Yesterday morning I awoke to Parker saying, “There’s water in the kitchen.” No, technically that’s not true. The first time he woke me up, he was talking to my husband about Skylander Giants. Again. Then they went downstairs and I started to drift back to sleep. The second time he woke me up he said, “There’s water in the kitchen.” “Yes,” I answered. He said, “It’s everywhere. It’s a flood.” I mumbled, “Is this daddy’s way of getting me to get up?” He said, “There’s water all over the kitchen. Everywhere.”

He wasn’t kidding. As I waded across my kitchen floor in my pre-coffee stupor, I almost had to laugh. This day was already supposed to be difficult because of some things my hubby had to deal with, and this was just the icing on the cake. There was still water coming out of our suspected culprit, the refrigerator. My husband was trying to move our giant fridge that’s technically too big for the space it inhabits so that he could get behind it to turn the water off. He spent about an hour sucking up as much water as possible with our shopvac, but it was clear that the water had been going for a while, and had been sitting on our hardwood floors for hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsShi0yqdv8&feature=youtu.be

(don’t judge me for the laundry on the floor- it probably absorbed a ton of water preventing it from getting further. It may be the one time my laundry failings were helpful.)

I called the insurance company and left a message, since their office wasn’t open yet. Their response email seemed to indicate they thought I meant I had a little water around my fridge. They reiterated my thousand dollar deductible to scare me off. Eventually I convinced them they needed to send someone out.

So here I sit in a torn up house on a hot summer day, my kids haven’t eaten because our kitchen and pantry are unavailable, and yet I am counting my blessings. Here, in no particular order, are 10 reasons why it ain’t so bad:

1. The butterscotch schnapps bottle that Zoe knocked over a couple weeks ago, sending shattered glass shards and sticky sweet liquor all over the kitchen has now been thoroughly soaked and eliminated.

2. Last week, I finally got around to ripping up the carpet in the pantry so I could lay the linoleum tiles I bought for the Spring break project that never happened, as mentioned in my previous blog : http://kbjackson.com/in-case-youre-wondering-i-think-its-poprocks-an-apology-letter-to-my-housecleaners .

This was what I discovered underneath:

 

It precipitated a lively discussion about what could possibly be down there. Someone guessed “Narnia.” Another said, “hiding place for Zombie apocalypse.” Some said it reminded them of “Being John Malkovich” or “Panic room.” My husband claimed it was his “escape hatch.” Of course there were the practical ones who said, “crawl space,” but they’re no fun, so I ignored them.  All I knew was that I wasn’t opening it. But I decided to tile around it, so that it could be opened without disturbing the tile.

 That white dot in the middle is a screw that, you will soon see, is useless, but I went out of my way to work around.

But my daughter’s curiosity soon got the best of her.

She decided to look.

Here’s how that went:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxBZwQ6AGeo

Ironically, less than 24 hours later, when Servpro asked me where the crawlspace was, I was able to tell them.

 This machine is now sucking the water out from under the house through the crawl space access in the pantry. Please note, they ripped up my newly laid tiles that I had very carefully laid so they wouldn’t have to do that.

3. The white noise of the 8 fans and humidifiers is blissful. When my kids are whining at me I just point to my ears, shake my head to indicate I can’t hear them, and then stare blankly at them until they give up. I also can no longer hear the youtube video Parker has been watching over and over of the kids playing “Skylander Giants.” They shriek and cackle and he giggles and I want to pull my hair out. I told him a couple days ago that I don’t want to hear some kid that isn’t even mine screaming in my house. The sound of his voice makes my head hurt. Why do kids watch videos of other people playing video games? To me, this is worse than sitting around playing video games.

 “WHAT??? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!”

4. They ripped up the molding in my kitchen that was nicked and in need of repainting. I can check that project off my summer to-do list.

5. I don’t know if this counts as a “good thing,” but it was pretty funny. Last night at about 9pm and the Servpro guys were setting up their fans and laying paper down, I saw Parker sneaking around the corner with a giant loaded nerf gun in each hand. I said, “You can’t shoot them. They’re working.” He got a mischievous look on his face and crept closer. “Parker. You can’t shoot the guys. Take the guns upstairs.” He gave a look of disappointment, then went off in search of his brother to unload his ammo on.

6. A non-functioning kitchen means no cooking.

7. This isn’t MY idea of a good thing, but my husband is thrilled that the damage to the laundry room necessitates me washing the dirty clothes that got soaked to get them out of the way. *editor’s note- The Servpro guy just asked me if I wanted him to take the wet laundry to the shop and have them wash and dry the clothes. I almost fell over. “You do that?!?” He said, “Not me personally, but back at the shop they do.” I responded, “Well I certainly wouldn’t fight you washing my clothes.”

8. So much electrical equipment plugged in means limiting electronic use in this house. Nothing to do inside means heading outside with no guilt. This afternoon I will be sitting by the pool.

9.  The necessity to move the fridge revealed things that haven’t been seen in a while. My husband yelled, “Hey Parker! I found some fruit leather behind the fridge! Come eat it!” I looked at it. “That’s not fruit leather.”

He said, “Are you sure?”

I gagged a little and flipped it over. “Yes. I’m sure.”

 Yes. That expiration date is September. Of 2011.

10. New floors, baby! Those dirty basketball-court looking ugly wood floors will soon be refinished with a lovely dark sheen. All for the bargain price of our $1000 deductible. If you’re gonna have a disaster, there are worse things to have happen than to end up with pretty newly refinished floors.

I’m sure in a week or so I will be very annoyed with the chaos. I already had to cancel the housecleaners for this week. (but at least that means no pre-housecleaning hysteria.) In the meantime, I am counting my blessings.