One of Those Days

You know that feeling you get when you wake up in the morning and hear the shower running, but you quickly find out no one is actually in the shower? And then you're wondering why someone's running the shower underneath your stairs instead? I hadn't either, until yesterday morning.

Turns out, the boiler tank on the hot water heater in the crawlspace popped a seam the night before, and was spewing water out like a fire hose directly at the back of the basement stairs. Which, not so incidentally, also gave us a small pool that covered two-thirds of the crawlspace and caused quite a bit of damage.

My wife and I have wanted to clear out the crawlspace every summer for at least the past five years; we just never seemed to get around to doing it. We even said we'd pay our son and his buddies to do it...but it never got done. Well, it's getting done now, and the insurance company is paying for it.

Thankfully, the water didn't get out of the crawlspace very much. A little bit leaked out through the bottom of the stairs, but it wasn't that much compared to what was under the house. We had to replace the carpet anyway, so it wasn't a big deal getting rid of that.

But there is a lot, and I mean a LOT of stuff in the crawlspace. And a good chunk of it actually didn't get soaked; stuff that was on top of the stuff that did get soaked, for example, escaped unscathed. And for that, we are grateful, because there was a lot of it. Not to mention the far walls away from the boiler, which thanks to the uneven floors didn't get wet either.

Unfortunately, there's quite a bit that is going to be ruined, some of it quite valuable, like the thousands of dollars’ worth of books that were stored under there. Some of it is priceless, such as photos and scrapbooking memories. The clean-up team is going through it all, and hopefully the loss won't be as bad as we feared.

But at least the crawlspace is getting cleared out. It's like God had finally had enough of our procrastinating and said, 'If you won't do it, I will.' Well, whatever works.

We've agreed that this is a sign that we should get ready to move. We've been in this house together for thirteen years now, and we've talked about moving for as long as we've been talking about clearing out the crawlspace. Of course, with this stupid virus running around and scaring everyone to death, we're going to wait that out before making any concrete plans such as looking at gorgeous properties that will exactly suit our needs.

So, we're going to finish emptying the crawlspace this weekend while the emergency people get all the damaged stuff out. After that, we'll see what we can salvage, what we want to get rid of and sell, and what few things we'll actually keep. And then, we'll put it back in the crawlspace away from the boiler, just because we don't actually have anywhere else to put this stuff anyway.

So, be grateful for contents insurance, because you might get an unexpected windfall (or waterfall) when you least expect it.

Not all of my books were in the pool, of course; you can find some of them on Amazon at my page, where you'll find mystery and fantasy (for now) stories to wet (ahem) your appetite for more.