The Good and the Bad

Today was an emotional roller coaster and physically exhausting.... I was feeling so good about our house and thrilled to be back where the stores are open 24 hours a day and I can speak the language. However, after watching the weather forecast last night, I told Josh that we should expect thunderstorms during the night so we were very careful to close up the house before sleeping at a local hotel. It started with a few rumbles of thunder at about 5 a.m. and was raining moderately at 7 when we headed to the house to get ready to let the movers in. The storm just progressed from there however and by the time the movers pulled up with their truck full of our storage items at 9:30 a.m., the rain was coming down harder than I had ever seen it. It rained and rained and rained and by the time our movers figured out a way to get our things into the house with as little water damage as possible, we had already received an unbelievably huge amount of rain. About an hour later, as one mover was taking a load of items down to the game room in the basement, he realized that we had a problem. Water had started coming into the basement from all angles and was actually creating puddles on the carpet. The movers quickly stopped what they were doing and hauled everything up to the first floor again to keep it dry. It then proceeded to rain. It didn't stop until 5:15 p.m. at which point, I heard that we had received 7 inches of rain! Unbelievable! All of the neighbors told me that their basements were also flooded and had never been before so we have no reason to believe that this is a habitual problem with the house, just a flukey huge rain storm. A crazily overworked man came by at about 7 p.m. and was able to start tearing up the carpet and getting the water pumped out. We now have a huge carpet replacement bill coming up and no access to our basement for a week or so while they get it dried out and then re-carpeted. We did have helpful neighbors and friends stopping by all day to lend moral support so we are feeling good about our surroundings. It was also fantastic to be invited to a "Girls Night Out" tonight where I reconnected with lots of very good friends and got started with a local book club.... Maybe tomorrow will be all good...