Flood update

Since the spare fridge (in the garage) is blocked by the furniture taken from the store room (belongs to the owners) our main fridge is a little packed, however I diligently and tirelessly searched for the Kahlua mudslide at the very back and poured myself a wee dram and am now ready to write the flood update.

The day was kind of funny - now I can laugh, but before!

It was raining really heavily and had been for a few hours when at 7am I offered to take D to the train, this meant he could catch the 7:06 instead of the 7:31. We made it to the station with a minute to spare and I was feeling really good that he was able to get an early train and did not have to walk in the rain. When I got home I noticed water beginng to pool outside the garage door and I thought, oh there is water pooling by the garage door.

Meanwhile the train D was on got caught behind a broken down train and they sat still while the 7:31 flew past and I was calling his mobile which fortunately was finally recharged and with him. Often the phone is either flat or turned off with him, or charged and on the kitchen bench, so the planets aligned in that respect.

By 7:30 I noticed that water was coming under the garage door, so I put down towels to protect the carpet in the playroom/basement and called the owners just to let them know that the carpet might get a little wet and that water was entering through the garage. H decided that she would come over to have a look.

I finished getting the childrens breakfast, made school lunches and by about 7:45 noticed water bubbling up through the carpet in the playroom and through the walls. I removd the 4 chairs we had in there and put the (borrowed from friends) TV onto the computer desk, picked up the two or three things off the floor (the room was remarkable tidy) and went back to preparing for the day.

About 10 minutes later the water was at my knees, my towels (placed to protect the carpet from trickles) were floating a foot above the carpet, water was flowing rapidly. H arrived just as I remembered my scrapbooking stuff (two boxes, two semi completed albums, a number of tools and paper packs, years of photos and negatives and spare albums). I had already removed them all from the floor and managed to get to them as the water lapped the bottom of the first box. H and I made two trips through thigh deep freezing cold water to rescue everything. Thank God, quite literaly that I remembered. D was too frightened to call me to remind me in case I had forgotten and he thought that by the time he got home I would be using the computer to book my return passage to Canberra if I had lost the photos and the Albums. They are all of my babies of course and some are the only copies I have I shudder to think about my mental state had they all gone, truely.

So while this is going on, D got to Grand Central Station where I managed to contact him and with a mild amount of hysteria asked him to get the next train home, it is also at this time that I broke the news about The Beast, that it was going to go under and that I thought it would be lost. Devestating though it was, I thought the news would not get better with time, also it was the most expensive thing that we had in the basement. Although the times table game would have come in very handy to help J learn hers!!! D dutifully took the very next train, it was a local though, so stopped at every station, when it finally arrived at Hartsdale there were no cabs, it was still pouring with rain and he had to walk home. Our car was stuck in the garage and the firemen, the first hero's of the day assured me it could not be removed. I say first because D was of course The hero of the day.

My firemen left just before D got home so he was unable to see the big red fire truck outside our house parked facing the wrong way with lights flashing, it was very dramatic. It was very reasuring having them here. I had a few laughes with them since I was begining to calm down knowing the children were safe, Doug was on his way and the water seemed to have stopped rising. OH, I promised fireman D Brown (I know that was his name since it was on his butt - well the butt of his coat actually) that I would tell you all that he knows where Canberra is, he has been there, he even know it was the National Capital!!!OMG I made him give me a high five it was so exciting and I told them all I had to take their photo so I could put it on my blog and tell everyone that he know about Canberra and I have...He is the second from the left.

D put his wet suit on, who would have thought when he packed his dive gear and it became item number 30 of our air freight that it would have come in so handy, right here in our own basement? He cleared some drains (Ice still there from the snow day and muck washed by the flooding water) and the rain stopped about the same time. Water subsided from the family room doors (did I mention it was coming in that way too, in this case though, my towels perfomed admireably (oh, no I am out of Kahlua and not sure if I have the energy to get more).

H's son Z arrived, H hired a pump from Home Depot and over the next two hours the pump removed water from our indoor pool (um basement), it is nice to think that I did have an indoor pool for a few hours.

Clean up continued today, the carpets were removed, the seats cusions and covers removed, some of the skirting boards, the panels in front of the heating etc. The Heater was fixed so now we have gas, hot water and heating. The house was 10 degrees today (51F) which was pretty nasty, now we are back to a nice comfy 20 (68F) and I just have a jumper on instead of my huge puffy coat. We are hoping that by Monday we will have an operational washing machine and dryer and D hopes to clean up The Beast tomorrow too, so that we can get back to exercising. (normally the week end days are my big days!!)

We spent the night in a motel and took the children to Friendlys for dinner, food was ok, it is berger and fries type fare, the children of course loved th eIce Creams for desert.

I think that is all.

Love J xx