How To Have A Crap Ass Day

1. Live in Pennsylvania.

2. Live in Pennsylvania in April.

3. Live in Pennsylvania in April when it rains for 24 hours.

4. Live in Pennsylvania in April when it rains for 24 hours two days after it also rained for 24 hours.

5. Own a house.

6. Own a house with a basement.

7. Don't own a wet vac, or a sump-pump, or anything handy like that.

8. Have your home office in the basement.

9. Watch water burble up into your basement from a crack in the cement floor.

10. Watch the water burble cheerfully up into your basement, as if from a lovely little steam.

11. Buy a shop vac.

12. Realize a shop vac isn't going to cut it, after you and your husband suck up and dump over 500 gallons of water.

13. Go to 16 stores to find the one lone pump that you can use without digging a hole into your basement.

14. Get the pump home, get it working, and then have it stop working.

15. Take it apart to see why it's not working.

16. Spill all the oil out of the central body of the pump.

17. Go out and buy more oil, put pump back together, then finally have it clear out the basement.

18. Be sure that you do all of this with a chest cold so that you are coughing constantly while standing in cold water trying to save your basement.

19. Because of the chest cold, keep having to lie down for a while so your husband has to do all the work.

20. Finally have it stop raining, the basement stops having a stream running through it, and go to bed exhausted but grateful that you didn't fight with your husband (much), you didn't make you daughter cry because the shop vac scares her (more than once, anyway), and that you already quit your job so they can't fire you for calling out AGAIN.

How was your day?

Comments

[carmie]

Oh my, that sounds like a very rough day! I hope nothing got permanently damaged in the basement. Yipes!

I hope your week gets better.

[CTG]

You win. I was super cranky bloated PMSy constipated oscar the grouch today and I should have just stayed in my little garbage can. AND best of all, I really have no excuse!

Hope all dries out soon! I think I would have been crying very early in the day.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better for all of us!

[RainbowW]

where i live we don't have basements.

we have bible-thumping jesus freaks who were brain-damaged at rebirth who believe that it's immoral to educate kids about, you know, sex because they, you know, might do it. (and then we take the product of that lack of education and ship it to death row where we mow em down like we get paid for it.)

i'd rather have a leaky basement, honestly.

[JuliaKB]

I am sorry to hear about your suck ass day. This is one of those times I am grateful our house sits on something like a hill even if that means that we get a rather steep slope into the garage.
Hope tomorrow is a better day.

[MsPrufrock]

Is it weird that this post makes me miss PA - a state I was so desperate to leave that I fled over 4000 miles? Yeah...I thought so.

[Teenuh]

Oh ugh. Sorry Cecily. That seriously sucks.

I had a good day and I'll leave it at that. Here's to a better tomorrow for you. :)

[Teenuh]

Oh, and here's a thought to cheer you up: ONE WEEK TO HEROES!!!!!!!!

[leigh]

So sorry - it sounds horrendous.
But I should confess that from where I live - in a drought ravaged country on the other side of the world (Australia), one of my immediate thoughts was 'rain for 24 hours' - that would be nice.
But as I mentioned, we are in the middle of an incredible drought and have quite severe water restrictions. Also we don't have basements that can flood.

[Kez]

Yeah, I'm with Leigh - rain for 24 hours - wow!!! That would be wonderful here.

However, I have in the past been caught in situations where it's pissing down, the drains are flooding, it's the middle of the night, freezing, and we're outside digging trenches to divert the water.

Ahhh, those were the days...

You're right, the day was sucky. There are however much worse ways to have a day considering all that happened yesterday... Sometimes a little perspective goes a long way.
Can you imagine watching the news if your child was at Virginia Tech? or receiving a call that a flag pole fell on your kindergartener during recess and took her life???
scary day yesterday - wishing you peace today.

[Whitney]

Sorry your day sucked--when it rains, it pours!

I live in Virginia and have close friends at VT. Luckily I heard from all of them. Horrible day waiting all day for word, though.

Hope your day and mine today is better!!

[wookie]

Look at it this way.

Now, you have a pump! Future floods will be more manageable.

Might be worth going around your exterior and making sure that your downspouts etc. are all properly pointing away from the house. I skipped that once and it was a pretty big disaster.

[Ash]

This is why I refuse to live in Pa ever ever again. Hello pocono's and sesaonal depression! NO THANKS!

If you need me, I'll be on the beach, drinking a non-al pina colada and enjoying the sun!

[Heidi]

Ugh!! So so so so so so sorry!! I live in VT and it won't stop raining and snowing here either. I'm SO fucking sick of it!!
That is sucks so much ass about your basement!!
Guess I didn't realize you quit your job, yay for you! :)

[mimi]

And to think that it used to be February that was a big sucky mess here in our little corner of the world! Hope you're feeling better soon!

[Beachgal]

Sorry to hear about your bad day. Wish I could do something.

[revdrmom]

Oh, Cecily that sounds perfectly miserable. You can see what my day with the nor'easter was like on my blog. Was interesting but not as bad as yours.

[thrice]

On Sunday and Monday, I thought about people with finished basements and how there was no way that these basements could hold up to the rain. I'm sorry that you are one of these people.

It makes me thankful that I live in a tiny-cramped-ass-apartment.

[Naomi]

Actually, very much the same, except I was, er, "supervising" my husband do the pumping.

[Reese]

So sorry, Cecily! That sucks. (Get it? It's a vacuum joke. Heh.)

[SandyC]

Yep, sucked -- and not to hog the blog, but I had it no better and I want to complain (I know, get my own blog!) But the roof leaks in the house I just moved into (in THREE places) and I had to go over to the old house (which isn't even on the market yet, god help my checking account)and bail out the basement. And I have been off line and with no phone for 10 days due to the fact that Verizon couldn't find the problem in their equipment!!! Thanks, I feel better. Hope you do, too.

[Julie]

Oh shit! that does suck ass. You may want to look into a permanent sump pump - it will save you a lot of stress in the future.

[wealhtheow]

I wound up getting into an argument with a friend about something stupid and then went home and cried to my husband about how I'm going to alienate all my friends and everybody will hate me by the time I have the baby (not even out of the first trimester yet).

But obviously this was nothing compared to what the people at Virginia Tech went through. My heart goes out to them.

[Leggy]

Would it make you feel any better to tell you about the time my mother's basement had 3 feet of water in it and all my wedding presents were stored down there? We had dishes floating around all over the basement.

Didn't think so. Anyway, at least the sun is peaking out a bit today.

[Leslie]

When this happened to me I was lucky enough to have some waterproof patching cement on hand and was able to patch the hole (while water was bubbling through) and stop it. It was amazing. I recently bought a similiar product at Home Depot for my last leaky basement. Hope things dry out for you soon!