Soggy

So.

My house is soggy.  We're recovering from a little flood-thing last Thursday morning. 

You'd think we could blame TS Nicole, which has caused days and days and days of raining here in our little corner of the universe.  But actually, it's far less glamorous than that: our main floor toilet leaked.

Except, leaked doesn't really describe it well.  Leaked makes it sound like a trickle of water came out onto the floor and we had to sop it up with some towels.  Um, no.

What actually happened is some line in the toilet failed, burst open, and water flowed out of it for hours and hours and hours.  While we were all sleeping.  Mark came home from night shift, heard water running, thought it was a little weird since the rest of us were all still in bed, went to turn it off, and found... a mess. 

Our main floor bathroom was totally wet, including the cabinet and wall, which wicked water right up.  Lots (and lots and lots and lots) of water went into the floor vent for our heater/ac, which filled the ducts until they burst into the guest room below. Taking out about half the ceiling.  And lots of insulation.  And the bed.  And then kept flowing until the whole floor was covered and those walls had wicked water up too.

At one point, when I got brave enough to go downstairs, I found Mark sloshing through standing water in our guest room, completely exhausted after working all night and trying to move furniture into dry zones, covered in bits of wet insulation material, shop-vaccing away. That's when I knew it was bad.  And the sinking feeling got worse when I walked across what I thought was a dry patch of hardwoods, and water squished... under the flooring.  Awesome.

Can I just say right how seriously scary it is that water can cause so much damage, so quickly.  Wow.

So we have spent the last few days dealing with insurance (which thankfully is covering the repairs and rebuilding, praise the Lord) and having a water extraction company (yep, that's a real thing) in and out of our house.  They've been pulling up flooring, tearing down sheet-rock from the walls, removing soggy ceiling and insulation, and hauling away two trucks' worth of stuff that is wet and damaged beyond hope of repair or drying out. 

Our TWO haul-away trucks

For the stuff that just has to dry because it can't be replaced (like the cement slab under our floors), they brought in big fans and fancy dehumidifying machines which are extremely loud and extremely hot.  Our main floor bathroom registered 105 when they came to check moisture levels this afternoon.  I'll say that again: one hundred and five degrees.  In our bathroom.  But the machines are doing their job, so... whatever.

Our rec room, normally ...and now

Our office area, normally*... and now

The kids' bathroom, normally... and now

I can't find a picture of our guest room how it normally is, but I promise it doesn't usually look like this:

Our guest room, now

I'd like to say that I've been a good sport the whole time.  But really, I've had a few (ahem) moments of acting like a baby.  But I'm trying.  I am. 

I'm trying to remind myself that even though the red tape is obnoxious, I'm grateful that insurance is covering the repairs.  Even though the only flooring that's damaged is what we've recently updated anyway, at least all the new flooring isn't damaged (the new carpet in both kids' rooms seems to be ok).  Even though the fans and dehumidifiers are really loud, it causes enough white noise that the kids (and therefore I) have slept past ten for two days in a row.  Even though they are really hot and we can't use the a/c (seeing as the ducts are full of water), at least it's a gorgeous, windows-open kind of weekend anyway.  And it's sort of funny that they literally evaporated the pee right out of a bag of wet diapers.  Right?

However, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't cried.  Or bickered with Mark.  Or let a movie babysit my kids (twice).  And that I can't stop thinking about the massive home improvement tasks still in front of us.  (Have I mentioned recently how I can't stand the home improvement process?) 

But for now, it is what it is.  I can't control it, I can only control how I react to it.  So I'm trying to be a grownup.  And you know what?  Thanks to an at-home date with Mark, a trip to a new playground with the kids, two DQ runs by Another Nathan (bless his patient soul), and again with the sleeping late, we had a pretty good weekend despite the Great Goettsch Flood.

And maybe tomorrow will be the day things dry out. Say a little prayer for my soggy sanity, ok?

*Normally in this case meaning a year ago, which is how old this picture is, in case you can't tell by the tiny baby version of Nathan standing there.