What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? Two things, the first is that it is over and the second is that we were here instead of Florida for a week like we usually are.

Why is that you ask, well I’ll tell you. Thanksgiving day started out as planned, my sister and Heather were cooking and I was cleaning the house and getting it ready for company. And then it happened, someone went to the basement and noticed that it was flooding. Then they went to the other side of the basement and noticed that there was a separate and unrelated flood going on over there too. I was upstairs cleaning the bathroom when I heard someone yell “Lisa.” I knew from the tone that whatever I went downstairs to see was going to be horrible, and it was.

This happened around 2:30 or 3:00 and the rest of the guests were coming at 4:30. I was in charge of the clean-up since everyone else was still making the food. I began mopping and mopping and mopping, but the water wasn’t really going away. Then someone turned on the kitchen sink and I heard what sounded like a rushing waterfall, it was then I realized the wall was full of water as I saw it oozing out of the floorboards.

I finally got it mopped up to a manageable degree and packed towels around the wall to soak up the continuing ooze. You know this of course meant that on one of the days of the year where you dirty the most dishes, pots, pans, silverware and more, we couldn’t use the sink or the dishwasher—OH JOY! To cut down on some of the cleaning mess, we used paper plates and cups, which makes for a really classy dinner by the way.

I then went to the other side of the basement to start on that flood.

It took me awhile to find the source of this deluge but eventually I found that the water pipe in the furnace had corroded and there was a nice thin stream of water coming out of it. Because of the pipe’s location, I had to MacGyver a water chute into a giant bucket and this seemed to work fine for the time being. 

I was a little late getting ready for our guests but I finally made it down and the evening actually went fairly well. Another thing I was thankful for that day were our guests Andy and Michele. They kept Pop entertained and that’s worth it’s weight in gold!

Cleaning up after dinner was a hateful torture. (If I were rich I would have suggested just throwing everything away and buying all new stuff.) Just imagine the smell of washing Thanksgiving dinner in a tiny bathroom basement. Or, how about cleaning the tub that you just washed Thanksgiving dinner in, (I’m dry heaving just thinking about it).

The next day the emergency plumbers came out and told us the 80+ year old drain pipe from the kitchen was cracked from top to bottom and would have to be cut out. They removed half the wall were the pipes are, cut it out and then told us there was a major clog that may require removing a large section of the floor. BUT, thank God they were able to finally clear the pipes and no floor was damaged. However, our wallet was severely injured in the incident.

So now we have a beautiful new pipe, a gaping hole in a filthy wall and a big new project for me to tackle in the upcoming weeks. Will the fun never end!!!

Here’s a section of the old cracked pipe:

The new pipe:

There’s a lot more I could write about the last few days, but I think the flood story is enough for now.

Again, I’m very thankful we were home, I can’t imagine what the basement would look like if we were gone for a week. The cat sitter would have had no reason to go into the furnace side of the basement—that would have been ugly.

I hope everyone else had a nice, flood-free Thanksgiving.