For the Love of Normalacy (and a Blogtip)

Yesterday started out just like every other “normal” day for me – wake up, put on my workout clothes, put on some hot water for my wife (for her green tea), and head downstairs to the treadmill.

This wasn’t going to be a normal day, however. As I was about to go downstairs to the basement I heard my wife say, “Honey, I’ve been running the faucet for 5 minutes and I can’t get any hot water”.

That set off a day like no other, because I hurried down the stairs to find the hot water heater spewing water out of the top, along with a flooded utility closet. After I quickly turned the water off I also noticed that the flooding had progressed to underneath our six-month old hardwood floor. Uh oh. I wasn’t going to work today.

We called a plumber, used a shop vac to get the water in the closet, and wondered out loud how this was going to play out. We found out soon enough – the hot water heater needed to be replaced, and we had to start pulling up (or should I say tearing out) the hardwood floor until we couldn’t find any water.

We got lucky and found our handyman readily available, and by 5:30 that afternoon we had removed about half the flooring from the basement. I functioned as the “hauler”, taking the discarded wood around the house and into the garage. My wife used the shop vac to get the water left behind. We then summoned a water damage expert, who methodically went around the room with a wetness meter to determine the extent of any drywall saturation (a potential mold issue). There were several spots needing to be dried out, so he set up 5 blowers and two dehumidifiers in our basement.

If you’ve ever needed this to be done you’ll understand when I say that this arrangement created about as much noise as a 747 taking off, and used about as much electrical power as my house was capable of providing. Wow.

By this time it was about 7:30PM, and I was still in my workout clothes and in a real need for a hot shower. But we still had some cleanup to do (and didn’t have hot water), so we didn’t stop to eat until nearly 9PM. Finally around 11:30PM we ended our day taking one last look at our basement, just to make sure the whole thing wasn’t just a bad dream (alas, it was not).

As is my want, today I look back at this day from the half-full perspective – it makes me appreciate “normal” even more than the day before. It’s wonderful to have those daily “comfort rituals”, and when you don’t get them, it’s amazing how your equilibrium can change.

Also, it makes me appreciate those hardworking folks like the plumber, handyman, insurance agent and water damage repairman who performed wonderfully for us (and quickly too).

Lastly, events like these give me perspective, in that material things like basement floors are of far lesser importance than those spiritual things that really matter. As Jessica Duquette would say, “It’s Not About Your Stuff“! (BTW, this is a great blog that I gladly “Blogtip” in honor of Easton Ellsworth’s “Blogtipping Day“).

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