Build an Ark

It is the wettest May on RECORD here. Seriously, it rains like... well, like we are still living on Woodstream Drive in Indiana. It has rained nearly every day for the entire month. Lots. The trout pond in the meadow is now double the size it was dug out to be. The grass is super-long, but its too sodden to mow. As I type, it is pouring out, and... yep, add some pea-sized hail to that mix.

Good thing this house has two sump pumps, right? Even better, when they were rehabbing the basement after the unfortunate incident down there, they actually replaced the sump pumps as well.

Friday evening, we were sitting in the living room, watching television, when I pulled an Aunt Bethany.

Except in my version, I said "Is it raining? Because I hear rushing water." Eric didn't exactly pull an Uncle Louis, but he did say something to the effect of, "I don't hear anything, and I'm pretty sure you couldn't hear the speedboats from Cedar Point if the launched in the pond." However, I was pretty sure I heard water. We looked outside. At that moment, it was not actively raining.

I got up to get something from the kitchen and we paused the tv. Seriously, that noise! So, I went into the kitchen, and since the tv was paused anyway (ok, seriously, on a totally random tangent, can you BELIEVE we can pause tv now??), I asked Eric to go check the basement, oh, and please also check the crawl space.

The next few minutes went something like this:

Eric: "MEGAN!!!!!"

Megan's internal voice: "Oh crap, not again."
Megan out loud: "Are you ok?"

Eric: "It's like freaking YELLOWSTONE DOWN HERE!" (ok, that may be an interpretation of what he actually said.) GET THE DUCT TAPE!"

Megan's internal voice: "Everything remotely related to home repair equipment is in a box in the garage, most likely behind and/or under a box of fragile, dining-room-type stuff. By the time I find duct tape, we are doing to need an ark."

Megan's external voice: "Ok! Best place to look?"

Eric: "There's some in my car! Hurry!"

Megan's internal voice: "I have never been so glad Eric keeps random stuff in his car in my whole life."

I  sprinted out to the car, found the tape, and rushed back in, climbed into the crawl space and found...

Geyser, shooting out of the sump pump, hitting the ceiling, hitting the back wall, and, oh NO, shooting my poor husband in the face as he wrestles with the drain pipe that wasn't installed properly and has now come loose, whereby the overloaded sump pump is shooting water out into the ether because it has no where else to launch it. (Yes, I know this paragraph is in present tense and the rest of this blog is in past-tense. There is just simply NO other way to write this description, so chill out grammar police.)

Eric wrestled that pipe like a baby bear, finally got it into a headlock, and duct-taped it into submission. It turned out that the contractor who did the work just stuck the pipes together, but never actually tightened anything, added glue, or tightened the hose clamps that he stuck over the pipe fittings. So, when the sump pump started kicking out the amazing amounts of rain water that we've experienced, it started loosening the connections until Yellowstone.

Eric's text to the homeowner was a photo that read "Time to smack another contractor."

The scary part is we weren't supposed to be home that weekend. We had plans to be out of state that we cancelled at the last minute. If we hadn't been home, my assumption is that eventually, all that water would have leaked into the recently refinished portion of the basement, and caused more havoc.

Needless to say, we are VERY well liked by the homeowner at this point.