in the garage to dry off.


And a nice pile of carpet pad. This pile got bigger as the clean up continued.

I just counted and we used a total of 23 towels, 2 blankets and who knows how many hand towels, dishtowels & dishcloths.

So.... What did you do today?