THE FLOOD

Tuesday, April 19, 2011:

Husband is smack in the middle of remodeling our bathroom, and we're taking a break and eating lunch, when we hear a huge POP! Husband runs upstairs to make sure the piping for the new shower he's just installed is intact. It is. We shrug and go back to eating lunch.

Ten minutes later, our next door neighbor knocks on the door. "Do you have water?" he asks.
"Yeah," I reply, "The water's on, why?"
"No, in your basement, do you have water?"
"Uh, Jason's been up and down the stairs all day turning the water on and off, I think we're dry. Jason is the basement wet?"
Jason puts down is sandwich and goes down to the basement.
A long series of curse words drifts up from the cold air return.
"We've got water!"



Neighbor proceeds to explain that he's lived in our neighborhood for decades and that they have not had any problems with their sewer drain backing up since the early 1980s when the city expanded the sewer line out on the main road. That's 30 years and no problem with their main drain. Neighbor's brother lives across the street so he knows the houses in our neighborhood very well, and when he saw water in our basement he figured we'd have the same problem and ran over to tell us, first thing. We have the sweetest neighbors! We might not have noticed for hours if he hadn't come over.

It's a good thing we did notice because our 1-year-old, $5,000 furnace would have been under a foot of water if I hadn't run out to Home Depot for a sump pump. It was a bad Tuesday.