Last any of you heard from me was Part 2 of the Paper Potter Bowl Tutorial. Went to bed, woke up the next morning-horrible headache. Thursday, I did some work, but didn't get to the blog. Friday, headache was back, and much worse, didn't really do anything until the late afternoon-All of a sudden the headache was gone! Of course, that's when I noticed the dark clouds rolling in outside (sometimes my headaches predict the weather-a surprisingly un-useful superpower that I have). You could tell it was going to be a bad storm, I even checked the weather channel for tornado warnings, the sky looked so weird. No tornadoes, but there was a severe storm warning that specifically listed my town (they usually just list the bigger cities, so that was neat), that said get indoors immediately, so you knew it was going to be bad.
Turned off and unplugged all the non-essential electronic stuff and sat in the house with the rest of my family, just watching the storm. Power went out, came back on shortly, and then went out again-And stayed out this time. Around 1 am Saturday the power still wasn't back on, and after checking on the sump pump (that currently has no way to drain itself without power), my brother and I decided that if we didn't bail it out, the basement would be flooded before morning. So we started hauling buckets of water upstairs and back outside. We kept talking positive-"The power company will fix everything once the lighting stops" (the storms continued on and off for 6 hours)- "If it stops raining the water level will stop rising" (rained all night)- "We just have to stop the basement from flooding until the power turns back on" (14 hours of no power, btw) The first hour I was counting buckets, but I lost count after bucket 20. I do know that 1 inch of water in the sump pump, bailed out is more than 10 gallons of water (we had some empty 10 gal. fish tanks that we were thinking about filling after we were too tired to go up the stairs anymore-a basement full of filled fish tanks is still better than a flood), we bailed out a lot of water. And we later found out that the drainage ditches outside were backing up into the house too, it was a lot of water. It wasn't like it was just constant bailing, an hour of bailing and then an hour break, repeated 6-7 times maybe. But when the power finally came back on I was sleep deprived and kind of sore, and so I pretty much just sleep all Sunday.
After seeing all the ruined carpet and furniture that some of the neighbors were hauling out for the garbage man today, I'm glad that we didn't quit or go to sleep. And it turns out that at after hauling buckets upstairs for hours, an off-hand comment from my brother saying, "This is hell", turned into a pretty in depth discussion on Greek mythology. I wouldn't call our situation "Hell", but Sisyphus is spending his eternal after-life rolling a boulder up a hill just for it to roll back down, and we spent our entire night hauling gallons of water upstairs just for it to soak back into the ground and our basement. Aside from the time span, there were a lot of similarities. Insightful stuff.
So now here we are, Monday, and I would like to get everything back to normal, but I have to catch up on some things first. To add to the fun our family computer needs repairing(that broke weeks ago), so my brother is going to commandeer my laptop for the evening to finish a project. So other than this quick write up you're just about done reading, I won't be doing much in the blogging world today either. At least I got a moment to tell you why, and in a day or two, all will be as it should. (And how cool is it that I stopped a flood?) ^_^
Oh you poor things! How awful....take care of yourself first and then take care of the flood damage! Good luck with the computer and you don't need to apologise for anything! Just glad your parcel arrived before this drama! xxx
ReplyDeleteThanks Jazzi, the post's up now. :)
DeleteHello Kyle,
ReplyDeleteDoesn't stopping a flood make you a hero? I hope your computer gets fixed soon and your followers will be waiting when you get back.
Big hug,
Giac
Not sure I've reached hero status over here, but it was quite the accomplishment.
DeleteThanks Giac!
thats why we bought a generator..(actually we have two a big one *for the household stuff* and a smaller one that we can hook up to our sump pump to drain the water out of our basement it's a godsend and it was cheap too) I think everyone should have a generator it's the best investment ever (we didnt have power for a week but we did just fine) Im glad you were able to keep from flooding just watch out for mold..spritz the walls with vinegar that should get rid of it
ReplyDeleteHugs
Marisa
I've been on team, "We need a generator", for years. We had a backup pump for a while, and that's the really important thing, so the generator kept getting put off for later. Pretty sure it's at the top of the list now. XD
DeleteThanks for the tip, not sure who told me that first, but I actually gotteb that advice for cleaning my rehabbed Van Buren dollhouse. Miniature skills work for everything. ^_^