We've had some things go wrong lately and they all seem to revolve around water. The month of July was the driest on record here since the Great Depression and though I haven't read any news on it, I would venture to guess that the month of August 2008, even in its 18 short days thus far, is probably the wettest!
It feels like we have had more rain in the past week than we've seen for the entire 5 years that we've lived here. Ok, probably a slight exaggeration but nonetheless the steady rainfall on Saturday was a mess and these crazies were even out running in it. As usually we are concerned about our basement gathering water during big storms, we checked on it every few hours starting Friday night. Bartee meticulously pumped the water out of our window wells at regular intervals so that it wouldn't overflow in through the windows. We were on top of it... so we thought. In the late afternoon on Saturday, Bartee walked downstairs to discover a rather large puddle on the floor. This is like the third time we've looked at each other and said... "Thank goodness we didn't put carpet back down here". To solve the mystery of where the water was coming from (because it certainly wasn't the window wells this time) Bartee actually saw the water "flowing" downhill and when he realized where uphill was, he opened the utility closet and it jumped out at him. Our concrete half-wall that holds back the dirt in our unfinished basement has a crack in it! The water was seeping out of it like a mini-waterfall. Well, the good news is that we found the source and can probably fix it enough to at least contain the water to the utility closet if we should happen to get this much rain again.
This basement leak followed an upstairs flood we had only a few days before... the dishwasher of 14 years sprung a leak and dumped water all over the kitchen floor. So we are now handwashing all the dishes (ugh!) and researching floor options to replace the laminate flooring that is now gone from our kitchen.
Tonight, the third and hopefully final in the trilogy of water-related catastrophes involved Sanjay. I'm reading a bedtime story to Priya and Sanjay comes running in with a worried, very concerned look on his face. He tells me that his car is gone. I'm thinking in my head, "I just heard the toilet flush... I wonder if that has something to do with the disappearance of said matchbox car". Sure enough when I asked what happened he told me "It's in the potty", and I promptly sent him to Daddy to take care of it. Sanjay usually carries about 4 cars with him during his bedtime routine because he plans on sleeping with them. Well, tonight it seems that one accidentally fell in the toilet and he probably freaked out and the only thing he could think to do was flush it. While watching it disappear down the drain, the tears started flowing. Daddy tried, but was unsuccessful in his attempts to retrieve it. It should pass through our house without causing any damage, right? Priya wants to know what the water company does with all the "stuff" that they filter out of the returned water. I think she's hoping that Sanjay might some day get that car back in his possession. Sanjay on the other hand will be mourning for some time over this. He's losing sleep over the flushed matchbox and is ready to go buy another one, since none of the other 37 cars he owns can possibly replace it. Daddy did manage to calm him down with the promise of a sleepover in our room one night this week.
Let's hope we're through with these kinds of problems for a while.
