Lilypie 3rd Birthday Ticker

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

When it rains...



“In our lives there is bound to come some pain, surely as there are storms and falling rain; just believe that the one who holds the storms will bring the sun.”
I am very sore today. My back hurts, my head hurts, my soul hurts.

Last Thursday Arianna came down with a cold, after only 5 days at daycare. Then the fever came and she became very lethargic on Saturday. We let her sleep the days away through the weekend and fed her what she would keep down. She was miserable, we were miserable. She would be awake all night because she slept all day and was gagging and throwing up on all the congestion in her head. I feel so bad for her.

We knew she wouldn't be going back to daycare anytime soon and planned on my mother watching her. My mom told us it was no problem. She called at 10:30 PM on Sunday (yes, I was already in bed) to tell me she wouldn't watch Arianna as she didn't want to be sick for their vacation (Saturday they leave for St. Marteen). I'm more than just a little pissed, due to the time of the call and that it would mess up everything. Ok, Shawn and I would have to each take half days to stay home with her. Tuesday was already a planned half day for me as I had to meet the Sears repair man about our leaking washing machine - we don't want water on the floor now do we?

Monday morning my mom calls to apologize and offers to watch Arianna - of course after I had already made my boss run an obstacle course trying to cover me... ugh! So she'll take her Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll be able to stay overnight on Thursday again, cause we need sleep. We got almost no sleep all weekend and definitely close to no sleep last night.

Why did we not sleep last night you ask?

Well, we got a bad storm Sunday night into Monday and its still raining today. I woke up several times during the night to tree branches breaking, I was afraid one would fall on our house! But that wasn't what I needed to be afraid of.

Monday morning about 6:20 the power went out and wouldn't come back on until 2 PM. We have electric 'everything' in our house - the heat, the appliances etc. We do have propane hot water, so I was able to take a shower, at least.

When the power came back on Shawn had just left for work and I was in Arianna's room changing her diaper when I hear the sound of 'something' running. I quickly deduced that the sound must have been the sump pump in the basement. When the water table gets high on our property the sump pump kicks in and helps keep the basement dry, in our case, a finished basement.

But sump pumps only work when there is electricity.

I went down stairs to our finished basement to find stuff 'floating'. We had a good four inches of standing water.

Small list of some of the stuff destroyed:
  • my wedding dress
  • ALL of my scrapbooking supplies
  • ALL of my cross stitch supplies
  • One nice pink couch
  • One nice, new, recliner.
  • Several ham radios
  • The pretty rugs
  • Our wedding timecapsule
  • Arianna's baby clothes
  • Lots of un-replaceable pictures
  • Lots of un-replaceable memories

Thankfully we had most of our things in plastic tubs from when we were in Cranston. I was worried about our apartment basement flooding and put everything in plastic tubs. I didn't put the stuff listed above in plastic tubs though...

Sigh. This sucks. Last night we were up to 2 AM pulling up carpet/mats, vacuuming up water and crying.

Thankfully homeowners insurance will cover stuff like this when you say "sump pump failure" rather than "basement flooding", but it will be at least a week before anyone gets out to the house.

Thank goodness for our $1,000 'emergency fund'.

I think this constitutes an emergency huh?

No comments: