Oh, No!!! Not Again!!!

Rachelle awakened us at 5:15 one morning last week with news that water was coming into her room presumably from a broken pipe. Lance leapt out of bed to discover the source. I tried to go back to sleep and pretend that I didn't hear Rachelle. We have had way too many water woes over the course of the 20+ years we've lived in our house.

If there is to be any type of household emergency, the likelihood that it will involve water is about 95%. Really. And we've certainly had our share of water problems over the years.

There was the time when we all waited in the car while a unnamed child finished using the restroom. The child closed the door, got in the car, and then we were off to run errands. We arrived back home over an hour later to find water pouring through the ceiling onto the garage and basement floors. Apparently, this sweet child had unknowingly played a nasty prank on us by lifting the toilet tank lid and flipping the fill tank hose up so that the water ran continuously out of the top of the tank. That little incident required us to pull most of the new carpet up upstairs, replace ALL of the basement carpeting, call our insurance provider, have Service Master come to the house and suck up the water and place fans strategically throughout the house, and cause Sara to get 7 stitches in the palm of her hand because she slipped and fell and tore her flesh on the exposed carpet nails.

Another water emergency occured when my sister, Melanie, was visiting. She awakened us on a Sunday morning to say that water pouring into the basement from the upstairs. Toilet trouble again, only this time it involved yucky toilet bowl water from the toilet being clogged. It was a smelly, yucky mess.

When Zachary was about 3 years old, he yelled upstairs, "Don't come downstairs, Mom!" When I asked "Why?" he replied, "Because there's water all over the floor." Apparently, he wanted to drive his tonka trucks through water so he dragged the hose in from outside and was watering the linoleum and carpet. Fortunately, only about 1/3 of the floor was wet.

A few months ago, Lance went into the garage to retrieve some boxes from the shelves next to the door. When he moved the boxes, he discovered that the sheetrock was wet and was beginning to rot. The upstairs bathtub had a leak we didn't know about. That little repair cost about $1,500.

I could mention other disasters at our house that involved H2O, but just know that we've had many, and we don't like them.

Now, off into the rain I go!