Well, I don't want to say that I flooded the basement. Anyway, since I wasn't going to the Fleet Foxes concert, I figure I should do a load of laundry. What I didn't notice -- and I guess I should have -- is that for some dumb reason, one of my parents moved the drainpipe. I've blog posted about this before: Other families have their washing machine drainpipe shoved into their standpipe which takes the dirty laundry water out of the house. We don't, and I think we're one of the few who just hangs our drainpipe in our sink. Well, either Father or Mother was doing something in the laundry room sink and thought that drainpipe was in the way, so he or she tucked it behind the faucet and didn't aim it back into the sink once he or she was done. I should have noticed this because whoever was doing work in the sink left some things in the sink, stuff I thought needed to be moved so that the drainpipe had room to spray into the sink ... even though I didn't check to see if the goddamn drainpipe was aimed into the sink.
Yes, I should have checked, but it didn't have to be moved in the first fucking place!
OK, got that off of my chest. I had a large-enough load to set the wash cycle for 90 minutes. I checked the washer at Halftime of El Trafico, which I seeing on Apple TV+ on my phone. Thank Buddha I did; I stepped into the pantry, which is on the way to the laundry room, and then I put my foot down and splashed water, and that freaked the shit outta me. The drainpipe was aimed out the door of the laundry room. But there was enough water that there was standing water on the floor of the laundry room and the pantry. I thought that somehow the sink was so clogged that the water came over its walls. That's when I noticed the fucking drainpipe shooting out where it wasn't supposed to be.
So fuck watching the rest of that soccer Match, and to hell with listening to "4th of July" before the end of the 4th of July. I had major water clean-up to do. I had some Shamwows I thought I left in the laundry room, but I couldn't find them. They would have helped a lot, but apparently I put them in storage. So I need a mop. The mop is supposed to be in the laundry room, but I couldn't find that, either. But there was a tiny mop I saw, and I had to use this inadequate, shrimpy thing instead.
The next big concern besides trying to mop up the standing water is moving the stuff on the floor of the pantry. I hadn't really noticed until last night that there is a lot of stuff everywhere, including the pantry. And unfortunately, most of the things on the floor are boxes, and so the water ruined them. So I had to get to moving those and hopefully saving whatever the hell's in them. But I saw stuff on top of these boxes, namely shoeboxes -- piles and piles and piles of shoeboxes. These belong to Mother, but I damn sure know she doesn't use them. Why in the hell does she have so many?
That small mop wasn't working, so I relied on this childish trick to get Father's attention without actually going over to ask for his help. I just started moving the shoeboxes over to a dry area in the basement really, really loudly. He finally got up from the computer room, where he was, to ask me why I was making such a commotion. That's when he saw the piles of shoes in the exercise room and that is when I asked where the hell the mop is.
I suspect Father was the one who moved the drainpipe and didn't put it back. I am still in a stage where I reflexively blame my parents whenever I can prove they have done something wrong. That is in reaction to all the times I was a kid and they yelled at me for doing something wrong, and not wrong. But I have to give him credit. He helped with finding the mop and then mopping the whole pantry floor. And he said he would put everything back where it was once everything was dried up.
That's real cool, seeing as I have work in the morning. But he may be, in fact, too chill. For example, there are a lot of bottles that we put underneath the sink, and the dirty water got down there, too. One of them put paper bags underneath the bottles because some of them contain cooking oil (don't ask). Those got super wet, so I figured I would replace them. But I was going to wait until I finished drying my laundry to do that. Well, I met Father when I went upstairs to wait, and by the time I went downstairs to get my clothes, he had already put these wet bags in another bag, but they were so waterlogged that they were leaking through that paper bag and onto the tile floor. I think he knew that was going to happen but didn't care, he was just going to clean that all up in the morning. I happened to sweat my way through mopping, and so I was going to take a shower I didn't plan on taking, so I figured I would take those bags out to the recycling bin and clean up the dirty water with the, well, Shamwow that, turns out, was in the laundry room. I didn't look hard enough. That's further proof that I maybe should have looked to see where the drainpipe was before I started the wash, and therefore I might need to take some responsibility for all this.
Look, I think I have done all I can do. I wonder if I moved the stuff back under the sink too quickly. I wonder if we should mop that area with clean water before putting everything back. What I'm really worried about is how much water damage there is in the pantry. Water might have seeped beneath the floorboards and into the walls. There is no standing water, however, and the humidity is going to come down a lot the next couple days, thank God, plus Father says he's going to mind it, so I hope there is nothing lasting. All in all, could be worse. And, again, Father really did help out a disaster I didn't help avoid, to be diplomatic. But if I were at the concert instead of washing my clothes, this probably wouldn't have happened.
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