Splish splash!

Josh had Monday off for Fall Break, aka Fair Day. He got up, took Lily to school so I didn't have to, and came home to begin is day of helping his wife. I am supposed to take my next CFP test on October 15, but things aren't looking good. Josh was going to be a sweet husband and get the house clean so I have one less thing to worry about. He started some laundry and left to go get a haircut. When Josh got home, I received a frantic phone call at work from him. Apparently my washing machine has a problem. It's the kind of problem that leads to at least 2 inches of water to flood my entire kitchen floor, part of the office/spare bedroom, and close to half of my living room. (Stick with me, I promise the story gets better!)

Josh gets himself composed and handles the problem. When I get home about an hour later, he's called the insurance company and the people are on the way to clean up the water. They suck up the water in the kitchen and laundry room. They cut about 2/3 of the carpet out of the living room, a small piece out of the hallway, and about 1/2 of the carpet in the office. They also take off all of the baseboards in the living room and office. Now all of the living room is squished into this little tiny square of carpet and we have a deadly outline of carpet tack strips in our main living space. It's awesome; you should come visit. (I know you think this is the worst that happened, but stay with me.)

After our house had been set up with about 7 industrial drying fans and a dehumidifier, we decided that we would go look at Lowe's for laminate flooring. I think that's what we are going to replace the carpet with. We look at Lowe's for a while, then go to Home Depot. Lily is not too excited about looking at flooring and wouldn't stay off of the floor at Lowe's, so I tried to entertain her by letting her "drive" the race car buggy. We look there for a while, then decide to get some dinner since my kitchen is jacked up. We're about to order at Chick-fil-a when I reach down to get some cash out of my purse. Where is my purse? In the race car buggy back at Home Depot. As an added bonus, I had written out my checks to make our house payment and put them in my purse to mail the next day before we left the house. (Isn't it funny that I'm sitting in my flooded house, writing the check to pay for it? I didn't find it that amusing.) Anyway, when I went back to the store, my purse was still in the buggy, just at I had left it. I'm very thankful for that.

We got our dinner and headed home. While I got Lily and myself situated, Josh decided that it would be good to restart the laundry. I know this seems silly now, but there was a tank of water and a whole load of our clothes that you can't just leave sitting there. He was going to keep an eye on it.

Josh comes and sits down to eat with us in the living room. (We have been eating at the table, but the kitchen chairs are on top of it right now, give me a break.) Josh gets up to throw his plate away and I hear him yell. The fans in the house are so loud that we don't hear the water pouring onto the floor and flooding my house again! Josh tried to run into the laundry room to turn the washing machine off and proceeds to BUST it. I'm pretty sure that he almost broke his arm. Now he's hurt, soaking wet, and standing in the flooded house. (I know you think this is the worst, but hold on.)

I call Tom to see if we can use his Shop Vac to get some of the water up, but he's still 20 minutes from home. He tells me that the gas station by our house has those Rog Doctor machines. I go to the gas station to get one. Picture this: I'm a little panicky. I have water splashed up my legs and my pants are rolled up to avoid the puddle that is my kitchen floor. Now I go just like that to the gas station and wait for 20 minutes while the dumb man tried to figure out the paperwork for renting the machine. He wanted to complain about how he hated doing it and didn't even know what he was doing. I told him my house was flooded and I didn't really care.

I get it home and Josh starts using it to try to get up some of the water in the laundry room. He can't get it to work because he's pushing the spray button, but we figure it out. We also have a little spot cleaning machine. When I plug that in, Lily starts crying because her cartoons are off. We have no power on half of one side of our house. Great. I move Lily into my bedroom so she won't be in the middle of the whole situation and can peacefully enjoy her cartoons. I run outside to see if one of the breakers has flipped. Nope. I decide that not having power is not the priority problem at the time. Tom gets there and plugs in his Shop Vac. Of course. Another power outage. Tom goes and looks this time (after the frantic search for batteries for the flashlight.) At this point, Josh is trying to decide whether to call Service Master back out (another claim) or to call an electrician to get our power back on. I get a little teary eyed as I'm standing in flooded house. For me, this was the worst moment. No power, water everywhere, no idea what to do.

It ends up that we have a fuse box that we didn't know about and have blown 2 fuses. Josh takes them and heads to Lowe's to buy new ones. Tom and I run extension cords across my house so that we can steal power from the other rooms to get the water sucked up. There was water in the kitchen, laundry room, living room and office again. By the time Josh got back we had it mostly cleaned up enough that it wasn't pooled anywhere.

You'll be happy to know that my house is almost dry. Hopefully, all of the drying equipment will leave this afternoon. The insurance adjuster is coming on Friday and so it the washing machine repair person. For now my house is a concrete slab with little poky nails all around it. Lily is deathly afraid of the fans and won't walk on the concrete, which means you have to carry her everywhere except for her bedroom. She could walk in her playroom, but it's filled with all of the stuff from the office that had to be moved so they could cut out the carpet. She's also very worried that Delilah will hurt her foot on the carpet strips. She has such a tender heart. I'm trying to look on the bright side. I'm going to get all new floors and we're going to paint the living room and hallway for sure. I'm trying to find some good ideas for the office and playroom. It's a good opportunity for us to purge some of the junk we've accumulated over the last couple of years. When it's all finished, you'll have to come visit!