Water, water.

Today's blog is brought to you by the letter W.

For wet.
And water.
And when will we ever be finished?

The morning started normally enough. Breakfast, children arguing, the phone ringing.

There was talk of me getting to morning service. That didn't happen. At ten, when it was too late to make it, I decided to instead throw a load of towels in the wash and then celebrate my Sabbath with some down time in the playroom the moment the kids vacated it.

That never happened.

They were still gathered when R's bug bitten face swelled up and T whisked her off to the doctor. E thought he would be clever and he snuck away for a nap.

With the three boys in my care, I sat down to think. No sooner had I done so than the doorbell rang and the baby started to cry. I held him and tried to ignore E's mom, who was driving me bat-poop crazy this morning. E had to miss his nap (HAHAHAHA) and deal with her as well.

When she finally left, peace ensued for all of twenty minutes. Lunch was in there, Monkey went to bed and then I went to change the laundry.

I descended the basement steps and approached the cess trap to gage where we stood on water use and see if I could run any water in the next hour. The answer was a firm NO.

I had to blink a couple of times and I'm sure I stuttered some before I finally called up to E in the kitchen, "We have a huge problem."

The trap was full, overflowing, and so was the small trap in the back of the basement. There was a good three inches of water covering the entire floor and water and bubbles were still gushing out of the trap. The only dry spot in the basement was from the bottom of the stairs to the right wall, where the craft table and the only thing that is readily water-ready, stands.

All three rugs in the kids' playroom were under water. The toys, the electric guitar, the chairs...all in water. My room floated far off in the corner of the basement.

I couldn't even tell where the water had come from because it was running down the wall near my room and it surrounded the washers and dryers as well. I stuttered and stammered some more when E asked me what I thought it was.

Then I got it together and made him go into my room to get my sneakers.

"They're in the orange box, four shelves down." I called from the dry spot as he splashed to my room. I wondered how my other babies were doing. Were they dry? Did they know that I love them? "Also my computer charger hit the floor this morning and I was too lazy to pick it up. Can you pick that up?"

He did and he wasn't electrocuted, even though it was plugged into the wall.

Cut to fifteen minutes later. T was there, baby on arm, gaping at the basement. The kids trying to get down the stairs for a look. E with a shop vac trying to get the water out of my room first, which is where it was deepest, me moving anything dry to the craft table and everything salvageable to the dry floor around it.

That's when we realized that the water was clean. The trap hadn't backed up. This water was clear. It smelled like...rain.

A huge storm hit here last night, hit close and rained hard.

But we haven't had any major trouble since the hurricane last year. And NEVER like this.

If I hadn't backed up that washing machine a few months ago and subsequently water-proofed my entire living space, this day could have been really sad for me.

As it was, all of my clothes are in plastic. I recently invested in some space saver bags. Everything of mine sits at least six inches off the floor. Everything.

I made out fairly well. I lost a pair of slippers and a pair of dollar store flip flops.

The water was clean but there are some things you don't trust after being submerged in flood water.

The cess pool people were called because we still weren't sure if the rain was purely to blame for our new swamp. With everything out of the way but the rugs, we continued vacuuming water out while the trap was pumped by the truck. The man running it said we had a clog in the trap, which is why it fills up all the time. It's also why there was no trace of fecal matter in our flood. Thank God for clogs!

As I lugged a big, wooden trunk that normally held toys up the stairs and out to the yard to dry I heard something. Something awful.

The toilet in my bathroom was running. Running hard. No one was in there. Or had been in ages. Since the discovery of the flood we had herded all the kids into the playroom once again. Swollen-face and her brother hadn't been in the potty in a while she said.

The toilet running was why the bubbles were still coming up from the trap. The toilet running for two hours was why the rainwater had so much help covering the entire floor so deeply.

Still, clean toilet water.

Four hours later E and the happily bribed man from the truck had hauled out the three soaked rugs. They smelled of water and dirt. They left them on the driveway to be cleaned at a later time by someone else.

E took the huge broom we use to sweep the garage and began using it to push the water into the freshly emptied trap.

Good idea, I said. That looks like it's working I said.

Little did I know I would have a turn at this later.

E cleared the playroom. He went with the truck guy to haul some more crap from inside the house that I won't help with because I hate carrying things. Seriously, anything. I hate carrying all things.

I took up the broom and started on my room.

The trouble was that my room is the lowest point in the basement. All the water I shoved out with the broom came rushing back in. I had to work fast. So I did. And ten minutes later I had huge blisters.

At this point the day was over. T took the kids to the pool for an hour to get them out of the way so we could wash the floors upstairs where water had been tracked everywhere. Then E went to get barbecue for dinner because the women folk were not going to cook. Period.

I dug in deep and got the water out of my room, across the basement and deposited it in the trap. It drained promptly. The floor gleamed.

I towel dried my room, killed the only two silverfish left in existence in this house, took out the trash and went to eat barbecue.

You should also know that during the wait for the truck to arrive, I pushed the last remaining spiders into the trap water, drowning them and ending their family line forever.

Before I could enjoy my dinner, I accidentally answered the phone when Mom E called. I saw her number, almost ignored it, felt mean and picked up. MY BAD. She was calling with advice, very detailed and redundant and heavily accented advice, on how to save our rugs. I tuned out no less than four times and bent over myself in defeated frustration. My employers mocked me for answering the phone, laughing silently and pointing at me in my distressed state.

I yessed her until tears and blood ran from my eyes (slightly exaggerated) and then finally hung up.

"Whatever, you're related to her. Think about that."

Tonight I am crashing on the couch, typing quickly because I can't charge my computer until the charger is really, really, dry and reassuring T that she doesn't need to buy me new slippers as I own back up slippers and back up back up slippers.

The only thing I lost that needs replacing is a train schedule that had blown onto the floor.

The kids lost four hula hoops. Shhh. They don't know. We didn't want to upset the puffy-faced girl.