OMG! I can't believe I crafted this wonderful, heartwarming post and never shared it? Wow. Let's go back a few months to when the employment opportunities looks grim...my credit card debt was increasing...and the sound of water dripping still made my eyes twitch!
November 26, 2010:
I thought I wrote a blog post about the great flood of '08 in our basement, but I can't seem to locate it. Boy, that was a crazy time. Lots of memories were drenched in basement water from a hole in the foundation that created a mini waterfall. We have three sections in our basement - two for storage and one is the kid's play room. It was all soaked that year. Ugh.
We learned our lesson after that...we put everything in plastic bins. We no longer have anything sitting on the ground...we ripped up and redid our entire basement flooring because it is used by the kids every day.
We were NOT going to be victimized again.
That was until Wednesday around 11:30 when my daughter shouted up from the basement "Mom. I have a problem. The carpet is all wet!"
No Mother-bleeping-way!!! This was not happening again.
Oh yes sister, it was. Only instead of a running stream down the wall that covers the floor, this time it was a spewing sump pump pipe that had essentially burst so I had a fountain on my hands - like the pretty ones you see lit up in Las Vegas - only it wasn't Vegas, there were no lights and it WAS NOT PRETTY!
I cried. There were Christmas gifts "stored" in the same area as my new fountain. Christmas gifts that were now soaking, soggy messes of cardboard and plastic.
I called hubby in a panic because, while I pride myself in handing most household emergencies, I had NO IDEA how to get a sump pump to stop pumping into the air. After praying I didn't die from electric shock, I stood in the ankle deep water, grabbed the plug and gave a pull. The water from the ground may have stopped spewing, but the water from my tears had not...then it took about an instant to realize it was over. Nothing I could do but start to mop up. And cry some more.
And then almost instantly I thought of families whose homes have burned down before the holidays, have been evicted and have lost their homes to foreclosure...and while my carpet was soggy and some gifts were now headed in the trash, I still had heat and a roof over my head.
The moral of the story - don't pile your Christmas gifts anywhere near water pipes. And be thankful for what you DO have, not what you wish you HAD. We'll be okay. A little worn out, but just fine.
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