Last night at about 11:00 I decided I wanted to knit a sweater, so I went down to the basement for some yarn, and stepped into water.
It's been raining for several days here, and it looked like the water had just seeped up through cracks in the cement floor, but it was kind of hard to tell. It was pretty much everywhere. I think it's been a couple of years since that's happened, and we had most of the stuff up off the floor on bricks or other things that water wouldn't hurt, but there were some boxes on the floor that I had probably put down there after the last time, after enough time had passed that I had forgotten that it was possible.
The basement is unfinished, but we had a bunch of old throw rugs down there, so most of those were sodden, in addition to the boxes. Although I suppose that might have helped keep the water contained. Hard to tell.
It was so late that I couldn't face doing anything about it last night, so I just got my yarn and came upstairs, and started the sweater, and went to bed at about midnight, figuring I'd get up early today and take care of it. So I spent most of the day down there, mopping up water, filling trashbags with things that were ruined, lugging the trashbags up the stairs and out into the garage so that I could drag them down the driveway tonight for trash pick-up tomorrow.
Bob's out of town.
This kind of thing is a lot easier when you have help.
And also, man, it's hard work. My back started to get tight, and the last few bags were pretty hard to get up the stairs. I could, of course, have left them for Bob to bring up when he gets home, but he's going to be gone all week, and I didn't want wet things sitting down there that long. I kept the cell phone in my pocket all day, as I do almost all the time, even at home, if Bob's gone.
I know it's silly, but when I'm at home by myself, I can't help thinking what would happen if I fell down the stairs--as I've done before--or hurt myself some other way (like the time I pulled the vacuum cleaner down on top of my head on the stairs) or locked myself out of the house or something. I realize that that's paranoid, but I figure it's better to be paranoid than dead.
And especially when I'm working in the basement, I always have the phone with me. Today, when my back started tightening up, I was thinking, okay, if my back goes out, I can call 911, but they'd have to break in the front door in order to come down to the basement and get me. I have my neighbors' phone numbers programmed into my phone, but none of them have a key to the house. My parents do, but I wouldn't want them to have to drive all the way out here. Bob's parents do, too, and they're closer, so I guess I'd call them and have them come over the unlock the house. Or I could call my sister, and she'd have to drive over to my parents and get the key, and come out here, because now that I think about it, my dad couldn't drive over here anyway, because he just had eye surgery . . . The things that go through my mind!
Anyway, nothing happened except that I'm exhausted and my back is sore, but the basement is in pretty good shape, and all the trash is out at the curb. I decided to stop before I actually got everything done in the basement -- some of the boxes over by the wall look like they might be wet on the bottom, but I decided I wasn't going to tackle it. There's paranoid, and then there's foolhardy.
2 comments:
As you say, better to be safe than sorry. I mean how silly would you feel if you thought those what-if thoughts, then decided to leave your cell phone upstairs - - and found yourself lying in a soggy basement begging the cats to please bring you the phone?? Huh, what about that??
Good point. I thought about that. I also thought about the fact that while Dinah is the one that could probably be persuaded to bring me the phone, she's also the one that would probably be the first to kill and eat me if the cat food ran out . . .
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