Just when you think your week can't get much worse...

...you are magnificently proven wrong!

Yesterday morning DH came home from Hawaii and I'm not sure who was more excited to see him--Maren, me or the dog. LOL Maren woke up at 5:50 a.m. (after fighting me until 10:45 p.m. the previous night to go to bed) and was exhausted by noon. DH was able to get her to go down for a nap and he went to take a nap too, as he'd flown through the night without much sleep. I left at about 1:30 while everyone was still asleep to go run errands and get my hair done.

DH called my cell phone while I was having my hair cut. I could tell he had that note in his voice; the one that says something isn't right, but he didn't say what it was and just asked that I call him as soon as I got finished. I called as I was walking out to the car (by this time it was nearly 6:00 p.m.) and he informed me that our basement had flooded! It seems someone (probably culprit: a little 2-year-old someone) turned on the faucet in the laundry sink downstairs and it ran for probably a good 3 or more hours before DH opened the basement door and discovered the mess.

As you might imagine, I cried all the way home from the hairdresser. Our basement is about 1000 square feet but it is a huge, unorganized mess. We've been meaning to get down there and reorganize for a while now but I'm afraid it just hasn't been a huge priority. DH has a $4000 big screen TV and an Xbox 360 down there, as well as a lot of inventory for his business, all of my holiday decorations, and our washer & dryer and food storage, in addition to all kinds of normal basement junk. All I could imagine was all of this floating in about a foot of water.

Thankfully, when I got home it wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined. The laundry room has vinyl flooring and DH had been working hard with our steam vac to suck up all the water, so it was mostly dry. Only a small part of the larger carpeted area got wet--really only a few square feet at the base of the stairs, a huge relief. The room that got the worst of the water damage backs to the laundry room and is the only unfinished part of the basement, which we use for storage. There's no flooring, only the plywood subfloor atop which the previous owners (who also used it for storage) laid down old pieces of carpet and carpet padding. The water soaked more than half the floor, so that meant that we had to take almost everything out of that room and find a place for it in the rest of the basement so we could pull up the soggy carpet & pad and get the plywood dried out. Well, we had been meaning to reorganize that room--nothing like a watery kick in the pants to get us motivated, huh?

We are lucky that most of the things in the storage room were in plastic tubs already, so there wasn't much damage to our belongings. So far the only real casualty looks to be a couple of dozen vintage glass ball ornaments that were on the bottom of a box that was right next to the wall to the laundry room. PSA: vintage colored glass ball ornaments and water do not mix! The colored film comes right off the glass ball when it gets wet. I set them out to dry last night so I think they'll survive, albeit with a much more wrinkly texture than they had before! The box for my beloved aluminum Christmas tree also got wet as did the box for its rotating spotlight, but I think both will be okay once they're dry.

We cleared everything out of the storage room last night and threw the sodden padding & carpet out the basement window, so this morning we'll go out and hang it all over the balcony. Good thing we have a couple of sunny, warm days forecast! LOL We borrowed some box fans from a neighbor and ran them all night. I just went and checked and the plywood floor is still pretty wet, so I'm guessing it will be at least another 24 hours before things are dry. We bought some shelving units to put together and once the floor is dry we can spend a few evenings this week getting everything all reorganized and put back in there neatly, a task we desperately needed to do anyway. And really, things could have been much, much worse--none of the electronics got wet, the carpet is dry, I'm not freaked out about mold growing, the food storage was off the ground on a storage shelf, and the washer and dryer are fine. However, this week as a whole still ranks right up there on the ol' Crappiest Weeks top ten list.

One thing that wasn't crappy about this week? The cute little consignment store I found in Boulder where I found these vintage felt pennants! They were marked down to $5 each and there was a huge stack, so I went through and picked those most meaningful to me. The Utah & SLC pennants are for my guest room with all the vintage travel memorabilia. The space pennant is for the future. If I ever have a little boy, I want to decorate his bedroom in vintage space and robot stuff, and I already have a small collection of treasures to get me started. Now all I need is a son! LOL At the same store I also bought an adorable vintage-style glittered papier mache candy bucket shaped like a black cat. I have considered gifting it but I love it so much that I'm not sure I'm going to be able to part with it. He was only $3, which I thought was a steal!

I am so, so glad that this week is nearly over! I've had enough--Check, please. Today I doubt we'll do much with the basement as it's still too wet. I have a wreath-making project that I'm going to attempt, and maybe if I can go get dressed I can go find a few yardsales; not too many more weeks before the season is over! Hope you all have a happy (and dry!) Saturday!