You Know Who Your Friends Are

...when your basement floods. And you're texting people because you don't know what to do, because you are helpless against the water flowing freely into your finished basement. And you never say, "please come over", they just show up with whatever they can get, at 8 p.m. on a Sunday - no questions asked. They stay and try to troubleshoot the water, help you decide what can be salvaged, what can be done at such a late hour on a "school" night. They get a little wet, work in the mud, in poor lighting, and even do some heavy lifting once we decide it's probably best to get the soaking carpet out ASAP. Even though we are exhausted, a little sore (me) and banged up (if you could only SEE my smashed finger!), today was a billion times easier because of Jason and Tom. We can't thank you enough.

There are pros and cons to the flood happening at a late hour - the kids were already in bed and fell asleep soundly and never moved even though we were all coming in and out of the house numerous times. But all the hardware stores were closed, disabling us from getting a pump to move the water away from the house. And we both had to stay home from work to clean up. We now have multiple dehumidifiers and fans running and everything seems to be drying up. Although there is significant amounts of mud left behind and the baseboards/molding needs to come out and we have to investigate the walls yet.

Our morning started driving around the southeast part of the state to borrow my brother's truck (for hauling wet stuff), picking up extra fans/dehumidifiers from my dad, getting my finger looked at because I can't bend the top knuckle (it's all sorts of purple and swollen), and Craig meeting with a landscape company to talk about pitching everything away from the house. There are 4-5 bags sitting in the dinning room containing standard-issue white rice and our soaked electronics. I'll let you know if any of it dries out (I have my doubts). We filled the entire bed of the truck with carpet. Also we concluded that the "drain" next to our house MUST be clogged, so we dug out the "exit" and realized it was back filled with mud, with tree roots growing through it- super. So that pipe has a "date" with a roto-rooter:

As our elderly neighbor said as she stopped to see how we were doing, "This too shall pass, right?" It's only stuff; we didn't lose anything that can't be replaced.