A Different Kind of Summer

I was waiting for additional inspiration before posting, but since it never arrived here is my blog albeit slightly dated. 

I don’t remember seeing so much rain in June.  According to the local news (who knows if it is fake news or not) it was one of the wettest Springs on record.  It rained nearly 6 out of every 10 days.  Only twice since 1900 has it rained more frequently.  It is still raining every few days around here, but at least we are now getting summer weather.  Of course, being Clevelanders, everyone is now complaining that it is too hot.

The point I’m leading up to is that for the first time in our almost 40 years of living in our home, our basement flooded.  Fortunately, I am blessed with a good sense of smell.  Many of Dana and Jonathan’s wedding gifts were being stored in the basement.  We had time to move them and other valuables to higher ground before the flood waters rose.  We estimate we got at least 6”-9” of storm water.

What do you do when your basement is filling up with sewer water?  We went to sleep.  After all it was past midnight and there was nothing more we could do.

In the morning the fun began.  What a mess!  After touching base with the City of Beachwood and our insurance company, State Farm, we contacted Servpro.  Within hours they were at our house removing everything in our basement including the carpet and the tile.  The tile was removed because it had asbestos in it.  Sixteen extremely loud fans blasted away for 3 days nonstop drying out our basement.

Oddly enough, our town didn’t have a diagram telling us where our pipes were located.  As a result our lawn was dug up.  No pipes there.  It turns the pipes were found under our driveway, so that was torn up as well.  At least all of this activity served as a lesson for a group of toddlers and their sitter.  They were taking a walk and found the construction so fascinating that they took a seat on the sidewalk and watched while the concrete was being poured.   It was very cute.

Wedding gifts, china etc. are now sitting in our family room.  Everything else is piled in our garage.  Based on how slowly our insurance company is processing our claim, it is going to stay that way for a while.

We had been thinking about the possibility of moving and were making a concerted effort to clear out 40 years of accumulation.  A flooded basement is one way to clear cut one’s belongings, although I wouldn’t recommend doing it that way.

What a far cry from last summer.  Instead of an adventure driving throughout the USA, we are dealing with painting, flooring, talking with our insurance company, and trying to figure out why our basement flooded in the first place.  Not much fun, but our basement will be squeaky clean.

The old saying says goes that “bad things” comes in threes.  Now that we’ve had a flood, we should be safe.  #1 We had to replace part of our roof due to leaks in our bedroom ceiling.  #2 One of our air conditioners had to be replaced.  #3 The great flood of the summer of 2019.

I was wrong, the list of “bad things” continued to grow.  I was playing my usual Thursday evening golf game and hit a ball over a low fence.  There it sat just out of reach.  Do I ignore it? Do I simply move on?  NO of course not.  I easily climbed the fence, but I wasn’t so lucky on the way back.  I twisted my knee and am now limping around.  That’s a sport related injury isn’t it?

Then at the end of short family vacation in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania, I woke up with Vertigo.  I ended up in the emergency room of Somerset Hospital.  So now I’m limping around and am slightly dizzy.

On a more positive note, Dan and I celebrated our 45^th anniversary.  Dan keeps reminding me that we’ve known each other for 51 years.  I guess he doesn’t think 45 is a large enough number.

NOTE:  Now that I’ve allowed so much time to elapse, (it is almost September), I am happy to report that our basement has been painted, and new flooring installed.  In addition, all our stuff has been deposited back where it came from.  My knee is much better, and my vertigo is gone. Hopefully my next blog will be only about “good things.”  Our luck seems to have turned around…stuff happens.