Flood

So our house is kind of old. And kind of weird in some respects. Like that it used to be on a septic system, but now has a pump (called a sewage ejection pump) that pumps the sewage/water up to the city water lines. The thing is, if that pump stops working, we can't use our plumbing--except in the half bathroom on the newer addition to the house. Last night it stopped working. We resigned ourselves to using the half bathroom until a plumber could be called the next day. It was annoying, but not too terrible. Kip went to work, as he likes to do before a disaster is about to occur. (I think it's a conspiracy, don't you--this work thing he likes to attend right before someone throws up or nearly cuts off a finger or the power goes out or whatever). Anyway, it'd been raining all day as it's prone to do in these parts. And here the plot thickens because another weird thing about our house is that it has this basement with a system to keep it dry where it funnels the water that would otherswise come into the house when it rains into a drain. Which is then pumped out by the sewer ejection pump. Perhaps you're beginning to see where this story is headed. In which case, you're a step ahead of where I was last night when I went to the basement to see if I couldn't just give the pump one more try to see if it'd work.

I didn't end up giving it much of a try, because there were three inches of water in the laundry room. I walked around helplessly for a few minutes. When I stepped on the flooring Kip threw down a year or so ago, it would squish waves of water out of the sides. There was nothing to do, but call Kip. Kip kept asking if I could just use a towel. No, I told him, squishing out waves, a towel was not going to be sufficient. Kip also suggested that I hook up a hose to the drain and funnel the water outside. I wondered if Kip was aware the he had married me and not someone else because I thought it was pretty clear that I would not be able to do such a thing--even if I knew which drain he was talking about. Kip said 'it's where the water's coming out.' The thing Kip couldn't understand was that I couldn't tell which drain it was because that drain was completely under water, so it's not like I could see it coming out.

Kip decided to come home. Which was a good thing. First of all because he could help. And secondly because he could see the task was indeed beyond a towel or two and that hooking up a hose, while possible, was not easy.

We, and by we I mean mostly Kip, spent the next couple hours wet vac-ing enough water out of the basement so that he could jerry rig a hose to the drain that I could now clearly see was spilling forth water. I helped by giving technical support (pushing buttons on the wet vac; retrieving paper towels, etc.) and by calling a plumber to see how much it would be to get one there in the middle of the night (at that point, the whole hose hook up was not going so well). But then, after several tries with several hoses and lots of types of tape (duct, electrical), Kip found a fat hose and puttied it together well enough to get the water to flow outside instead of in (I admit that, while I hate to see Kip struggle, I was a wee bit relieved that this was not an easy task--even for the handy man genius. It's good to know when you can't do something that it's not because you're an utter idiot even if you aren't a handy woman genius).

I never did get hold of a plumber, but my efforts got us on the early list in the morning.

Now if I was a proper blogger I would have seen the opportunity in all this and gotten out the camera and recorded all the fun that we were having. But I didn't. I mostly sat on the steps feeling sad and tired and sorry for myself. And then when Kip went back to work, I went to bed about 1:30am. Ouch.

And then Mark woke up at 5:45 with a nightmare and I couldn't go back to sleep. Double ouch.

But there were many blessings:
1. I'm glad I went down there. I could have just gone to bed and then we would have woken up this morning with a whole whole lot more water than three inches in the laundry room.
2. We do have that half bathroom. Halleliuah. Otherwise, we would have just had to issue a no flush rule for nearly 24 hours and I think we all know how ugly that could have been.
3. Kip could leave work and Kip could do a temporary fix, which saved us some money.
4. When the plumber did come today, we didn't have to replace the pump as we thought we would have (at least it seems so now; Kip is still cautious in his optimism). The plumber drilled an air hole in the pipe at the top of the pump thing because I guess it needs air yadda yadda to not get plugged up yadda yadda, sort of like a sippy cup needs a little hole otherwise the fluid won't come out for the baby. At least that's how I interpreted it. But my plumbing skills are just a wee bit limited, you see, so that could be not quite right. Anyway, he drilled a hole and everything started working again. It cost only $85 instead of $400. That's a big blessing if ever there was one.
5. Thank you wet vac. Even if you did get full awfully fast.
6. And then God sent us a sunny pretty day to take a breather. Or in my case, a very long nap in the afternoon.
7. Which brings me to: Thank you Kip. For being a handyman genius and for coming home and for letting me take a very long nap today because I was so so so tired.