Monday, December 29, 2014

A crappy way to start the day

I went to bed early last night, but around midnight I woke up and thought it certainly did seem hot in the bedroom and I needed to make an adjustment to the temperature. Because of where our thermostat is located, our room gets extra warm when we run the heater and extra cold when we run the air conditioner. But then, that feeling of heat I was experiencing changed to a wave of nausea, and instead of worrying any longer about adjusting the temperature,  I did a quick about-face and headed for the restroom, where I became the second household victim of a mild, but no less unpleasant, tummy bug.

Around 3:00, Clay appeared, announcing that he needed to go potty. I took him to our bathroom, and after he took care of his business, the potty made an odd "glub, glub" sound, but it seemed to flush okay, so I took Clay back to his room and sleepily stumbled back to my bedroom, where I experienced the need to use the facilities myself. The toilet seemed to flush just fine, but, after a moment, I realized that the water level was rising. And then, it was overflowing. I trotted off to the utility room to fetch a plunger.

As I stood there plunging, Jeff, who had taken himself to the hall bathroom, since ours was occupied, appeared in the bathroom doorway and proclaimed that the hall toilet was also stopped up and the water level was rising there as well. He took over the plunging duties and was going back and forth between the two bathrooms. I was wide awake by this point, so I was following him around, offering moral support. I was standing in the hall while he worked on the powder bath potty, when I noticed that a small river was flowing out of the utility room. I hollered at Jeff to stop plunging, while I went to inspect. We have a floor drain in the utility room, which is suppose to carry water out of the house should the need arise, but, in this case, it was bubbling like a spring and a steady stream of nasty water was flowing into the house.

Meanwhile, Jeff had stepped into the kitchen, to find that the two floor drains in there were delivering similar rivulets, so that a large portion of the floor in the middle of the house was being soaked in sewer water. I quickly gathered up a handful of towels and old blankets to soak up some of the mess and quietly thanked the Lord that we do not have carpet, but the water continued to flow and the towels and blankets were not making any difference. Jeff shut off all the water to the house and called a plumber around 3:30. The plumber said he could be here around 6:30. We both felt disgusting and disgusted, but we tried to get a few winks before the plumber showed up. He arrived at about a quarter to 7:00 and went right to work.

The problem seems to have been taken care of, and my plans for the day now include mopping the floor, disinfecting various surfaces and washing loads and loads of soiled towels and blankets. It really wasn't a great way to start the day. Still, there is much to be thankful for: my emesis went down and didn't come back up, the tummy bug was very short lived,  we don't have carpet in any part of the house, the water flowing into the house was not stinky or discolored, the plumber was able to get here so quickly.

Happy Monday!

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