Crap
Sunday, August 14, 2005 at 5:05PM 2 Comments 
It's been a rough week. We came home from dinner last Sunday night about 9 PM to find our house smelling like absolute butt. I blamed the dog, looked all around, and couldn't find anything. Clearly, something was wrong.
"Look in the basement," Jen suggested. I opened the door. "I think I found our problem," I managed, as I was knocked back by the stench. I took a few steps down the stairs to have a closer look, and yeah...our unfinished basement was flooded with 3-4 inches of sewer water. Poowage. And in the intervening week, I have heard every conceivable crap pun.
Being the laid back sort that I am, I was ready to worry about it in the morning. But seeing as how we have an infant now (and hepatitis is airborne), Jen wisely elected to call a plumber. $400 later (d'oh), as we decided to move in with my folks for a week with kid and dog in tow, our basement was still flooded. But we had gotten the ball rolling on the road to recovery.
It's been a long week of dealing with all sorts of involved parties:
- Our insurance company, which has been thankfully painless so far.
- A "restoration" company, whose job it is to sanitize and disinfect. Next time my job seems the least bit tedious, I will think of these guys. They were truly in the trenches.
- The city, which was entirely at fault, and has been unrepentent and unresponsive. Go get 'em, insurance company.
So we've spent a week staying with my folks, who have been incredibly accomodating. This weekend, the house is officially ready for re-occupancy and the basement is - to the eye, anyway - cleaner than I've ever seen it. But some things that we had down there simply can't be replaced. I'm thinking of the 10 x 10 Howard Dean for President sign.
What an experience. We're going to have some additional work done to the basement to ensure that this never happens again. And I am most of all disappointed - but not surprised - with the city. The backup affected our entire block (though no one as badly as us), and had happened before five or six years ago, before we lived here. They knew it was a problem, and they hadn't taken steps to prevent it or even to warn us that it was a "poosibility."
Reader Comments (2)
It was MY 10x10 Howard Dean sign that was a casualty of this event, and yet I LAUGHED AUDIBLY when I read that in your entry.
We have to submit a list of lost items and their value. How do you put a price on something like that?
$.39
Haha. Haha.
I know I'm just a journalism SLAVE. But you should really get your account across to Terry Plumb at the Rock Hill Herald. I think that any chance he has to roast the city and sell him some papers, you ought to try. Or do yall live in Shallot? Somewhere up there.
B'leve me, newspapers are definitely accommodating. Don't go to the news editor directly. A reader's desk note will do fine.
I checked the Web site, and if you click on news and scroll all the way down and there's a trench-coated icon that you can click. They're updating their Web site, though, and I couldn't get it to go anywhere.
Bottom line, the people would be receptive to hear that the town is not doing, er, shit.