In which our heroine saves the basement

I have moved to a desert-like climate. The air is so dry that my lips are chapped and my fingers have broken out into a bouquet of hangnails.

We are not supposed to have serious downpours that last multiple hours and dump high quantities of rain. We aren't. It just doesn't happen. These are the words I have been telling myself all week while moving. This is because when we finished a couple of rooms in the basement, we had to cut larger windows. And while the new windows look really great...


...the window wells were not actually finished before the main contractor went AWOL.


I have been living in some fear that the sky would open up and wash that wall of mud into the basement.

Hence my fear yesterday evening during a brief thundershower. I checked on the window wells afterwords, and found them damp, but fine. They were sufficiently deep that the rain was nowhere near the window levels.

Around 10:00 last night, it started raining harder. I checked on the wells again, and found that the level of water had risen. Moreover, it was flowing in rapidly. After checking again, I realized that the window wells were exactly under the sections of roof without gutters. Consequently, all the water from two large sections of the roof was running straight into the window wells! I hurriedly rounded up all the buckets I could find, including garbage cans and a wrapping paper storage container, dumped their contents on the living room floor, and positioned them in the mud of the window wells under the roof run off.

Before going to bed around midnight, I checked on the buckets again. They were nearly full. I emptied them all and put them back, and decided I'd better set my alarm for 2am to check them again.

At 2am, I awoke to find the buckets full and running over, and the level of water in the window wells approaching the base of the windows. Moreover, the walls around one of the wells had begun caving in, which had knocked over a couple of the buckets. I emptied and bailed for a half hour, then attempted to construct a rain guard out of cardboard and plastic paint covers.... By 4:30am it seemed to be working. I went to bed and set my alarm for 6am.

At 6am, the rain was lighter. The buckets were only about 1/3 full. The cardboard system was holding up. I emptied and did some cleaning and went to bed again around 8am. I dreamed about mud sliding in all the windows of the house.

I awoke to a loud drumming sound. The sky had opened. I ran down to check on the windows, and found the wells filling rapidly. The cardboard cover was bent under the weight of the rain off the roof, threatening to crash and dump gallons of mud and dirt into the window well. I fought it off the best I could, solo. The other well was full of water to its highest point yet.

Things were looking grim for our heroine. Little sleep, much mud, and two window wells. I will not repeat here some of the things she said while bailing water solo. Let us just say it is good she had been living in the rain of England, and had appropriate clothing for hauling mud through a downpour.

Eventually, the bailing overtook the inflow of water. Eventually, the rain lightened up, then stopped. Eventually, the sun even came out. Eventually, I lined the buckets up in the back yard and hosed them down. I called a gutter guy, got an estimate, and told him to schedule my house for the first slot he has available. I even packed the wrapping paper back into its box and found a home for it under my bed. When Tim arrives later this week, he will find it neat and clean.

The theme song of the night's events: "A little fall of rain" from the sound track to Les Miserables.

The moral: Nothing in the whole entire world can compare to home ownership.