The fun part of home ownership

Everything is wet. Shoes, car, clothes, house—all wet. The rain won’t stop, which is a good thing because it means there won’t be draught conditions this summer, but right now it’s a very, very bad thing, particularly for our basement. Yesterday the basement was WET, or rather FLOODED or, even better, UNDER SIEGE. Usually our basement problems are minor and can be fixed with the strategic placement of towels in a particularly leaky corner. But yesterday morning Lunchboy went to check on the towels and I thought the basement had eaten him alive because he went completely silent, or as silent as you can be when you’re sloshing through an inch or so of water.

“Why didn’t you come get me to help?” I asked when I saw the extent of the water on the floor.
“I was trying to protect you from the badness,” he said.

We concluded that God hates us and is punishing us with water torture because we’re living in sin.

For three hours, we battled the badness—opening the French drain, getting the sump pump going, sweeping water into the drain and rescuing boxes from the deluge. The sump pump hose wasn’t long enough to reach into the downstairs bathroom, so Lunchboy came up with the brilliant idea of duct taping the pump hose to a garden hose and then we snaked the whole thing out the basement window and down the sidewalk about 9 feet away. Eventually we got ahead of the water and things started to dry out a bit. I’m praying that the duct tape on the hoses holds because Lunchboy’s in NYC now and if that thing blows, I’m on my own. And the forecast says we’re getting another few inches of rain before the weather clears up. Oh joy.