back in business!

Now where did I leave off?

That's right. Water. Lots of water.

You felt The Shock and The Dread when you saw that picture, right? Did you remember that days before, we'd found mold growing in the closet, (I'd subsequently been unable to breathe in a few rooms of the apartment,) and our water heater burst?

Over the course of a week, things went from bad, to expensive (I still haven't had the heart to open the water bill), to 'did we just lose everything?'

I saw the water pouring from the entryway ceiling, and I saw the water standing at the door of my apartment. I dropped my arm load of things (except for Eli, who I was carrying) and froze, in shock and maybe terror. Brian came back out of the apartment and said that lots of water had seeped in but it wasn't coming from the ceiling inside, just the floor, and that my hope chest needed to be moved immediately. He took off for the apartment's main office, and I tentatively made my way to what I assumed was going to be a disaster.

I sloshed through 2 or 3 inches of standing (rising!) water outside my door and was met by more of the same inside. But Brian was right - nothing was coming from the ceiling, it was all coming from the floor up. And due to the weird layout of our apartment, it didn't look at first glance as though we were going to lose anything.

Other than another week's worth of sanity, I mean.

So I moved my hope chest to the living room, where the water hadn't quite reached, and I surveyed the damage. Soggy carpets down both hallways. The hall closet carpet was wet. Water was about an inch deep in the laundry room, which has vinyl tiles, and had made its way all the way through into the garage (that's like 12 feet, including a right angle and another door!). Water had crossed the threshold to the living room but hadn't made it very far into it. It did run off the hallway into the master bedroom; it had also soaked directly (back) into the master closet, where we'd only yesterday resolved a mold issue, and it had also soaked through the master bathroom and into the bedroom on that side, too. (The closet and bathroom share a wall with the flooded entryway.)

It's been more than a week now, and we haven't had to toss anything as a result of water damage. Because it came from the ground up, and it didn't reach anything that was being stored on the ground (other than laundry machines, dog crates, and I think a bookbag?).

The carpet dude (the same one who'd shampooed our carpets earlier that morning, apparently) came that night, removed all the soggy pads, and sucked up all the water. We slept on the couch and ran a high-powered fan for a few days. And then, on Monday, Brian and Linda left - Linda was returning home, and Brian headed out for a youth conference. I was alone, with the dogs and a fair amount of chaos. (But hey! I could stay in the guest bedroom! No more sleeping on couches!) On Tuesday afternoon, the carpet fixer guy came (after I was promised that he was coming Monday, then Monday evening, then Tuesday morning....) and fixed everything. He also re-shampooed the flooded area, which was nice. I spent the following several days reassembling my home. It was such a relief to re-load our closet and stop stepping over piles of clothing. It was also a relief to be back in my own bed, even if Brian wasn't there.

It's also nice to have all the puppy pee stains gone.