Flood Week - Part 1, In Which We Are Flooded

Alternate title: Hell Week - Part 1

(My apologies to those offended by my use of that word. Still using it, though. Nothing else quite adequately describes the events of that week.)

CG has been back in California for a few weeks now, enjoying girl's camp through church, helping with horse camp through her stable, getting braces, and so many other fun summer activities. Her last week here started out really pretty fun, we made a last minute decision to hit the aquarium, just me and the girls, and had a great time spending a few hours there.

We saw fish that could eat my kids for breakfast,

we watched the penguins swim around a bit (my favorite part),

and Sweetheart sat in the most photographed boat that has never gone anywhere.

We went home, had some lunch, and were just chilling in front of a movie when we had a knock on our front door. I opened it to see our landlord standing there. He said that he just wanted to let us know that the reason our water was shut off was because there had been a teeny flood in the basement of the other half of the duplex, so it would be off for just a little while until they could figure that out and get it fixed. I had had no idea that our water had been off. I said ok and he left, and I decided that I better take a peek in our basement to see if there was any water down there since no one had been down all day. When I got to the top of the stairs and looked down, I could tell that the carpet was darker and wetter than it should be. I went down and walked around on the sloshy, wet carpet to see exactly how flooded it was. My office/toy room was completely wet and so was the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, and then the water extended just a little bit into CG's lounge area of her bedroom. Awesome. I went outside to the other half of the duplex and broke the news to our landlords. CG then took care of the little girls for me while I went back downstairs and singlehandedly emptied the toy room, cramming all furniture and toys and everything into the laundry room. Thank goodness our laundry room is huge! The disaster relief guys showed up right after, and it became pretty evident pretty fast that there was no way we were getting our water back on that day. We made some dinner (I had some water stored that we used for cooking and cleanup) and then we got packed up and went to crash at Marquis's parent's house, who thankfully are nearby and were willing to let us crash overnight. Our landlords offered to put us in a hotel overnight, but I had to work the next day, and the thought of trying to keep a teenager and two little girls entertained while shut up in a teeny hotel room just sounded like pure torture.

By the time we got to Marquis's parent's house, I was beyond tired. I had moved all that furniture by myself, and fast! It probably only took me twenty minutes to empty that entire room, and my back was feeling it. Add to that all the quick packing I did, and washing a bunch of dishes by hand by heating water on the stove and bending over a couple of bowls to do all the washing, not to mention the mental fatigue of having my normal routine interrupted so drastically, and I was very ready to sleep for a long time. Unfortunately, my sweet little girls decided that sleeping in a different place was not fun, and conspired together against me.

To be continued!