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?
