Adventures in Sewer Back-ups, Ruined Basements, and Insurance Companies

      Sewer Germs are so GROSS-in case I forget to mention that- GROSS

     With most of my friends this year packing up and leaving for exotic places and new adventures, I wanted a grand adventure of my own.

     What I settled for was sorting our stuff and getting rid of clutter so we would be ready to move should the remote possibility arrive and fix up our house in case we needed to sell it in hurry. A girl can be hopeful, right?

     Tuesday I got my wish- just not the way I had envisioned it.

    My fairy godmother sucks.

    Bean was in the shower when the water started raising. She hurried out, hastily putting her clothes on as the water started to come out of the toilet. When she came rushing up the stairs and said the toilet was overflowing, I grabbed the plunger.

      “No, Mom. You don't need that. It's not plugged.” She's trying to explain to me as we rush back downstairs.

     I stop at the bathroom door, shocked by what I'm seeing.

The towels stopped the gushing, which I wished I captured in a photo, but you can see the water still coming out of the toilet and this is towards the end of the 45 minutes.

      Water is like a geyser shooting out of the toilet, with debris of toilet paper and branches and who knows what else, (I don't really want to know). The shower is overflowing, and the floor is already covered in an inch of water and it's quickly flowing into the other parts of the downstairs.

     “Get your Dad.” I holler at her, not sure what to do. This is more than a blocked sewer pipe out to the main sewer line.

Gross

      The next few minutes pass in a hurried blur of shouting at each other as Hero Hottie comes rushing down the stairs and realizes we can't do anything to stop it.

     The older girls and I start to grab things off the floor before the water can reach it and throw them onto top of beds and counter tops, trying to save as much as we can. From the photos you can see we couldn't save everything.

     And for 45 minutes we watched as water kept pumping into our house, ruining half our house.            

      Destroying the girls' bedrooms, the downstairs bathroom, the living room. Inches and inches of sewer water flowed everywhere.

     The cause: The construction company up the street had busted a water main, causing sewer to back up into six different homes on the blocks. Our house was hit the worse. But all the houses would need new flooring.

     We sent the girls' over to Grandma's so they could clean up and get the sewer water off their bodies. The upstairs was contaminated by our footsteps.

     My house was a bio hazard.

What's this brown stuff?

     Gross. Totally gross and just a little – no, completely gross.

     Sewer water. People's poo. Covering my girls' bed. My couch. My Blueberry's toys. I wanted to cry. And scream.

    Hero Hottie was upset. He marched down the street, still in bare feet because he didn't want to put sewer water covered feet in his shoes and started demanding answers.

   Mostly who is fixing this and they better start right now.

   Hero Hottie and I are pretty easy going people. Except when a company pumps sewer water into our home for 45 minutes and RUINS our house. Then we're a little bit more demanding.

   Which was a good thing. Because within a couple of hours, the construction company had professional cleaners, Stanley Steemers, at the house, decontaminating the floor so we could safety walk through and grab our personal items that were savable.

Clothes, baby potty, Abu's retainer and waterpik all totally gross and ruined

   

Blueberry's toys completely ruined. You can't clean those toys enough. Not for this Momma.

Who wants toast?

Sorry Gibson, it got your dog food too.

    In the last few days, the company has taken the flooring out of Abu's room, ran 13 giants fans to dry the sheet rock, tore out most of the bathroom, and spray all kinds of germ killing chemicals into cracks and around edges of walls.

   Bean and I have spent the last four days, not doing schoolwork as planned, but sorting through the damaged items, making an inventory with photos, and then finding the replacement price of the item on the Internet. That way they can see how much damage they did, at least the monetary side of it.

   They can't replace the sack of letters I had from loved ones who have already moved on, and they can't replace the box of teenage memories, the photos that Bean looked at and said, “Wow, Mom you were pretty when you were a teenager.”

   “Thanks.” I said sarcastically.

   “No, I just meant...you're pretty now too. It's just, you didn't have wrinkles.”

   “Just stop talking.” I said. 

It's just stuff. But it was the stuff I used to take care of my family.

These are the things that can't be replaced.

And you want to know the irony of this? We are in the process of fixing up our upstairs shower, so this was our only working shower. Guess what kids? We're all taking showers in the kitchen sink. Or with the garden hoses out back. It's only a little cold outside this time of year. Brrr.

These giants fans, 13 of them, run for 72 hours to help dry everything. There is a constant hum upstairs and the cove heaters are turned up to 90 to heat things up. The smell upstairs is stomach turning. Damp, and hot and coying.

    They can't replace the container of dance costumes I had been keeping from all the girls' dance recitals since they were five and tiny and just my little girls. And they can't replace a Blue Blankie that was Abu's security blanket, especially when I was sick. She carried that thing everywhere, quietly watching me, wondering if Momma was ever going to get better.

    The couch, the beds, even the toys are replaceable. We won't get new price for it, but as long as we get enough, Hero Hottie and I can rebuild the downstairs and give the girls' their rooms back.

    But in the meantime, my mother-in-law is kindly doing all our laundry since my washer and dryer is off limits until they have been decontaminated. We have been staying at my in-laws' house too, until we can buy another mattress and set up three girls in the tiniest room in our house.

    

     A teenager and a toddler in one room. What could go wrong?

   When Blueberry finally saw our house, her bottom lip quivers, her eyes filling with moisture and she whispers. “House broken.”

     Yes, little sweetie, our house is broken.

     So in a way I have been granted my wish. We packed up part of our house and MOVED it to the garage. And we're redoing our entire downstairs. And I'm having a grand adventure of the character building sort.

     Blah, character building adventures are for literary novels. I wanted sun, sand and fun. I swear, one of these days, I just going to move to New Zealand. Their website says they're the happiest place on the Earth. I'm assuming after Disneyland, of course. 

Some beach in New Zealand, works for me- I'm not picky

  

A Valentine's Day Disaster

    Sorry for the delay. Life has thrown me a few curve balls in the last few weeks which I will be sharing in the next few weeks, just not today.
    I rather share my Valentine's Day with you. Funny and a disaster and a reminder of parenthood. Ahh, Hallmark where is the Valentine's card to give your spouse that reads, "I love you no matter what. Through plugged sinks, and broken roofs. Through unexpected surprises and piles of bills. I love you even when we're too tired to kiss and an exciting evening is watching House Hunters together. But mostly I love you because you're you."

    Hero Hottie always brings his girls flowers. For me it depends on the budget, sometimes just a single rose; other years a bouquet.
    He brings Bean and Abu a single rose, usually yellow or pink.
    This year he found roses that were injected with bright, rainbow colors in the stem just before they bloomed. When the petals unfolded they have soaked up the dyes and are a brilliant array of colors. The girls loved them.
     At the end of the day we usually try to hang out or if we're lucky we sneak away for a dinner date.
    This year we were reminded that we are parents.
    And we were grateful for the end of the day.

    This tale starts last December. Bean and Abu, ever the creative type of kids (think Phineas and Ferb, but without the endless budget and better haircuts) decided they were going to make perfume for Christmas presents.
     Yes, perfume. Bean and Abu style. Here's their recipe...

     Step One: Search the kitchen and recycling for any kind of glass container that Mom will let you have. Spice bottles area great but don't ask Mom to empty them so you can have them.
      Step Two: Collect any sort of shampoo, soap samples, spices and lotions that smell good. Don't ask Mom if you can use her expensive face cream, you will be greeted with 'the Look.'
      Step Three: Lock yourself in the bathroom and make your perfume.
      Step Four: Give as presents. Remind people that perfume is not edible.

      Since they weren't mixing toxic stuff together I let them happily create until bedtime. And then I demanded they clean the bathroom until I couldn't tell they had been in there. Which, surprisingly, they did.

      Fast forward to Valentine's Day. For the past few weeks the bathroom sink has slowly been trying to plug up. I dumped vinegar and baking soda down it and that seemed to help for a while and then two days before the fourteen it just completely plugged up and would not drain. It is totally and completely gross to have your bathroom sink clogged and unusable. Growing germs in the bathroom sink-YUCK. So the first day Hero Hottie had off, which unfortunately was Valentine's Day, he emptied the sink and then cleared everything out from underneath the sink.
     Then he was faced with the unpleasant and stinky and lovely task of taking the piping apart to try to find the clog. The pipes under the sink were clear. Great. This meant the plug was deeper into our crappy, old house pipes. He bought acid to stuff into the piping, so it would eat away the blockage. It helped but it also ate part of the bottom of the cupboard too.
     He still had a plug though. He run the snake through the pipes, pulling out some nasty, black stuff. But it was still plugged.
     Five hours later and after recuiting my Dad to help...They managed to stuff enough acid stuff down the pipes to loosen the plug and bring it up with the snake.
     It took nearly all of Hero Hottie's day off.
     We took a look at the object that had caused all this grief. At first it appeared to be a piece of cloth but upon further investigation we realized what the offender was...
     A Baby Wipe.

     I took a deep, calming breath. Which kid stuffed a baby wipe down the sink? They knew better. I know they did.
     "Girls, who put a wipe down the sink?" I asked, actually calm. Of course, I hadn't spent all day trying to clear the clog.
     "I didn't." Bean quickly says. So I look at Abu, who is quietly looking away from me. Avoiding my eyes.
     Guilty!
     "Abu?" I was surprised.
     "Yeah. It was me. I didn't mean to through." She looked sheepish as she shrugged her shoulders, and I could tell she was clearly remembering when she had lost the baby wipe down the sink.
     "When did this happen?"
     "When we were making perfume. It went down the drain."
     "Last Christmas? Why didn't you say anything?"
     "I didn't want to get in trouble. And the sink was still working."

     The sink kept working until enough stuff caught around the baby wipe and completely plugged things up. I told Hero Hottie how the wipe ended up ruining his day off.
    He didn't say much. Guys aren't in great moods after spending all day having to be plumbers.
    But Bean and Abu have been banned from making perfume in the bathroom now.
    They didn't even complain. I think they knew from Dad's mood, they had been lucky not to be banned from using the bathroom at all. And they felt bad for being the cause of so much plumbing problems.

    By the time we cleaned up the bathroom, fed the girls and put them to bed; we were both exhausted and ready for the end of a long day. Hero Hottie bought us carry-out and we ate our Valentine's Day dinner while watching House Hunters.
     Too tired to talk much and too disappointed that our day had been a mini disaster. But really, where is the chapter in the marriage manual that warns that one day all your romantic intentions will be thwarted by a plugged bathroom sink and a baby wipe.
     And kids making perfume, two months earlier.
   
     Parenthood should come with a warning.

   "Warning: Kids will reduce an adventurous and fun couple to eating carry-out in front of HGTV, while the only conversations they share revolve around the nasty stuff coming from plugged sinks."