my weekend (rent, houses, school)

[stycotl]

oh, this weekend was a blast.

first, we adopted a dog from the humane society on saturday. her (current) name is slurpee, though that will change as soon as we come up with one we like. she's a boxer/pit mix, and made it through three weeks of visits and eliminations. she is a sweetie, especially with our daughter (though she doesn't like cats).

saturday, as it was raining incessantly, we noticed a leak in our roof. hmm, bummer. more money that we need to spend. we just bought this house, and have been fixing things up like crazy. but the roof was one of the two physical (along with the foundation) things that we had chosen this house for, that we thought wouldn't need fixing, as it is close to brand new. unfortunately, whoever installed our swamp cooler and decided that they should put the ventilation through the roof, didn't know what they were doing.

so i went to bed saturday night worried about a leak in our roof.

sunday morning was my morning to sleep in (my wife and i rotate on days that we can), but my wife came in at 0830 in the morning and woke me up with these dreadful words:

"we have a problem. the basement flooded."

as i deleriously tried to make sense of this news, i got up, pulled some pants on, stepped into my old combat boots, and trudged to the stairs. sure enough, my basement was flooded, and the water was still rising.

now, as i mentioned, we just moved into our house a little bit ago–just before christmas to be exact–and have slowly been unpacking. downstairs, we had used the basement as our staging area for the plethora of boxes that haven't been unopened yet, and we've been primarily living upstairs. now all of those boxes were standing in two to three inches of water.

but again, the water was still rising.

so i spent the entirety of my sunday hauling soggy boxes full of soaking wet clothes, books, paperwork, and other things upstairs, to be dumped onto a carpet of blankets and towels on our living room floor. then we wet-vacced the entire basement, and eventually borrowed our neighbor's rug doctor to suck as much of the water out of our basement carpet as possible.

first, to get this off of my chest, my wife and i had argued about whether to put carpet in the basement. i had argued against it, she had argued for it. i hate carpet, but especially in basements. so the whole time i was slogging through my basement swamp, sorting through ruined possessions, i was remembering that i never wanted the stupid carpet in the first place.

second, the rug doctor is awesome. that thing sucked probably close to 200 gallons of water out of my basement. i had no idea that a basement could hide that much water in a carpet. sure, the water had completely submerged the carpet to begin with, but even after the water level was lower than the carpet (after we got the sump pump working again, thanks to my dad and mom and their emergency help), i vaccumed more than 100 gallons out of that carpet (based on how many times i emptied that 3-gallon tank).

even as i was emptying water though, it was still coming up. if we hadn't started when we did (if she hadn't gone down for strawberry jam), we'd have had two or three feet of water down there.

i eventually had to return the rug doc, but it had done a mighty fine work. now the water just squelched between my toes as i walked barefoot across the carpet, instead of shooting up in miniature geysers.

last night, after hours and hours of work, my wife and i tore out the carpet and propped it up as well as we could so that the fans would be able to help dry them.

last night i went to bed, trying hard not to think about anything. this morning i woke up to find that the snow plows had piled up a massive wall in front of my driveway. i missed school as i tried to dig out my car. when i get home from work, i get to dig some more, and then vaccum more water out of my basement. and we still have to finish going through the piles of wet stuff to see what can be salvaged.

yipee.

on the bright side, slurpee made it through the chaos of her first 24 hours with us in dazzling style. she still has that anxious, new-mutt, don't-leave-me complex, but she handled it very well. the only bad part was when she tried to kill my parents' cat.

so, between the monsoon rains and everything else, did anyone else have an awesome weekend?

thanks for listening to my rant.

aaron out.

[kaytidid]

I am so, so, SO, sorry Aaron. But...it is nice to know that these things happen to other people other than myself sometimes. There have been many different times throughout my life that I felt like the only one.

I hope your basement dries quickly.

Edited to add: By no means, I am happy that this happened to you, just relieved that it does happen to others from time to time. After I read my original post, it sounded kind of off...I am hoping that you knew what I meant, but just wanted to make sure.

[stycotl]

thanks. i'm laughing as i read this. i needed that; it's therapy to the murderous rage that i've been in for the last 30 hours. gotta get it out now so that my wife and kids (counting the dog now) don't disown me.

aaron out.

[kaytidid]

LOL...repeat after me,

This too shall pass
This too shall pass
This too shall pass

[Lmejh]

Oh my, flooded basements: the bane of my existence.

[stycotl]

LOL...repeat after me,

This too shall pass
This too shall pass
This too shall pass

that's a lot cleaner than the language i have been using (maybe someday i need to treat (tom-eh-to, tom-ah-to) the forumites here to my view of why cursing is bad. don' worry, i'd put it in the religion&philosophy forum)...

Oh my, flooded basements: the bane of my existence.

sounds like you have more experience with them than i (not that my minor flood counts as actual experience compared to a real flood like the kind that washes away houses and cars and stuff).

[Lmejh]

Originally Posted by stycotl

sounds like you have more experience with them than i (not that my minor flood counts as actual experience compared to a real flood like the kind that washes away houses and cars and stuff).

Well, not quite Noah's Ark of proportions, but after the third flooded basement (the first one being after the Blizzard of Christmas 2003) you just get sick of it.

[eggalegga]

Glad that Slurpee is doing well.

I used to get minor flooding when it rains hard due to the horrible way my rain gutter runs under the concrete path leading up to my house. My brother helped me with a temporary fix for the winter. I need to hire someone to re-route it and dig a better drain for it this spring.

It's a good thing your neighbor has a rug doctor....and he/she let you use it.

You found an unconventional way to get through all that unpacking.

[Chickrae]

Wow that sounds awful Aaron. Basements are a wonderful thing, but when water gets in them it can be very trying to get it all cleaned up. I remember one year and I believe it was probably 1995 because it a couple years after we moved in a home we had built, there was a rain in the Davis County area. It only rained for 15 minutes but the water had gotten in our window wells and was literally pouring in through the windows. I was crying just watching it. It took us forever to get the water out of there, dry the carpet and rent fans. We had just finished our basement about 6 months prior and I thought the same thing.........why did we put carpet.
Now I live where you can't have basements and we get water in our "fraidy hole" instead. I just deal with tornados now...ha ha. and a SERIOUS ice storm today in Tulsa, OK

At least you got a cute little dog, and I love that name slurpee!

[stycotl]

Well, not quite Noah's Ark of proportions, but after the third flooded basement (the first one being after the Blizzard of Christmas 2003) you just get sick of it.

i am beginning to understand. hope you don't have to deal with it anymore.

Glad that Slurpee is doing well.

me too. she is pretty easy-going.

I used to get minor flooding when it rains hard due to the horrible way my rain gutter runs under the concrete path leading up to my house. My brother helped me with a temporary fix for the winter. I need to hire someone to re-route it and dig a better drain for it this spring.

It's a good thing your neighbor has a rug doctor....and he/she let you use it.

yeah, i wouldn't have been able to do even a 10th as much as i did without the help of my neighbors and family. we had my parents, my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, and my neighbors from across the street come over to lend a hand. the rug doctor ended up being the mvp among tools and machinery there, but the floor fans, wet-vacs, and other tools certainly made it easier too.

You found an unconventional way to get through all that unpacking.

ha! that's along the same lines as what my wife said yesterday.