Our latest news is nothing to envy. This weekend our basement flooded with the neighborhood's sewage. Yuck! It's gross enough if your own toilet overflows and has to be cleaned up, but to have your whole basement covered in other people's waste...something is extra disgusting about that.
We were all upstairs Saturday morning when Mark went down to our laundry room to start a load of laundry. He noticed an area of standing water, so he quickly grabbed stuff to bucket it out. The faster he tried to empty the stinky water out of our house, the faster it seemed to keep coming up the drain in the middle of the floor.
To make a long story short(er) we were lucky enough to have two great neighbors that were willing to come over and help us quickly move belongings that were on the floor out of the way. Eventually a service arrived to start pumping the sewage away from our our home...soon followed by the city who started checking the main sewage lines. They were shocked to find out that every manhole on our entire street was backed up all the way to the top!! So, they quickly started notifying everyone on the street to check their basements, expecting that most of the homes would have the same problem as we did. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) we were the only house that got it! They suspect that since our home is at a slightly lower elevation that we just got hit first, and that if we hadn't caught things so quickly that things would've moved on to other homes also.
Anyhow, after getting the boys situated upstairs, I hurried downstairs to jump from the dry spots (as the sewage continued to spread throughout our basement) and collect the things I'd need to take the boys with me and get out of dodge. Our bathroom ended up with so many inches of the nasty stuff that I couldn't even get in there to get anything, but I got the necessities...as well as all of our dirty laundry. So! As we've been running our laundry (here at my parents house, where we're staying right now) and finding out what we've inadvertently brought with is, it's been like hitting the jackpot - "Oh, sweet! I have a clean bra with me now!" or "We're lucky that Lincoln had so many dirty blankets & bibs!"
All three of our bedrooms are in the basement (as well as the laundry room & a bathroom, as I mentioned), and everything was contaminated except Noah's room. So, after the sewage backup issue was cleared up, the carpet & floorboards were all ripped out. The disaster cleanup crew that came cleaned the floors with this superheated device and with some sanitizing chemical. We had to sign some paper saying that we agreed to keep any kids, pets, or people with respiratory disorders out of the house for a certain number of days. Nobody that could smell would want to be in the house anyway, not to mention all of the nails sticking up everywhere.
We'll find out tomorrow when next week that we'll be getting new carpet (at least that will be nice - sayonara ugly, old, burber carpet), and when we can move back in. *sigh*
So! If any of you have tried to reach us at home, or have left messages there - don't feel avoided, we're not there! Just call our cell phones or email us. And don't worry L&A - we'll have things back to "normal" before you come out to Utah in a few weeks and stay with us! We're looking forward to seeing you.
In the meantime, I'll try to enjoy my pretty good excuse for not wearing makeup for a while (couldn't get to it, to bring it with us!) and I'll continue to be grateful that not only were we home Saturday morning, but that I have a husband that does laundry - otherwise who knows how much worse things would've been before we ever noticed!!!
Update: We got home Sunday night, after being gone just over a week & we're just about settled back in now. New carpet and all *sigh*
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