There's A Hole In My House Dear Eliza..... Dear Eliza

I really don't know where to begin this story other than saying There is a Hole in Our House.  Yes, literally, a hole.

A couple of days ago, I was cleaning our media room.  A room in the basement, under the ground level of the house and hence no windows.  Perfect for a dark atmosphere and a big screen.  Our circuit breaker and electrical panel is also in this room.  As I was wiping down the chair rail around the panel, I noticed some brown nasty goop coming out the bottom.  It was dried and considering the brown nasty goop the rest of this house was covered in (i.e. boogers) I wasn't too alarmed.  But, right next to the goop, was a bit of bubbled paint.  I made a mental note to tell K.  Which I did.  I also looked back at pictures I had taken of this room way back when we were considering buying it and yes, the bubbled paint and brown goop was there then.  Hmmm.  K determined that it wasn't currently feeling wet, so lets not worry about it.  Not worrying for me simply means not obsessing.  I always worry.  Always.

So.... let's not worry about it.  La la la.  Happy stress-free existence.  Joy and light.  Happiness abounds.  Then SLAM!

Yesterday it rained.  Torrential downpours.  I almost died in the driveway by a bolt of lightening.  Seriously.  I was on my way to pick up my friend Andrej and as I was getting into the car, I felt all the hair on my back (eww... I don't have hair on my back!  I mean arms) raise.  Then CRACK went the thunder!  I screamed and I saw K pointing and laughing from the window.  Can you just feel the love!?

And that is when the rains of our life started.

I was gone for about 2 hours.  After I had picked Andrej up in Franconia, I accidentally exited the freeway.  Then came the traffic.  And I yelled at my poor Betty (the navigator on my dash) for being a fool.  But I digress.  When we finally got home, I pulled in the driveway and saw K and two of my neighbors running around all crazed like.  What the?  They looked like drowned rats in the rain.  Before I even had my feet out of the car and onto the pavement, K yells "we have a leak in the basement!"  Now, the man has been married to me for 7 years.  He knows I have a freaking out problem.  But wanting to keep my composure for my dear friend who I haven't seen in years, I simply said "hmmmm."  Very good of me, although I was seeing stars, my stomach was churning, and I was swallowing back the foam that wanted to come out of my mouth.  Then K said, "It's probably a crack in the foundation!"  That's when the foam came.

For a brief minute in time I blacked out.  I saw money signs floating in the air, I heard voices saying what have you done to yourself... you mortgage laden fools, I smelled the stench of fear and felt the strangling arms of regret, I envisioned the house sinking and leaning, much like the Tower of Pisa.  I pictured myself kicking the previous owner in the family jewels. 

Anyway...

I came to.  I went down to the media room and saw water and mud literally running out of the electrical panel, down the wall and onto the floor.  K had taken off the frame and there was a freakin hole in the bottom of the panel with mud coming out of it.  And an inch more of mud on the bottom of the panel itself.  While I was holding back the freakout of the century, K was on the phone with our homeowners insurance.  All agents busy, and they'd call us back.  K then called my dad.  My dad knows everything about houses and is thankfully NEVER doom and gloom about anything.  I was on the phone with my mom who knows just the right thing to say to her daughter who is foaming at the mouth.  I had given the children to Andrej (my wonderful, childless friend who had been invited over for a nice calm meal), who somewhere in the distance was yelling with slight panic "Susannah, is this normal?"  Referring to Clara drooling and Max doing his finest and loudest impression of a circular saw.

We then called our home inspector.  He was such a nice guy and we couldn't believe that something like this had been missed in our initial inspection.  Remember, I have a picture of the bubbled paint dating back to April.  Within the hour, the inspector was at our house.  Along with all the neighbors who wanted to help us.

They all crowded into the media room, and the inspector took a screwdriver and stuck it into the hole.  It went all the way in... about 7 inches and came out covered in dirt.  Hmm... that's odd, he said.  They got a longer dowel and stuck it in.  It went all the way through... about 12 inches and came out covered in dirt.  That is when the inspector got a very concerned look on his face.  Isn't there supposed to be a CEMENT FOUNDATION!?  I was upstairs at the time and heard people yelling "we need a longer stick!... Matthew, go get your fencing foil!"  Next thing I see is someone running across the street with a long sword towards our house.  All in the rain mind you.  The inspector sticks the foil into the hole and it goes All The Way Through.  Before I expound on how wrong that is, let me paint a little picture.  We have a gaggle of people, bunched in the corner of our basement, all looking like drowned rats, sticking a sword (A SWORD!) into our circuit breaker panel, a panel that is covered in dirt and WATER!  I couldn't watch, and I didn't want the kids anywhere near this situation that was on the verge of becoming an international news headline.  Man Electrocuted While Sticking Sword Through Circuit Breaker During Lightening Storm.

I went upstairs and within a few minutes the gaggle of men with their sword were running through the house yelling something about shovels.  It was right then that the lights went out and I screamed "who's been electrocuted?!"  The lights came back on and everyone was OK.  Meanwhile my friend Andrej says "is it always like this at your house?"

K was in the garage looking for our shovel, which was no where to be found.  (As I'm writing this, I'm still wondering where are shovel is?  Damn movers.)  Anyway, he finds Max's Little Tyke's play shovel and goes outside to start digging.  At this point, there are more neighbors convening in the middle of the street.  One of which had gotten a beer and a chair to watch.  To watch my husband with his son's bright purple toy shovel digging a heap of dirt away from the house.  Luckily other neighbors showed up with grown up tools.  They dig and dig, and low and behold, they find a hole.  Drilled ever so nicely right into our foundation.  Someone goes back downstairs and sticks the sword through the hole in the circuit break and someone outside yells "I SEE IT!"  We were sticking a sword through our house.

So, that was the problem.  Some very dumb, VERY DUMB, person drilled a hole through our house.  And left it.  The inspector was appalled.  He was baffled that he didn't see the mud and dirt and gunk and stuff during his initial inspection.  It obviously had been aggravated by the recent rain and I for one totally believed the guy.  The guy that dropped his dinner, ran over to our house, and stuck a sword through it.  Sounds like a medieval fairy tale.

So you think the story ends there, don't you.  Well, you're dumb.  If the rain had stopped, then maybe.  But the rain started to come down harder.  And in the men's attempts to discover the problem, the hole they had dug around the house started to act as a filling basin.  And water began to go into the house hole.  They saw it happening and I heard K yelling "SUS!"  I was in the middle of changing the world's poopiest diaper but could hear the alarm in his voice.  I took a naked Clara and ran out to the front porch.  K and the men yelled at me "go to the basement with towels!"  It was right then that Clara chose to pee all over me.  I briefly thought that the porch roof had sprung a leak, but it was just my daughter.  Behind me Andrej said "Is that normal?"   Meanwhile K had stuck his finger in the house hole to plug it up, but he couldn't really stand there in the mud all night with his finger in the house.  Although the thought of it made me chuckle.

I handed off the naked baby to Andrej (who by this time is permanently scarred for life) and ran to the basement... and yes, water and mud was everywhere.  I stuck paper towels continually in the hole to soak up the water while the boys were outside rigging up tarps and such.  We were talking to each other through the hole in our house.  How wrong is that?!

With the hole plugged and water now directed away from the house, we could finally relax.  The inspector left and our neighbors (bless them for being so wonderful!) also left.  K and I sat and stared at the hole for a while, with really nothing to say.  What is there to say after an incident like this?  Other than a whole string of very unsavory and colorful metaphors. 

Max, who thought the whole thing was about the coolest thing to happen to him since the Tornado of '07, hasn't stopped retelling the story.  K is off this morning to Lowes.  I don't know what he is getting although I heard mumblings of epoxy, caulk, and a brain for our previous owner. 

Homeownership.  It should come with medication.

Comments

[Mom]

Freaking amazing. Is this in the front of the house? I can't visualize but then you know me and directions.

[Steve]

Wow, sorry to hear that. I have to admit that I laughed my butt off at your story though, I could envision it all. Great description of the events.

Was it good beer at least, and hopefully he shared some with everyone.

[Melinda]

Ah, yes. Rainstorms and water in the basement, I know thee well. We had a freak rainstorm two summers ago and a window well filled up with water which GUSHED into the house. Luckily, it was on a Saturday and William was here helping in the yard. While Paul dug trenches to redirect the water, William and I filled a tall outdoor garbage can and emptied it 14 times into the shower drain(14 times!) It was absolute pandemonium, and we didn't have neighbors to help -- they were all mopping up their own messes. The phone kept ringing because the water had short-circuited the alarm system so ADT was calling, then Mom was calling because ADT was calling HER, and on and on and on. It seemed like days. Dorothy still hides under a table when she hears thunder.

I'm glad you survived. Did Andrej ever get any dinner, poor fellow?

[Elizabeth]

OMG, that was the funniest story. I couldn't stop laughing, because I can picture the whole thing- I would have been right there with your neighbor, his lawn chair, and a beer- although a glass of wine would have been a little classier.

[Melinda]

P.S. That is a CLASSIC post. One of your funniest EVER! I was re-telling it over dinner tonight and Dorothy and Amelia couldn't stop laughing (once they were assured that no one had been electrocuted!).

[Brighton Amy]

Suze, I swear, bad things happen to you JUST so you can write about them and entertain the pants off the rest of the world! I am completely entertained by every post! Oh, sorry about your flooding disaster. . .awful, just awful. . . I'm torn between wishing you smooth sailing, and privately hoping you have more disasters to write about for our entertainment! I know. I'm horrible.

[Lins]

Oh my goodness. You do things in spades don't you? PArdon the pun! I can imagine your panic - hope it gets sorted out soon!

[Paige]

Oh, you tell it so well. And I'm glad to see the size of the hole. I was thinking it must have been a huge 1 foot or larger hole. A small hole like that is certainly managable, now that you know you need to fix it. And it's good to have a huge catastrophe early on so you can meet all your neighbors, right?

[That One Best Selling Autobiography Guy]

So I know the solution to recover damage costs for this and other catastrophes that you seem to be so magnetically attracted to.

Compile these blog posts and publish your auto-biography. I'm seeing 21 weeks on the best-seller lists and a theatrical movie release, DVDs, soundtracks, etc.

Seriously, I hope everything is ok and the "rest-of-the-story" is without event... but the part that was, was hil-freakin'-arious.

You know it was K's Karma nailing him for pointing and laughing at you from the window. ;)

[Lins]

Maybe it was a mouse hole???? Keith???? You're the expert?