My Own Private Waterfall

Pardon me while I take a moment out of talking about the wedding to tell you about my day yesterday.

Where rain fell from the sky….

or from the ceiling…….

And for a time, I had my own private Niagra Falls in my house. I thought about selling tickets.

The day started out like many others around here. I had a list of tasks a mile long that I was hoping to get accomplished starting with the laundry.

Put in a load of whites. Put in the earbuds for my ipod. Start to work on the computer…..

I had been cranking out work long enough to have run through one podcast and started another, about 30 minutes I would guess, when I figured that I would fold the load of laundry in the dryer, put the wet clothes in to dry and start another load in the washer.

My office sits right across from the laundry room, there is a small tiled back hallway between. I exited my office…

Heeeeeeeeeey, is that water on my floor? Is that FLOWING water on my floor? Is that a river extending from my laundry room through my back hall and into my kitchen!!!!

Yes.

I could hear the washing machine filling with water. But that couldn’t be right because I had started the load about 30 minutes before and it shouldn’t take that long to fill….

Poopy, poopy, double poopy, triple poopy!

I slosh into the laundry room and this is what I see. Please ignore any underwear that might be in there.
The washer is FULL and the water is overflowing onto the floor. And the water is flowing into the washer. I managed to get the water to stop but after that the washer was dead. Stone dead. And there was water still flowing out of it onto the floor. Hot water.

And then for a short period of time I had what I can only describe as a break with reality. A chicken with it’s head cut off moment.

Sort of like a opossum in the middle of the road when the headlights strike it moment. Slooooooow moooooootion wwwwwwwwwhat doooooooo I doooooooo??????

Towels!

No, there aren’t enough towels in the world to soak up all this water.

Wet/dry vacuum! Yes, that’s what I need. I rush out to the garage but it isn’t where I normally put it. I am a creature of habit and I always put the big vac in the same place. In reality it WAS right where it was supposed to be, I was just blinded by panic and didn’t see it.

I ran back inside and then ran back out to the garage where I found the vacuum right where it was supposed to be. I lugged it into the house, snagging the cord on the way and almost tripping myself up. Plugged it in, hoping not to electrocute myself in the process and started to suck up the water. I did this for several minutes, getting up a bunch of the water that had flowed onto the floor.

And then a thought struck me. A terrible thought. An awful thought……

The basement!

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

So, I go ripping down stairs and about half way to the basement I can hear water. A lot of water. A waterfall of water.

I don’t think that sound is supposed to come from my basement.

And this is what I see

Can you see the inch of water that is swirling around on the floor? Oh yes, and there was a literal waterfall of lovely warm water that was cascading down from the ceiling right onto a computer and boxes and furniture.

Oh. Joy.

And it was flowing from here. This picture was taken after the actual waterfall had slowed to a slow bwip, bwip, bwip. But just take my word for it when I tell you that it was thundering down like Niagra Falls. I expected to see someone go over it in a barrel.

And then I had another short break with reality and said some things that cannot be repeated on this family blog.

The dog was so frightened by the whole experience that he just didn’t know where to go to hide. His normal practice is to hide in his crate, but that wasn’t a safe place as it was in the water danger zone. And I was running back and forth trying to decide what to do so he just retreated to the front hallway for a time.

I called HHBL and I am not sure if I was totally coherent or not but the just of what I told him was, “Get your cute butt back home cuz the creek is risin’ and we need to get to higher ground!” Ummmmm, sorry, I don’t think that is what I actually said but it is close.

And so, the rest of our day was filled with this….
And several trips to Wally Mart for fans and more fans and a Coke (cuz I needed it!) and some boxes, and some more boxes, and several plastic boxes.

And there might have been some of this going on. Thank goodness that it was a sunny, hot and not windy day so that we could put all of this stuff out on the driveway to dry and go through.

And there might have been some boxes that got wet. This is just a very small portion of the boxes that are now waiting to go to the garbage. Of course, yesterday was garbage day but they had already picked everything up before the great water debacle.

Oh, and the BEST part was what caused all of this chaos.

Oh yes.

I called my appliance repair people and I was very happy to hear that they could send someone out that very afternoon. Yipee! Dave arrived around 4p to look at the offending washer.

He labored and poked and prodded and got out his little computer thingydo. And after a short time this is what he told me…

Dave: Well, you see this knob here, the one that you turn to pick the size load you are washing?

Me: Yes.

Dave: Well, it seems like it wasn’t turned all the way to medium or to large. It only got turned half way and the washer didn’t know to turn off. It was in sort of no man’s land. Seems to be working fine now. That will be $137 please.

Yes, I have again given some repair man a tale to take back to the office. I have given laughter and joy and money for something that I might have been able to figure out on my own.

My work here is done.

Well, all except for all the boxes that need to be put back down in the basement.