Part II of The Week From Hell

The next day I call hubby in the morning and he says that he and his boss have not spoken all morning long. He has not heard anything from the VP either. So, what’s a wife to do? Worry of course.

I somehow manage to keep myself distracted all day and at the end of the day I fight the drive home and arrive at about 6:45 in the evening. First thing I hear when I walk in the door is the sound of the gas flame from the hot water heater. I walk into the laundry room to check it out; nothing seems amiss except for the fact that it sounds loud. Then I hear my husband snoring (he is on his 2 weeks of nights-shift) and walk into the bedroom to change into comfy clothes and tennis shoes. After a long day and even longer previous night I need some exercise. Squish, squish. Uh, oh. Squish, squish. Oh, NO! I look down at my feet and see water seeping up over the top of my boots. I run to the bathroom where to my amazement I see the one of my feather pillows in the middle of the floor soaking wet, the garden tub overflowing and standing water of about 1.5 inches covering the bathroom floor.

I run over to the bed yelling and screaming for P to wake up. He is startled and groggy. He gets up and walks to the bathroom in a daze having absolutely no memory of what has happened. He has somehow in his sleep gotten up and turned on the bathtub and now we have a flooded bathroom, connected closet, half the bedroom and half of the dining room. He cannot remember anything about it. Due to the amount of flooding I suspect the water had been running for two to three hours.

Par for the course, we have different opinions on how to go about cleaning this up. P thinks he can do it himself. I think we need to call a professional. An argument ensues and he runs out and gets a grocery store “rug doctor” steam cleaner thinking this will pull up all the water. Eventually I figure two of us doing this are better than one so I go to the grocery store and rent one too. So now he is in the bedroom, I am in the dining room and we are both trying to pull as much water out of the carpet as possible. After about an hour of this (and about 50 gallons of water between us) I notice that the carpet is feeling a little less wet so I go over to the corner where the carpet is completely dry and pull it up.

Well, the padding is soaked. Somehow the water has flowed out way past where the carpet is wet and has soaked the padding underneath even further than we thought. UGGGHHHH!!!! At this point P agrees the padding will have to come up and we will have to call a professional. So, at 8:15 or so I call Stanley Steamer. By 8:30 they call back and someone be coming out in about an hour. So, I begin moving everything out of the closet, bedroom, and dining room, drying it off and putting it in the living room. (Which, by the way, is the only room in the house that I had finally divested of boxes and had some semblance of order) When I run out of room there I move things into the kitchen and anywhere else they will fit.

In the meantime our next-door neighbor, S, comes over to tell us that he was in fact ringing our doorbell at 1:15 am the previous morning. He had noticed that our garage door was open and so he thought it would be neighborly to let me know. (AT 1:15 IN THE MORNING??) He said he had been ringing it about 20 times but I never responded. We thanked him for thinking of us but asked if something like that ever occurs again he call us instead. What amazes me even more is that the dog didn’t even bark! Some guard dog she is!

Anyway, it’s now 9:30 and P has to leave for work by 9:45. I am worried that the Stanley Steamer guy won’t get here before he leaves and after the events of the previous night I don’t want to be alone with a complete stranger in my house. So, I ask a friend over to stay with me.

Stanley Steamer arrives just before P leaves and assures us that this will be no big deal. WHEW! He says it’s not nearly as bad as he has seen before. P leaves and SS Guy starts moving the furniture around, pulling up the carpet and hauling the padding out the front door. Then he uses a “hoover” with 800lbs of pressure to pull the water up off the concrete and then out of the carpet. Finally at about 12:45 he finishes and leaves me with a mega-fan and instructions to rotate it EVERY HOUR! And there I was thinking I might actually get some sleep. Needless to say, I slept very little that night.

So yes, it was the week from hell but, a few good things did actually happen. P and his boss got things worked out and he also had a meeting with the VP. The VP told him that family is very important and they need to work out some sort of arrangement for those who work third shift in case of an emergency. He also said that P’s boss was wrong in his response and that if P ever has a problem, please feel free to come to him. Whew!

I did actually learn a few life lessons out of the mayhem. 1. Arguing over an event that occurred in the past can be foolish and a waste of energy. Being angry did not dry the carpet any faster, or stop the water from flowing over the tub. 2. Pulling the proverbial rope in opposite directions is essentially a tug-of-wills and does not help solve one's problems. Working together to reach a solution is much easier and better for your relationship!

See how I ended everything up so nicely? My life should be a sit-com from the 80s! ;)