Thursday, December 1, 2011

Niagra looks nice, but you DON'T want it in your basement.

Let me just catch you up on some things.....

It's snowing again; a lovely, slow falling snow that looks like something out of a Charlie Brown Christmas Special (and yes, even now I'm humming the Vince Guaraldi Trio music).  Everything outside seems chilly and peaceful.....

And inside, it's a freakin' disaster area.

Last Sunday, I was awakened by my Favorite Wife, who gently whispered into my ear at 4 PM (which, as you well know, translates into about 1 AM on my schedule) that there seemed to be something wrong downstairs.  Sometimes, my wife is a little vague on the specifics of the concept of 'something wrong'; it could be that the computer is frozen, or it could be that one of the cats needs a trip to the vet; or it could mean that water seems to be leaking out of the ceiling, walls, and floor.

Yes.  That last one is the big winner of the day.

I shut down the water, called the plumber, cleaned up a little as best we could, and went back to bed, which I will call a major victory on my road to person-hood:  in the past, I would yell and kick and whine and moan and think what an awful tragedy, but instead, I made sure that the library was intact, that no lifeboats were required, that no electronics were injured during the filming of this part of my life, and I went back to bed.

There is a reason, after all, why we have plumbers, and homeowners insurance.

For the last couple of days, there have BEEN plumbers, and insurance people and people who address themselves as 'Disaster Cleanup Services' that have been traipsing around my basement, looking, photographing, writing, and systematically ripping up carpet and drywall and setting up industrial sized blow dryers and asking me about how it all started.

Apparently, inside the wall, a leeeeetle pipe leading to the shower in the Master Bathroom broke, and while it wasn't a problem when running a tub, when the shower was begun, the water pressure was pushing some of the water back into the wall.  Invisible to the human eye.

So....my house looks like Swiss Cheese.  There are industrial sized blow dryers humming away in the basement.  My library looks like a scene from OUTBREAK, and people keep knocking on my door.

How's your day going?

1 comment:

Kizz said...

It's like Crime Scene Cleanup for Mother Nature.

Make sure they're SURE those walls are dry before they start putting everything back together. I speak from experience. Damp, moldy experience.