I'm Writing 2009 Off!
Basically this is a post to apologize to everybody on my flist who commented on Blood Debts or a couple of my other stories over the last week and I haven't responded to yet.
So I posted Blood Debts on March 11 and continued on with my day on that fateful Wednesday. Went to bed that night with the full intention on checking my email, responding to comments and continuing on in my happy little world. Yeah will that didn't happen.
Instead I woke up Thursday morning to pretty much a foot of water in my basement.
Wait let's back up a little. My hot water tank finally died on Monday March 9 but that wasn't really a big surprise, we knew we had to replace it this spring because it was the original hot water tank that was installed when the house was built almost 30 years ago. It sucked that it died when it did because my husband was out of town for work but the good news is that he works for a refrigeration/heating company so I called him, he called the office here in town and roughly two hours later I had a plumber and a journeyman plumber here at the house with a new hot water tank. Yay me!
Only not so much.
Fast forward to Thursday March 11 (the early hour of 5:00 am), I wake up to a cat with soaking paws standing on my chest. I'm thinking that her or her sister have spilt the dog's water dish again. So hissing curses at the cats, I crawl out of bed and head to the back door to mop up a dog dish full of water, only there is no water in the back entry. Then I hear an odd splashing noise coming from downstairs.
We all know where this is going...
Flick on the light, go down the stairs, turn the corner to go down the last three stairs to see a foot of water and the splashing noise is louder. Go back upstairs, call James' cell, (he's still out of town at this point) yell at him that the basement is flooding. He asks me if I've waded around to see where the water is coming from. Ask him if he's an idiot or if he wants me to electrocute myself. Tells me I am an idiot and there isn't enough water if it's only a foot to reach the sockets and go find out where water is coming from. (Hey it's five in the morning, I'm not thinking clearly yet.)
Take cordless, go back downstairs, open door to the hot water tank and furnance room and surprise, surprise I can see where the pipe has let go to the hot water tank.
Yell at James that the plumber the company sent is a fucking moron and what the hell am I supposed to do now. He tells me where the shut off for the house water is and tells me he's calling the boss of the plumbers and will call me back.
Hang up phone, cursing Cody (the plumber) and go into the laundry room and shut off house water. Go back upstairs and thank god that we have a programable coffee maker and that I will at least have a pot of coffee and wait for James to call back.
James calls back after talking to Scott and he tells me that Scott is coming himself to fix it.
Scott, bless him, shows up almost an hour later (6:30ish) but he lives almost 45 mins out of town, so I can't blame him for taking an hour. Works for twenty minutes before Cody shows up. (Scott called him). I let Cody in, do not punch him in the head, though I was turly tempted and he went downstairs to help.
They continue to work downstairs while I get Marie and Garnet up so that I can get Marie ready for school. Continue on with my morning routine - with the exception of no shower - and leave to take Marie to where the school bus picks her up.
Come back to find out that the journeyman plumber was the one supposed to be connecting the hot water tank to the house water and he's the one that fucked up.
Okay so I'm glad that I didn't punch Cody.
Scott goes to the shop, picks up their shop vac and comes back and he and Cody start trying to clean up the water.
Here's where it really sucks though. My basement is a finished basement, so there's furniture and boxes of stuff that we've either put away once the kids were born or keepsakes. Yeah well all the furniture is soaked or was. The boxes all had to be gone through and there was books and pictures and odds and ends. I've spent a week trying to clean everything up and trying to decide what could be and couldn't be kept.
Oh and James? Instead of coming home on Friday March 12 like he was supposed to, had to stay in B.C. until last Tuesday because there was an accident involving one of the guys that works for them. (James is the company's Health and Safety Officer). And of course when he did get back into town he still had to go to work on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as per usual. And had to work Saturday because a crane lift had been booked and he had to be there. So most of the cleaning I've had to do myself.
So how was your week? Loose any Wedding pictures? Baby pictures? Pictures from when you were a kid? I did. Some I've managed to find the negatives for, some were pictures friends took and are gone for good. Books were wrecked that are out of print. Charcol drawings my grandfather did, that I didn't even know were in a box down there became a sopping pile of nothing. Some other crap that is lost for good.
Anyway, I'm slowly drying out and will be getting to comments either tonight or tomorrow. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm not dead.
Rhy