As delightful as some news has been lately (like that of Kris moving to town), not everything is sunshine and peaches at our house. The plumbing problems that I wrote about last week? Turns out, those problems are not so much fixed yet. Last Friday, Dave worked from home so he could meet the plumber at our house. We had been told that the most likely problem was a blockage in the line between the house & the septic tank. Fine. The plumber showed up, snaked the whole line, and found no blockages. He did some exploring, and found that our septic tank was not draining like it’s supposed to (it’s supposed to drain something like 2 inches per minute, and instead it was doing 2 inches per hour; translation: hi! You’re screwed). He’s technically not allowed to fix the septic tank himself (big legal licensing issues), but it’s a good thing he showed up when he did, because we were about thisclose to having another flooding disaster in the house. He also found that there was lots of sewage water under the house. Ewww. I’m so glad I was at work while this was going on. I’m sure I would have freaked right out if I had been there when this discovery was made. It was much easier to take the news over the phone when I was 10 miles away.

Dave called 1-800-Water-Damage (who knew such a company existed?), and they were out within the hour. They got rid of all the water under the house (again, I was at work – I don’t want to know how they did it, I was just happy to know that it was gone), but they told us that our hardwood floors in part of the house were damaged because of the water. Which really wasn’t a surprise at all, since I had told Dave a couple of weeks before that I thought the floors in the downstairs bathroom were warping. So, the dude rigged up these huge rubber mat things that suck all the moisture out of the floor. They look totally science-fiction, check it out:

He also had to hook them up in the hall in front of the bathroom, along with these enormous industrial dehumidifiers.

They’re kind of creepy, aren’t they? And they’re loud, it sounds vaguely like a jet engine is taking off in the kitchen. The cats are terrified and have been camping out in our bedroom since Friday night. The noise combined with the cats fighting in our room makes it interesting to try to sleep at night. Not to mention that the moisture-suckers are giving me nightmares that the yellow hose parts are going to detach themselves from the mats, latch on to me, and suck out my soul, dude. Yeah. Anyway.

Meanwhile, the septic tank repair guys came out on Saturday and fixed that part of the problem (the entire pump failed and had to be replaced! Whee! Thank the lord almighty for homeowner’s insurance!). We have since been able to shower and run the dishwasher without the thought of doing so striking fear into our hearts, so that’s been good. But the water damage dude – his name is Jim, I think we’re starting to become friends – has been back to our house twice since Friday, and he says that there’s still too much moisture in the floors, so it’ll probably be tomorrow (Thursday) at the earliest before we can get rid of them. So that’s a week of headache-inducing non-stop noise. Not to mention what those enormous appliances running 24 hours a day are probably doing for next month’s electric bill. Mmmm, good times. I love it when huge expenses come up in mid-December. I think Dave and I just unintentionally bought each other’s Christmas presents: a new septic pump and perfectly dry hardwood floors. Ah, the romance of it all.