Saturday, October 15, 2005

DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!

I wake up this morning and see Brian come up stairs from the basement. He says, "Good morning." We hug each other like we always do when we haven't seen each other for a while.

He asks, "Have you been down in the basement lately?"

"No, why?"

"There's about 2 inches of water down there."?

I walk down the steps, look around and sure enough, angle deep water.

DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!

I called the fire department to get put on the list of people needing to be pumped out then go outside and to get the swimming pool cover pump. I start dragging the pump, hose and extension cord toward the back door. The extension cord gets tangled in a bush so I pull harder, rip a few branches out and get stung by a bee. Maybe it was a yellow jacket, but who cares, it hurts like a bitch!

DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!

I put the pump in the basement and plug it in, check that it's running and go outside to check for water coming out the hose. I wait..................wait some more......................"Uh, WTF, where's the water?"

I go back in the house and check the pump, and it's running. I know it works because 15 minutes earlier I could see it pumping water off the pool cover. I guess it can't pump the water up that far up hill, so to speak. The basement floor is about 5 feet below the yard level.

"Now WTF am I going to do?"

"I know! I'll suck the water up through the hose and if I get it started, maybe it will keep it going," I say to myself.

So outside I go, stretch the hose out, put the end in my mouth, spit out little dirt and start sucking. I suck for as long and as hard as I can, bend the hose, put my thumb over the end to keep the water from going back down and catch my breath.

Repeat...........repeat................repeat........................etc, etc, etc.

I spend about 5 minutes repeating this process and finally get a mouth full of dirty water. (Remember, the hose was pumping water off the pool cover earlier.) I toss the hose to the ground and SURPRISE, SURPRISE, I struck it rich! Water! I watch, I wait to see if it stops. No, it keeps pumping water. It looks like I'll get my basement pumped out after all.

It might take a week at the rate the pump works, but WFT am I going to do?

PS

I just came back in after talking to my neighbor. The hose is still pumping water but he has about 8 inches of water in his basement. It seems high tide is pushing water up through some cracks he has in the basement floor. Maybe I should consider myself lucky.

NO! I will still feel sorry for myself. You have no idea how much crap I have down there and how much I'm going to have to throw out.

DAMN! DAMN! DAMN!

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