Walking across the carpet, feeling the water squish between my toes....

Alternate title "I love the smell of rain in the basement in the morning"

or

"Does anyone have any hip waders I can borrow?"

First of all, I want to thank all of the de lurkers who left me comments yesterday. If you didn't see, I have some pretty famous people reading my blog. Mario Lopez wants to show me his pecs and I got a marriage proposal from Orlando Bloom.

Sorry Orlando, I'm already taken, and besides, my husband is like 3 feet taller than you.

The comments on my last post really made my day!! I learned a few things too, like who General Larry Platt is, and why he left the comment about pants on the ground. Unfortunately, we missed that part of American Idol. I did manage to find a clip on Youtube, and it was really funny!

Max saw it too.

Max has been singing the "pants on the ground" song, All. Day. Long.

He does the dance too.

I can't get the song out of my head.

Thanks A BUNCH to whoever left that comment.

Seriously folks, I don't think I've ever laughed that hard while reading my comment box. I might just decide to make "leave a random comment as a famous person" day a regular feature here. (besides, I didn't get any comments from Tiger Woods, and I really thought he might stop by.....)

Thanks for De-lurking and commenting!!

OK, now back to our regularly scheduled whiny post.

This week we had a flood in our basement. I have to tell you that having my husband wake me up at 5:00 a.m. to tell me that we were having an emergency is really not my favorite way to start the day, because;

#1. I'm just not a morning person.

#2. Nobody likes to see water pouring out of their basement ceiling at any time of the day.

#3. Did I mention that this was at five o'stinking clock in the a.m. and I'm not a morning person?

So, the first thing I do is think of the children, sleeping soundly in their beds, just down the hallway from our new indoor swimming pool. I didn't think that it was fair of them to miss out on all of the fun, so naturally, I went and kindly woke them up by yelling "HEY GUYS, THE BASEMENT IS FLOODING! GET UP AND HELP!!"

My husband had already turned off the source of the water and we started hauling things out of the family room. The best part was how we were in the process of cleaning out and rearranging the storage room, so half of the contents of the storage room were in the family room, right under the waterfall.

AWESOME!

We spent the morning hauling our soggy belongings out of the flood zone and mopping and moving furniture.

The professional clean up guys came and ripped up the carpet, tore open the bulging ceiling (causing one guy to get an unexpected dousing) and vacuuming up water.

We now have a grundle of industrial sized fans scattered throughout our kitchen, laundry room and basement, running 24 hours a day, drying out our house.

They are loud, and they are freaking out Max. We told him not to go near the fans, because we like all of his cute little fingers to stay on his hands, but then he saw Brielle and Aaron touch a fan and he says to me "They touched the fan, and they still have ALL OF THEIR FINGERS!"

Actually, he won't go anywhere near the fans, he has spent the last several days in his room. We've been delivering his meals to him.

The fans are loud.

The fans are driving me batty!

Sure I could have a really bad attitude about this whole thing, however, I've decided that I'm going to look on the bright side.

So here it is, the TOP TEN BEST THINGS ABOUT HAVING MY BASEMENT FLOOD!

#10. I finally have something to blog about!

#9. The basement family room is finally clean!! (and when I say "clean" I mean that the only things there are the fans drying the walls, ceiling and bookshelves and the videos on the bookshelves) (Yes, we still have videos, we are that old)

#8. We hadn't taken our Christmas decorations back downstairs yet, so none of them got soaked, and now we get to enjoy them for a few more days! (Hey, don't judge us, we're just extra festive around here)

#7. We have raised the thermostat to a balmy 78 degrees to help the walls dry out faster. When I stand in the kitchen with the gale force winds from the fans blowing through my hair, if I close my eyes, I can almost imagine being on vacation on some tropical island somewhere. Or standing on the bow of a cruise ship in the Caribbean........Not that I need a vacation or anything.

#6. In order to fit the fan in the laundry room, we had to disconnect and move the washer and dryer, so I don't have to worry about doing laundry for a few days! However, Max is down to one last pair of clean underwear, and we won't be able to wash again until Monday. Sunday will be interesting.

#5. The treadmill is now stashed behind a bunch of stuff, so I have an actual legitimate reason not to use it!

#4. Due to the loudness of the fans, the children are unable to hear each other, and this has cut down on the fighting. Or maybe they're still fighting and I just can't hear them, either way, it's still good, right?

#3. Naughty bird, naughty frog, naughty rabbit and naughty reindeer are afraid of the fans too, and have made themselves scarce (Have I told you about naughty Reindeer? He showed up around Christmastime, and believe me, he's been a barrel of laughs! We can't seem to get him to go back to the North Pole where he belongs, but I'm thinking that Santa doesn't want him there either)

#2. I got to spend the day with my husband because he stayed home from work to clean up the mess!

And the number one best thing about having our basement flood.....

(drumroll please)

NEW CARPET!!!

So Join me in the following weeks for our new adventure "Shopping for carpet with Jill who can't make up her mind about what kind to get!!"

(Maybe I'll just put the choices up on the sidebar for everyone to vote on so I don't actually have to make a decision)