Sometimes, the noise level in the house detracts from being able to string together words into sentences that create posts. Today, it’s not so much the noise level INSIDE the house, but OUTSIDE of it that’s distracting. To be specific, it’s really the noise ON TOP of the house.
I’ll explain.
It’s obviously been a busy summer; hence the recent lack of posts. Some of it’s the normal buzz of activity. That and the copious amounts of water that seem to be accumulating in my house, in places that water just shouldn’t accumulate.
It started with the downstairs toilet. We’ve got two bathrooms in the house; the main floor bathroom is heavily favored. Not just by the actual bathroom users, mind you. It’s also favored by #s 5 and 6, who enjoy recklessly hurling all manners of objects into the toilet when given the opportunity. Though it’s thankfully rare, a door left cracked open once in awhile results in something like this:
Or more traumatically, something like this:
Thankfully, most items are retrieved prior to flushing. But once in awhile, we probably miss something, resulting in a toilet that doesn’t drain properly. Or, results in the dreaded… FLOOD.
FLOOD #1: I’ll set the stage. We’re minutes away from leaving for a birthday party. Five kids are standing near the door, ready to leave. One emerges from the bathroom, with the dreaded words….
“Um…Mom? The water’s getting higher.”
You plunge. You plunge harder. And the water keeps rising. And rising. And then… it’s over. ALL over.
The floor.
The carpet.
Dripping down into the basement.
I’m not sure what the worst part of it all is: the panic of plunging until it FINALLY stops, the use of four formerly clean towels to sop up the mess, or the whining of six bored kids standing at a door, late to a party as you frantically scrub on your hands and knees.
Me, minus the growling and gnashing of teeth. And the Clorox wipes.
(www.naturallyloriel.com)
FLOOD #2: A few days later, just prior to bedtime, The Captain and I were having a rare, relaxing moment talking on the basement couch. The little girls were upstairs in bed, or least, were supposedly upstairs in bed. The peace was shattered moments later when #2 (who LOVES crisis moments like this) triumphantly cried,
“There’s water coming through the kitchen ceiling!”
Whaaaa?
It’s amazing how fast the brain connects those words to the legs, urging them to HAUL A$$ up the stairs. We come into the kitchen, to find something like this:
No, not a toilet. This time, the upstairs bathroom sink was the culprit, or rather, the stopping up of the sink by two naughty rugrats that had slipped out of bed.
That clean-up took considerably more than towels: spackle, paint, drywall, etc. And the batteries were replaced in the little girl’s room baby monitor, for obvious reasons.
And slowly but surely, my patience meter runs dry…
FLOOD #3: The only thing I can say is that this one was less an act of child antics and more an act of God. We had a steady rainstorm one night. Normally, I find the sound of rain drumming on our roof to be a peaceful, soothing sound. It’s not so soothing, however, when the steady beat is interrupted- again, by a very excited #2 announcing,
(yes, you guessed it.)
“Mom?! There’s water dripping from the ceiling! It’s soaking our carpet!”
Yup, a leak in the roof. Which resulted in a sopping puddle on the older girls’ bedroom floor.
Which the little girls LOVED….
Me? Not so much.
www.quickmeme.com
But the rain wasn’t done with us yet…. it technically caused,
FLOOD #4: The leak in our roof was situated in JUST the right place to cause a slow, steady drip right into the basement…. which we didn’t find until the following morning, when I soaked my socks on my basement carpet when attempting to do laundry. Argh….
THAT mess required the use of some heavy-duty force, in the form of an industrial carpet-dryer. For those of you that have been lucky enough to not require the use of one, it looks like this:
You pry up your carpet -yep, every little edge- and let the blower dry your carpet. They work well, and blow really hard, creating a huge bubble effect. And the kids were thrilled, because,
they finally got the trampoline they’ve been wanting.
Which is as close to a real trampoline as they’re getting, because, to come full circle, we ended up calling in a contractor to replace the roof.
So as I write, there are various men crawling around above my head, tossing bits of our old roof into the grass and hammering away. It’s loud, but it’ll keep our floors and towels dry, so I’m happy.
As long as we keep #6 away from the waterworks, that is…
