Sept. 23, 2003 - Water, water everywhere

All I wanted to do was the laundry, this shouldn't have been the major production that it was...

I put in a load of laundry around 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, the third load of the day. I went upstairs to work on my water colour that I started and to have a snack. Sue came down to invite me to dinner and to see if I was lonley yet. (she seems to think that I will break in two if I am alone when Kevin works straight through the weekend or several days in a row.) I told her that I would probably stop up for a bit, but after I went to the station to bring him his lunch for Monday. She leaves around 5ish. I get up start cleaning up the paints and paintbrushes and head down in the basement.

All is good until I get 8 feet from the washer and realize that I am standing in water. OH FUCK...I run to the washing machine, I shut the water off from the faucets and I stand there repeating out loud, "oh fuck, oh fuck, water, water, water..." At this point, I didn't think it was all that bad, the water didn't seem to be near the boxes yet..so I hurried to scoop everything off the floor or put the paper boxes ontop of the rubermaid bins that I have down there. I start to head up stairs, but turned the corner to the finished side of the basement and I froze.

Six inces of water on the other side of the basement. Insulation was floating, even a beer bottle floated by my foot. I stood there in ankle deep water with tears streaming down my face. I was alone and Kevin was working for 72 hours straight. Who was I going to call? What was I going to do? I felt overwhelmed so I cried harder. I ran up the stairs, slipped on the tile in the kitchen and called the fire station. I was hoping that Kevin didn't respond to the call they had at the marina with the explosion and boat fire...

He was at the station and I told him what had happened and he said, "OK I will send a truck out and I will have Steffan come and look at it, I am on desk and I have to stay here." I wanted Kevin to come, not people I couldn't hug or cry to. Damn, this means I have to make sure the house is cleanish...so I hurry...then the firetruck appears out of nowhere and ALL the neighbors are stearing at our little house. Kevin was on the truck with Steffan. This relaxed me a bit. So they all go down into the basement and confirm that yes our basement is flooded with water. But where is it coming from? For an hour we searched every pipe and the washer conections were fine. So we think it was just the washing machine that overflowed....but over a 100 gallons of water?

I wet/dry vac-ed the side of the basement where the washer is and I took out over 60 gallons of water, and they had the fire house and pump on the other side of the basement. It took almost 5 hours to clean this mess up. It is now 11 on a Sunday night.

Ugh, it stinks so bad down there. We have fans, dehumdifiers and windows open. I just keep thinking how lucky we are that we tore up that rug and that we don't have that to deal with ontop of this mess. I am also so happy that none of the new construction materials were in the basement and they didn't get ruined.

So yea, I WAS excited to do my laundry in my house. Now I am scared to death. We had someone come look at the washer and he said it was fine. Might have just been out of wack when we moved it. Dunno. So weird. I guess this is what happens when you own the home. Oh, our first mortgage payment is due on the first...Ugh.