I love hearing waterfalls, flowing streams, and even fountains. The peaceful sound of running water is so soothing to me. As a result, I really enjoyed the recent day we had of heavy rain—mainly because I didn’t have to go out.
Unless, however, that sound is coming from my basement.
Years ago, when my husband and I were in our townhome, I had finished a difficult work project and decided to take the afternoon off. I plopped down on the sofa in my family room and was about to treat myself to a Lifetime movie. Before I could find out who was stalking the woman, I heard the sound of running water.
“Hmmmm…that’s strange,” I thought. I wondered if I had left water running in the bathroom.
I checked. I hadn’t.
Then I checked the upstairs bathroom. Still no water.
Where on earth was that sound coming from? Then it dawned on me—it was coming from the basement.
Water in the basement terrifies me. Why? Because years ago, after a hurricane, I was greeted by a similar sound of running water. When I went down to check it out, I saw water pouring in our back window and running onto the floor like a waterfall. Water was backed up behind the window in the window well, making it look like an aquarium.
I did what any normal person would do in this situation.
I panicked.
I called my husband and screamed something about the basement flooding and told him to come home. Then I called my neighbor to see if she had a wet/dry vac. She didn’t, but she came right over.
It’s a good thing she did because all I was doing was standing in my basement watching the waterfall flood the place. I was so stunned; I finally understood what it meant to be like “a deer in the headlights.”
Luckily my neighbor had functioning brain cells, unlike me, so she took some towels, stuffed them into the bottom of the window, and wound them into a bucket so that all the water pouring in was no longer ending up all over the floor.
She was like MacGyver.
I, on the other hand, was like the drooling village idiot.
(Did I mention that, at the time, my husband and I were recently married and all our towels were new? I discovered that nice new towels can sop up a wet basement like nobody’s business.)
My husband came home and asked what he could do. I told him to go to the local hardware store and buy the biggest wet/dry vac he could find.
But I didn’t quite mean this literally.
Hubby, who was still as stunned as I was about this whole mess, followed my directions and came home with a wet/dry vac that could not only suck small children across the room, but could actually fit one inside.
We spent the rest of the evening vacuuming water from the basement and the window well. Shortly after, my husband put a drain in the well, and all remained, uh, well.
Until I was in the middle of my Lifetime movie.
When I went down into the basement, I expected to see the window leaking again.
But no.
This time, it was the hot water heater. Evidently, it picked that afternoon to go to that big cellar in the sky. And it did so in the most grandiose fashion.
Water was spewing from the top of it like Old Faithful and leaking from its sides and bottom. Water was all over the floor. For the first time since we had it installed, I was sorry that we had gone for the 50-gallon heater.
For a few seconds, I was like a stunned deer again. Then I went into action—shutting off the water main, throwing old towels (which were once the new towels) all over the floor to absorb the water, and calling my husband to bellow, “You need to leave work RIGHT NOW!”
Luckily, we already had the monster wet/dry vac. But I, uh, never learned to use it. Trust me; the time to learn is not when there is water all over the basement. It makes it tough to concentrate and read the instruction booklet.
By the end of the day, we had the basement fairly dry, a plumber on the way the next morning, and water restored to the rest of the house.
Silence never sounded so good.
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not giving thanks for her nice, dry home, writes Wojo’s World® from Baltimore.