It's now established fact.

Husband goes on business trip, safely out of reach of cries for help...something really bad happens in the house.

Don't try to talk me out of this. I'm 53, I've been married nearly 35 years, The Papa travels six times a year...I have enough evidence to prove it. It's a cosmic principle, firmly established. Some kind of switch is tripped when he leaves town, and it's then only a matter of hours before there's a major catastrophe.

So yesterday I went into the kitchen to get something to eat. Noticed that there were some dishes on the counter so I opened the dishwasher to see if it had been unloaded. As I opened it, I realized I was standing in water, and my first thought was that something was wrong with the dishwasher. But as I turned around to see how far the water had spread, the cold wet reality sunk in: the water was nearly an inch deep in THREE rooms, and the culprit was the washing machine in the laundry room that was STILL pumping water out onto the floor.

Immediately the kids sprang into action--unplugging the washer (it wouldn't shut off--the water level switch was broken), pushing water out the doors with brooms, and using every towel in the house up against baseboards to keep it from seeping into the walls. Meanwhile I was on the phone first with Dirk, lifesaver son-in-law, and then with the appliance people, the insurance company, the water extraction company, the renovators we use...hours and hours on the phone. Dirk ran to Lowe's, bought a Wet/Dry shop-vac type thing and was over here (with five of the kids since Aubrey was at the doctor with Sam) in a flash, sucking up every last drop of water with that contraption in what looked like a near-miracle.

Meanwhile, the insurance company was telling me they were pretty sure that with a flood of this magnitude we'd have to have all the flooring replaced and all the baseboards and probably even some drywall replace. I could see my whole life summer passing before my eyes and all my little projects down the tubes. Not to mention that our insurance has a $1000 deductible.

Within two hours of Dirk's leaving me with completely dry floors, the water extraction man was here with his little gadget that reads the moisture level INSIDE the walls...what will they think of next? To my (and his) utter amazement, there was no moisture in there! He said that with the amount of water I was describing, he could hardly believe that it hadn't already gotten behind the baseboards and up in the walls, but he was sure things in there were dry and he recommended we not do anything further. Nothing!

So...a HUGE thank you to Dirk for once again coming to the rescue when the cosmic switch was thrown, and to my great kids for doing all they could to minimize the damage until Dirk got here! There's no way you can see from the pictures how much water we were dealing with since I didn't go get the camera until we had a lot of it taken care of, but here's what it looked like before the shop vac...







I know my son-in-law appreciates having his backside on my blog. But hey, he'll probably get a free golf game out of this.


And then, of course, we're still dealing with the mess...hundreds of towels and no way to spin them since we can't plug the washer in...so we hung them pretty much everywhere, just in time to see our neighborhood homeowners' association Nosy Patrol driving around ready to ticket us for having our porch and yard look like a slum.

So...now we sit tight and wait for the next catastrophe.

I have Dirk on speed-dial.

Labels: Fun, Kids, The Papa