Water, Water, Everywhere

I’ve noticed that many bloggers slow down blog activity at certain times of the year—semester break, spring vacation, holidays. It makes sense. Everyone needs a break. And readers also take a break from blog-reading, so there’s less motivation to blog.

But I have a better excuse. On Sunday, December 27, I walked down the stairs to my finished basement. That’s my office space. All my poetry books are there. My beloved desktop is there. The printer. The treadmill. My life! As I approached the bottom step, I saw what appeared to be a shadow. It wasn’t. It was water. Lots of it. And it was spreading throughout the entire room.

Sunday morning, a holiday weekend. But I quickly called the plumber who is married to my daughter’s best friend, and he said he’d come right over with a new pump. So within an hour that was in and sucking out water rapidly. Then we realized when we looked outside that that water was gushing like mad out of the wrong place.

Turned out the underground drain was clogged, so the pump had been working non-stop and then died of exhaustion. Thus the flood. Pretty annoying since we’d just had the gutters cleaned and the guys were supposed to have checked the underground drains. Obviously, they didn’t. And then guess who gave me a hard time about coming to snake out the drains on Monday morning? But I put on my toughest demeanor and got them here. Would you believe they had the audacity to leave a bill?

Anyhow, the flooding was way beyond our ability to deal with, so we called the “water mitigators.” A great crew of clean-up experts—Chem Dry in case you’re ever in need—and they arrived in good speed, got rid of the remaining water, set up 9 huge fans and 2 huge dehumidifiers. They had to pull up two sections of carpet to get fans under there, so the carpet was billowing.

Those fans blew for 12 straight days, but the crew returned today, took out all the equipment, cleaned the carpet and disinfected it. I’ll be able to get back down there in a few hours. Then I will have a lot of cleaning up to do. But it’s a huge relief to have my room back. I’ve been on my laptop, but it’s not the same. And yes, I will be getting a backup for the pump.

Speaking of water, you may recall that the title of my forthcoming book is Temptation by Water. I wonder if I somehow tempted water to enter my house? Right now I’m in the midst of choosing cover art—that is fun and exciting. My cover artist sent me two gorgeous pieces, both featuring water. My problem is that I love them both, so I’ve been vacillating, unable to make a decision. But decide I must and soon as I need to send off the final manuscript soon.

---