Man, what a weekend. No, really. Oof. I’m writing this on Sunday night, won’t post it until Monday morning (auto-schedule), but I can tell you how things have gone and will continue to go down through Monday evening.
Friday:
Took a day off of work to spend some extra time this weekend with Kate and Eddy. Pretty relaxing day. Ran a quick errand in the morning (chiropractor), hit Home Depot on the way home for mousetraps, then went with Kate to her haircut appointment, wherein Eddy and I sat in the lobby and he flirted with every girl in the place. I sat off to the side and realized that, yes, truthfully a baby is more effective for meeting women than a puppy. Crazy.
Saturday:
The day of little tasks. Set the mousetraps in the garage. A few days prior, I had found the bag of birdseed chewed open, and a bunch of mouse droppings. Later that night, I saw the little fucker hauling ass along the baseboards while I was in the workshop. Baited them with some asiago and then left them scattered throughout the garage. Hung out with the wife. We went shopping at Capitalism Central (the Mall of America) so Kate could get some work clothes that fit. Eddy threw a wrench into the works and we came home. Not before eating at Rainforest Café, where I took advantage of my newfound absence-of-fish-allergy and ordered the fish tacos, which were underwhelming.
Sunday:
Intense thunderstorms blew through here at about 2 a.m. Hail, strong winds, torrential rain. When I went out to check on everything at around 8:00 a.m., I was legitimately surprised that we had all our siding, screens, and shingles. All the deck furniture was where we’d left it. The yard was pretty sodden, but nothing to worry about. Kate went out to finish her shopping and Eddy and I hung out and watched TV (or I did, anyway — he napped on me). She came home, we ordered pizza. At some point after that, there was a conversation in my head that went something like this:
“I haven’t heard the sump pump in several hours.”
“We should probably check on the crawlspace.”
Then the external conversation portion went: “Oh, fuck!”
On examination, the crawlspace had about three inches of water in it. Fortunately, not enough to overflow the space and flow into the rest of the basement, but still enough for causing concern. After a few hours of monkeying around, I got the sump working again — the float had broken free and would’ve had to float up about four feet to actually get triggered again. Made sure the outflow pipe was clear and the hose extension ran to the side yard as far as it would go, and then manually triggered the pump and let it run for about 30 minutes. The result was a very quickly-drained space. Don’t get me wrong, it was still damp and mushy and the crock was still filling up about every 15 minutes, but I did manage to get the float secured, and now the sump is kicking off every 20-30 minutes. Next steps involve buying, renting, or borrowing a massive dehumidifier to put in the crawlspace (and direct the outflow of it into the crock). Then we need to start seeing about pouring concrete down there.
Monday:
We’re going to be getting up early and getting Eddy to his first day of daycare. I suspect that’s part of the reason I cannot sleep and am still writing this at 11:30 p.m.
