The week started out great but went downhill fast. At least our drought is officially over.
Monday afternoon and Tuesday all day were the All Staff Conference on East campus. I drove in Monday and met Darla for lunch at Noodles then spent the afternoon at the conference, where my friend Karen, who used to work at UNL , was doing the keynote. Monday night knitting was fun, as always. That was the good start.
It started raining at 9:00 Monday night and it was coming down faster than I'd ever seen. When I went to investigate after I heard one of my cats make a strange sound, I saw that my entire basement floor was covered with water. I had to slog through at least an inch (over my birkenstock footbed at that point) to get one of the litterboxes, which were floating, up the stairs for the cats. I went to my problem corner and saw muddy water jetting 3 feet across my ebay room from a new crack in the cinderblock foundation. I looked out my bedroom window to see water coming out of my neighbor's downspout do fast that it was still in the air for the width of her driveway and so was pouring into my basement. Normally it hits the crack in the middle of her driveway and heads to the street. Nothing I could do at that point so I went to bed.
I have a floor drain in my laundry room so by Tuesday morning there were only a few puddles of standing water but with more rain due that afternoon, I headed to campus for the rest of the conference, which had some good sessions and I got half a sock knitted. I'd deal with the basement when I got home. We had gotten 6 inches Monday and another .4" Tuesday afternoon. I did pull a downspout diverter out of my garage and my neighbor installed it immediately so the next rain would absolutely go down the driveway. Problem solved? I hope so.
I had taken Wednesday off to garden but spent the entire day in the basement. I have a jam packed basement, including an entire room full of vintage linens to sell on ebay. (I sold Corelle and linens on ebay in the early 2000's and plan to start up again when I retire.) Most of them were in laundry baskets, which has always been fine but when you have 3" of water in your basement, the bottom layer of baskets all got wet. Besides those, every single bin had to be moved because water was trapped under them and I spent time with a big car sponge and a dishpan soaking up mud where the water came in and the puddles everywhere else. I also had quilting fat quarters and fabric in my craft room that got wet so that's what was job #1. I started doing laundry between moving things and squeegeeing. At the end of the day, I forced myself outside to prep and plant my tomato bed so at least I could say I got some gardening done. I put a little steak on my George Foreman for supper and happily sat down to the 3 hour Survivor finale. Exhausted doesn't being to describe how tired I was.
I was working from home on Thursday so did laundry before work, during lunch and after work, getting all the quilt fabric done by the end of the day. SO tired. The good news was we got 1.4" of rain overnight, which meant we'd had 3 months worth of rain in 3 days(!), and the diverter worked so no more water in the basement. Friday was the day before the long weekend and when I talked to my boss about taking some vacation time to work in the basement, she told me to logoff immediately and call it comp time for 30 years (I'm only on my 27th - ha!) of hard work. She is the best! At 10:00, I started the 2nd and much bigger round of laundry.
When you have a big laundry basket full of water laden linens (talk about heavy lifting!), you can't just dump them in the washing machine. You have to peel every single one apart and put it in in a single layer. It took 2 loads to empty each basket. Luckily the weather was gorgeous so I could hang things on the line. I went non-stop all day - take a load out, put in another, hang the first load and then start again as soon as the washer was done. My cousin had invited me for lunch, which I declined, but I needed to go in search of a dehumidifier so went to Lincoln at the end of the day. We chatted and she made sandwiches for an early supper and then I headed to Walmart. I was shocked that the cheapest dehumidifier was $177 so got on Amazon in the aisle and ordered one for $77. I'd have to wait for delivery but for $100, I was willing.
The laundry continued all day Saturday and into Sunday. By noon on Sunday all the big stuff that I could hang out was done and I sat down. I was bone tired and only had 3 more loads to do, which were small things that would be dried in the dryer. I had ordered a pizza Saturday night so ate that for days but did do some cooking on Sunday - bread pudding, banana bread and cowboy beans. I also ripped out (frogged) some sock projects that weren't bringing me joy and as a reward for days of hard work, I dyed some yarn from one of the projects I'd frogged. It will knit up much nicer after my dye job.
No comments:
Post a Comment