A Long, Long Day

So, yesterday started out pretty normally with getting Kolby onto his school bus in the morning, and then going to the grocery store with the other boys before rushing home for Eli to catch his bus in the afternoon. And I left Brax out in the house while we went to the grocery store (we usually put him in his crate whenever we leave the house, but he’s been such a great dog that this week I’ve been leaving him in the house when we have to go out, and he’s done perfectly each time – no accidents, no chewing, no mess at all). After Eli left for school and I got the three youngest boys down for naps, I brought in the groceries and then started to make dinner. I was feeling like the day was going pretty well so far – I turned on some music on the computer to listen to while I worked on separating and bagging up all the ground beef from the grocery shopping trip to be put in 1 lb bags in the freezer so it’s easier to use later on. I also prepared some butternut squash to marinate in the fridge for a day or two before we would grill it up – I was really getting ahead of everything and looking forward to getting dinner made and then just relaxing a bit while the boys finished their naps. I was feeling motivated (I’m not always real big on cooking), and I was making ham and bean soup. I got the water boiling and added the ham, then went downstairs to get all the different kinds of dried beans out of our food storage jars in the basement.


After I got all the beans measured out, I went to walk upstairs and saw a little puddle of water on the floor at the bottom of the basement stairs. Luckily, we have some old hand-me-down rugs on the cement floor in the basement play room, but no real carpeting, so that kind of thing isn’t too terrible to clean up. My first thought was that Brax had come down and peed on the floor, although Brax never comes down into the basement without our permission, and (to my relief) I quickly discovered that the puddle was in fact water. Then I thought that maybe one of the little boys had dumped out a sippy cup full of water on the floor right before I’d taken them up for naps. I pulled back the closest rug, and it was pretty wet. Then I pulled up the brightly-colored foam floor mats and the carpet pad underneath them that we have on the floor at the base of the stairs, and it was pretty wet too. At that point I realized we had a leak.

Our basement is set up as one big room that is divided by the stairs that run down the middle. The largest room on one side of the stairs is the boys’ play room, and then through the door on the other side of the stairs is a small room we use for storage and the laundry room, with the furnace and water heater behind the stairs. Our basement is partially finished, with drywall on the walls, so I could see a number of places on both sides of the stairs where the drywall was starting to get wet from the water on the floor. There was water all around the floor by the water heater and furnace, and it ran all the way under the stairs. Luckily, we had only stored the boxes we used for moving under the stairs, so although we’ll now need to get a bunch more boxes next time we moved because they were mostly all soaked, at least we didn’t have anything important stored under the steps. And luckily I was motivated to make the soup, so I went down and noticed then instead of finding out later when it could have gotten worse. I called Michael, turned off the water main to the house, and called our realtor group that we bought the house through because they have a ‘client perks’ program where they have certain recommended companies for all different kinds of house-related work. While I was waiting for someone to call me back about that, I worked on clearing out all the wet boxes before any more water soaked up the drywall. Then, thankfully, my dad returned my messages and walked me through step by step what to do. After we decided that the problem was the 12-year-old water heater (and not the air conditioning connection next to the furnace that was still under warranty), he had me shut off the water to the water heater. Then he had me shut off the gas valve (and he calmed me down when I started crying on the phone after I used the wrench to turn the gas valve and I turned it in the wrong direction and broke half the valve off). He had me make sure that the gas was off, then showed me how to use a match around the valve to make sure that no gas was leaking out where the valve was broken. Then he had me bring in a garden hose and hook it up to the water heater and run it across and out to the far side of the play room where there is a drain in the floor, so we got the thing drained so it wouldn’t possibly leak it’s entire contents all over the floor. I was very, very glad that he knew what he was doing, and that he could explain everything to me so well over the phone. He had to go meet a client at work, so I kept working on clearing out wet boxes and drying up the floors with towels. I went over to check on how the hose was draining, and when I bent down next to the wall I accidentally scraped my back against the broken handle on our water main – that hurt so bad!

Camden and Isaac had gotten up from naps about an hour after I had discovered the leak and while I was on the phone with my dad running through all the steps to drain the water tank. I went upstairs at one point to find that they had emptied the dresser of Isaac’s and Eli’s clothes and all the drawers onto the bedroom floor. I wasn’t able to deal with them while I had to get the water up, so I told them to stay in their room while I was in the basement. A little while later Kolby told me that they were putting things out the window. I retrieved a book from a bush under the window, then went up and hung out the window so I could reach the pile of clothes and a few toys that were on the roof outside the window. I was already stressed out about the basement, so it was especially frustrating that they were acting up like this. The boys haven’t done much lately to get in trouble around the house like this, but I guess that’s what happens when I can’t give them my attention for a big chunk of the day. A little while later I went up to find Isaac had removed his clothes and diaper, and luckily I came in right in time to get him into a clean diaper before there was a mess. They also opened the fridge and finished off a bag of dried apple slices that I’d dehydrated earlier this week. Needless to say, I had had it. Kolby’s piano teacher came and I was still working on getting things cleaned up in the basement. I think our hose has a little leak, so a little puddle by the hose grew a bit and almost get an extra mattress and box springs wet that were stored nearby – luckily I noticed that and got them moved into the other room. I did have several distractions from the boys, but it took me a total of 4 hours to get the water drained, remove all the boxes and the other things that were near the water, and get the water pretty well soaked up with towels.

We are out of hot water, but we were able to turn the water main back on so we’re ok until this afternoon when the guy is coming to put in a new tank. At first we got a call from a company that I scheduled to come and do the labor and sell us the tank for $725. Then I got a call from a second company, and the person quoted us $600 for the labor and new tank, and it has a longer warranty than the other company, so that’s good. And I also learned that we use less water than lots of people, I guess. We had a 40 gallon water tank, and they said that size is usually for a family of 4 or less. The guy was suggesting an 80 gallon tank for a family our size. We are going to stick with the 40 gallon tank, since we never run out of hot water, and if anything a new water heater should run a little more efficiently so it’ll be plenty for us.

I’m still not quite sure how we’re going to get the credit card paid off with this new expense – it was already going to be really tight for us this month because of some other circumstances with Michael’s paycheck changing from two times a month to once a month, and with having to replace the breaks in Michael’s car last month for the state inspection. Even with me selling things on craigslist over the last couple months and making about $400, and being really careful to save money where we could and not spend extra on things like babysitters or extra treats or anything, it was still going to be very tight before this happened. Plus Michael’s garage door opener stopped working this summer, which is going to be a pain once it starts snowing, but we can’t really do much about that right now. I don’t know how people manage to save up an emergency savings – I guess they don’t have 5 kids on a resident’s salary. But we do know that even though this is stressful right now, everything will work out in the long run.

At least we’ve been pretty lucky – up until now we’ve gone a whole year without any major expenses with this house (other than the cosmetic changes that we’ve been trying to make). That’s pretty good, I suppose. It is a little irritating to know that we are basically buying a new water heater for someone else (since we will be moving in 2 years), but at the same time it’s going to be a selling point for the house to have a newer water heater, I guess. And I guess we’re going to need to go down there and cut out all the sections of drywall that got wet and replace them. At least we didn’t finish the mudding, sanding, and painting on the drywall down there yet – I’ve been thinking about painting down there recently. Overall, it could have been a lot worse than it was.

So, last night I called Michael at 5:30 when I finished in the basement, and I was relieved to hear that he was coming home. I was physically exhausted at that point. Plus, when this all started I took the soup off the stove so it wouldn’t burn, so I had to start cooking it all over again later that night, and it’s the kind of soup that’s supposed to cook for 3 hours (which is why I originally started cooking it in the early afternoon), so we defrosted some chicken nuggets and had them with some grapes from the farmer’s market for dinner last night. Oh well, at least we have a nice dinner all ready for tonight. Michael got home, ate quickly, then had to rush off to a meeting for scouts. Luckily, someone else is taking over his scout committee chairman position, so on Sunday he has his last meeting where he will show the new person how things run, and hand over all the paperwork, so that’ll be nice to have just one calling now. But so Michael had to run for that meeting last night, and I was just done for the day. I told Kolby we’d have to do his night up tomorrow, and after dinner I sent the boys upstairs to brush their teeth while I cleared off the table. I hadn’t turned on the water main yet, but the boys didn’t seem to mind brushing their teeth without any water (yuck!).

The boys were all getting ready to get in bed when I turned around to see Brax peeing on the top of the stairs. I told him to stop, and he stopped for a second then started again. I told him to stop and ran with him downstairs and out the back door – it was kind of pitiful, he was trying so hard to run out the door quickly that his paws were slipping all over the wood floors and he had a hard time getting to the back door. In reflection, I had thought that Brax had the chance to go outside when we came home around lunch time and then again when Eli fed him dinner in the garage, but I was so involved with everything else going on in the day that I didn’t see him go outside. That means that the poor dog may have been holding it all day since first thing in the morning. I left him outside and told all the kids to get in bed and say their prayers (usually we sit with each boy while they say their prayers individually), while I cleaned up the puddles all the way down the stairs and out to the back door. I then went up and said goodnight to all the boys, and Isaac was asleep by the time I got up there. I was good – I didn’t get mad at the dog, but I did take him straight upstairs and put him to bed on the dog bed in our room. It was 8pm, and I was ready to be done with everything and everyone at that point. Michael’s dad suggested putting out fans to dry out the walls and floors, which was helpful because we hadn’t thought of that. Luckily, our space heaters that we use in the winter time also have fan settings, so we were able to place 4 of those plus a fan we have around the basement, and it seemed to help quite a bit with drying things out overnight. And it looks pretty good this morning. I can say that I will never store a huge pile of cardboard boxes anywhere near a hot water heater again – only storage in those heavy-duty plastic bins from now on.