Be careful what you wish for

I want to see some thunderstorms, Sarah said.

I wish there was more to do around here to help out, Sarah said.

Bah.

Around 6am this morning, John jumped out of bed to use the bathroom and I woke up to him squishing his way into the bathroom.

The basement flooded. He was standing in a puddle of water. On my carpet.

I went and checked the basement rec room–flooded. The dog’s bed was soaked, and she was laying in a puddle of water. I took her upstairs and dried her off–she’d obviously gotten up and layed down again on the other side, since she was wet on both haunches, but why she didn’t get up and leave her bed is beyond me. Then I woke my parents up. Then Amy.

This is the worst flood yet, according to my mom. My old room has water welling up inside the closet, along one outer wall, and around the doorway, all spreading towards the center of the room, where the bed has been pushed all the furniture has been piled. The laundry room is flooding from the same wall that my old room is, and together these two leaks are flooding my bathroom. There’s also more wells up under the stairway, flooding Amy’s old room’s closet, and another one right in her doorway. There’s one where the laundry room empties into the rec room, filling the bottom of the stairs, another in the rec room over by the sliding glass door, and another somewhere along the long wall. All the furniture has been piled or put on 2×4 pieces or taken upstairs.

Dear god, it’s a lot of water.

When I wanted rain, I meant an innocent little thunderstorm or two, not tornados, not torrential downpours while I was tramping through fields, and not 3 straight days of rain that flooded the basement.

Brat, we watered our roots, but too much, I think. The roads are flooded in some places, lots of farmer’s fields (and thus their crops) are flooded, the golf course is flooded, the creeks are swollen, we’re under flood AND flash flood warnings. The water needs to stop coming now. Fortunately, as I write this, the sun is starting to come out, and the radar map shows no precipitation anywhere west of us all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska. And I think Saturday and Sunday are supposed to be fairly warm and sunny, so that’ll give it time to dry out. If the rain started again, we might have to give up.

So it’s now 10:30, and we’re taking a break from shop-vac-ing up all the water. John went and got his mom’s (that’s how we know the roads/fields/golf course are flooded), and between hers and ours, we’ve pulled gallons of water out of the carpet. Problem is, the basement’s still below the water level, so it just keeps welling up. My mom stayed upstairs, away from any potential mold or anything, and cleaned the kitchen and frosted my birthday cake. I moved stuff. Dad and John shop-vac-ed. Amy napped on the couch upstairs.

Yeah, you heard that right. We moved all her furniture, in her old room and her current room/my old room, and all her shoes and stuff that was on the floor, and have gone over her/my carpet so many times now it’s not even funny. And she slept through it all. I don’t know where she is, maybe in my parent’s bed, since I turned on the lights in the living room to vacuum, but I don’t really want to see her right now. I think she’s biding her time until she can leave to drive to South Dakota to visit some friends for the weekend. Bah.

Anyways, mom went off to work to get some stuff done in the lab (yes, my parents are Mad Scientists, too, only with birds, not viruses), and we’ve gotten the spreading water up, and fans to dry the areas, but wherever there are cracks, it just keeps coming, and if we leave it alone for too long, it just starts to spread again.

This is gonna be a fun day.

Back to stemming the flood, I suppose. I’m just glad we’re here to help, since my mom’s not capable of it right now, Amy’s apparently not willing, and I don’t think my dad could have done it alone.