On Sunday, I had a minor flooding in my laundry room. The roof leaks (has ever since we moved in), and the floor has been getting a big pool of water in it every time it storms. On Monday, that pool spread its way through the entire house. Oh, what a mess.
This house is sort of weird (Costa Rican "architecture," what can I say), so explaining this is going to be difficult and/or sound really strange. Our laundry room looks like a converted exterior space that had a roof put on, and then it looks like the garage was built as an afterthought. So in the laundry room, you have gutters that would normally be on the outside of a house running inside the house. I know, weird, right? I'll have to take a picture, because I'm sure you're saying to yourself, what the hell is she talking about? Anyway, these gutters (as all gutters do) were full of leaves and sticks and mud, and basically overflowing to the point of no return. All of the water then spilled out of the gutters (poured out, rather, I couldn't even keep up with dumping out buckets, which were inadequate to hold all of the water to begin with) and onto the laundry room floor. When the laundry room floor was full, the water started seeping into the hallway, then down the stairs into my office.
At the same time, water was pouring into the garage, coming in through the hallway that connects the garage to the rest of the house, then into the kitchen, dining room, and living room. There was so much water inside the house that it started overflowing the door jambs and going outside the house.
Also, have I ever mentioned that we are on the edge of a valley? Basically our house (and our neighbor's house across the street) are the highest things around for miles. And you know about lightning seeking out the highest object? Yep. So lighting pretty much strikes the house antenna every time there is a thunderstorm. So here I am, with a four-year-old, water on every floor, trying to keep my son in his bed where it's dry while I go around unplugging everything electrical and hoping lightning doesn't hit the house while I'm standing in water.
I finally manage to get esposo (who is at work, naturally!) to call the landlord, who calls the handyman to come over and clean out the gutters. He is then nice enough to sweep out and sop up the water in my entire house. I mean, talk about going above and beyond the call of duty. By the time the evening rolled around, son was asleep and I finally started to relax. Most of the house had dried out (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for tile floors, is all I can say!), though even this morning there was a small pool of water in the living room. And the handyman came back this morning and fixed the roof, so hopefully flooding season is over at this house.
A benefit to all of this? Realizing, as esposo says, "It's just stuff." Yes, some of it important stuff; yes, some of it expensive stuff, but in the end, stuff. Stuff can be replaced. Children and pets can't. I can't even begin to imagine what trauma people go through during a real flood; watching the water rise and take everything, knowing you are absolutely powerless to stop it.
As the water was flowing into my office, I started taking everything I could off of the floor and moving it to higher ground (aka, my bedroom, the only room in the house that didn't flood). One of the things I found was a photo of me and esposo at Margaritaville in California. The frame is pretty much destroyed, but the picture seems okay. I love this picture of us: in it, I'm happy and thin, esposo is handsome and young. We used to go to this place all the time; it was out in the valley, away from it all. We had so many, many good times there. I can see why pictures are usually the thing that people miss the most after a flood or a fire.
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