My basement.

It flooded.

We had a record rainfall late last summer. That was followed by record snowfall this winter. Then this past weekend, we had another heavy rainfall. Sometime between 3:30am and 2pm on Saturday, our sump pump decided it was done working and punched out. Permanently. Hubby heard the sump pump run at 3:30am. We went downstairs at 2pm and were met with *squish* underfoot. In the corner of the basement by the sump pump, we had 2 inches of water. The rest of the basement was anywhere from 2 inches to barely damp.

I kept repeating the mantra, "At least it's not sewer backup. At least it's not sewer backup. At least it's not sewer backup." We dug out the shop vac and put it to work inhaling water. I placed a call to a couple friends begging for an extra shop vac and an extra dehumidifier. Both were promptly delivered along with helping hands.

I went to the home improvement store and purchased their last vertical switch sump pump. (The only kind that fits in our sump well.) I also bought a big fan. We swapped out the old pump for the new one and it works beautifully. Yay!

We then got our carpet pulled up so it could start drying. I talked to a couple people and they said we had to get the pad up ASAP to facilitate drying. So we did that. We had two dehumidifiers and two fans running and 3 days later, parts of the carpet were still wet. And now it was starting to smell.... And it wasn't flowers!

So today, I ripped out all the carpet and it's all at the curb. We just had this carpet put in 2½ years ago, so that was sad. Fortunately, we bought cheap carpet!

Everything is drying nicely now. (Concrete dries fast when it doesn't have wet carpet sitting on it. I went browsing today for replacement carpet. Hubby is going to bleach the floor tomorrow to make sure the mold is dead.

Bad parts: all the work to clean it up, the smell of wet and musty carpet, the loss of carpeting that was newer

Silver lining: It is forcing me to clean out the basement storage, I found out I can replace a sump pump, no furniture or other items weren't ruined, and it wasn't sewer water!

I hope that never happens again. What a PITA!

I have a sad friend.

My friend had applied for a promotion last year. She is a police officer and she wants to be a detective. She didn't do so well in the process and consequently, she did not get promoted. She decided to try again this year.

This year, she aced the exam and got the highest score of all the applicants. Then came the interviews. She aced the interviews and got the highest ranking of all the applicants. The other detectives wanted her to be the next one added to their group. Other supervisors recommended her. The lieutenant in charge of the process placed her first on his list of recommendations. This recommendation list was forwarded to the chief.

The chief reviewed the rankings list. The chief chose someone else. Someone that wasn't even on this recommendation list. My friend does not know why she was passed up and she is very sad. I just spent two hours on the phone with her, trying to help her through this. Part of me wants her to go stomping into the chief's office to demand an explanation. Part of me wants her to just put her shoulder to the wheel and try again next year. Part of me wants ME to go stomping into the chief's office to demand an explanation!

I think I finally persuaded her to go talk to someone. She feels like she can't trust anyone in the office to talk to. I finally suggested she call an old co-worker who was more of a mentor during his time there. I hope that will help. I feel helpless and I really don't like that feeling.

I recently found...

...the joys of Stephanie Plum. I had asked some online friends if they had any reading suggestions. More than one recommended the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. So I took their advice and I'm hooked! These books are easy reads and very entertaining.

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I survived a 5th grade sleepover this past weekend. Frodo never had a party for his birthday because March was just too busy for our family. He invited his friends from school, so my home hosted four extra boys on Saturday night. The best part about boys? All they need are food, video games and nerf dart guns, and they are a happy bunch for many hours. They would've been happier for longer, but we finally forced them into sleep mode at 5am.

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It was 63ºF and sunny on Sunday. I dethatched the yard a bit. Ok. I lied. I dethatched the yard a LOT. I have a plentiful number of bare spots in my lawn now thanks to the voles that hid under this winter's deep snow. I was going to spread some grass seed to fill in the spots, but it's back down to the 40s again and is scheduled to snow again tonight. Sigh. This has been the worst and longest winter I have ever experienced. We never had this much snow even when I lived in the great white northern parts of Minnesota. Maybe now I'm starting to understand why people spend winters in the south.... Any suggestions of places to spend winter?

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