Phase I Cleanup

This whole thing has been traumatic for Ryan. Here he is hitting himself with a child's toy anticipating cleanup...



So apparently there is a code for cleaning up waste. Only those who have the privilege of waste management can be enlightened. So sorry to leave you out. If you'd like to be informed, you are more than welcome to come over and join in. Then...you can be in the secret club. See...we even have uniforms.


Trying to make Ryan feel better...



And Phase I Cleanup Begins!

Stay tuned...Phase II coming shortly!

What I am calling the Sewage Flood of 09...

More background: Three weeks ago we had most of the stuff in our basement in one huge but nice neat pile at one end of our basement. Being the messy/want-to-be neat freak that I am, I decided we must organize our storage area. SO...I made Ryan help me divide everything by category. Once everything was divided by category, we were going to organize each category into storage bins, number them, and write down everything in them on an index card. That way if we needed something, we just look at the index card in that category and find which number box it is located in, making retrieval a breeze. Nice thought, huh? So being the excellent finisher of projects that I am (HA! HA!) instead of one nice neat pile of things on the OPPOSITE end of the basement where the sewer water came in...we had about 10 piles spread out ALL OVERthe basement separated into...you guessed it....categories. Now, not to be too hard on myself - we actually did get about 10 bins actually organized and put away but we still had a lot left. So when the water came....it hit us in categories! Anyway, just thought I'd share that optimistic little fact there just in case you were desperately wanting some more depressing Irwin news!

Here is the basement filling up with water- hard to tell where the water is- wish I used a ruler but...oh wait, the ruler was stuck in my craft supplies on the other side of the basement already submerged!

ick!

Guess what I got to do last night? Ryan and I had some real bonding time. At 11 pm, we discovered our pipes in the basement were backed up and sewer water was coming into our laundry room area. There was about 2 or so inches of standing sewage water. 20 minutes later...Ryan comes to get me in bed to tell me to get up we must go salvage things in the basement. The sewar water was pouring in by that point. So there we are standing in rising sewer water trying to rescue our photos, memorabilia, clothes, etc. while the nasty water continued to creep its way into all of the corners of the basement. By morning our whole basement was covered 2-5 inches deep in utter yuckiness. Good news? A guy came out and fixed it, making all the water go away! Bad news? The water went away but not the sewage...so now the cleanup begins! Normally, I try for some humor when I am blogging about something like this. Maybe I should wait awhile. Humor currently escapes me. Oh, and by the way, I forgot to mention that I am sick.