Basement flooding

Well, after buying and setting up a dehumidifier (which we needed anyway) and a large metal turbo floor fan that could rival a small monsoon in our basement, it turns out that we had mold already growing in the rec room carpeting. Poor David had even borrowed our neighbor Nancy's ShopVac and had spent long arduous hours sucking up water from the floors, to no avail.

Fortunately, nothing we really cared about was damaged or lost. We lost several cardboard boxes that had been sitting unopened in a pyramid-like mountain in the unfinished area by the laundry machines since we moved back in 2005, so it's probably safe to say we don't really need them anyway. Eventually (soon, so we don't exacerbate the mold problem) we will go through them to see if there's anything worth salvaging.

So because we had mold, all of the carpeting had to be ripped out and disposed of and the floors disinfected. We had to keep the kitties out on the sun porch because we don't have a door leading to the basement stairs. Poor bunnies. They were really traumatized. They were yowling and scratching, and, I think, peeing, which they never do in our house (thank god). It really reeks of cat pee out there now. I'll have to go out there with a spray bottle of bleach.

The restoration guys (David said there were 5 of them that descended on the basement at once; I was playing a matinee concert, so I had a welcome escape from it all) came and ripped everything out, disinfected all of the floors, and brought and left their own dehumidifiers and turbo floor fans. So now we have absolutely no carpeting downstairs, which is weird. The floors underneath what was very nice berber-style wall-to-wall carpeting are cement with dark green paint over it. Not horrible, but definitely not something we can live with if we want to maintain that very large surface area as livable space.

So now we're investigating flooring replacement options that will be much more mold/water resistant than the carpeting was (the padding underneath it was functioning as a mildew hotel, ick) while still looking nice/like a family room atmosphere. Any suggestions?

Oh, and fortunately for us, since we had an additional flood policy added to it (we're less than half a mile from the Milwaukee River), our homeowner's insurance has our wet butts covered. Phew!!! Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there, indeed! :)

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto...

Holy sewage flooding, Batman!

Wisconsin was a hotbed of storms yesterday, with seven counties statewide reporting tornado sightings. Milwaukee county (ours) wasn't one of them, but we got an unprecedented deluge of rain.

In fact, we got so much rain that the municipal sewage system of Milwaukee couldn't keep up with it. We have two sump pumps in our basement but the well was still overflowing. I came home after last night's concert to find poor David running back and forth with a bucket, bailing from the well to the laundry sink. I helped him with a wastebasket for a while but then started running around trying to pick things up off the floor that we wanted to save. Our downstairs office and rec room both had sopping wet carpeting, so we were digging papers out of file drawers and picking up cardboard boxes. At the worst point we had about 4 inches of standing water in the lower parts of the non-carpeted half of our basement where the laundry and storage is. We had lots of storage boxes get wet, but we haven't opened them since we moved here in 2005 so we probably don't really need them anyway.

The front page of today's paper said: "In Milwaukee, two south side buildings collapsed, rescue workers snatched people from cars stalled in streets turned to rivers, while pressure caused by storm waters gushing through city sewers flipped 200-pound manhole covers like pennies. At one point, water poured into the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District's deep tunnel system at a rate equivalent to 10 billion gallons per day..."

I called two different plumbers' emergency numbers, and they both said that there wasn't anything they could do since everyone in the area had this problem, and many had it far worse than we did since we have two sump pumps helping us out. I ran outside to check the downspouts to make sure nothing was backed up and also checked the outflow pipe for the sump pumps and the water coming out of the 3" diameter pipe was moving at a very high rate of both pressure and speed.

It certainly does give one perspective on the horrors that Katrina victims went through. This is peanuts, obviously, to that.

So now I have to go downstairs and do a huge load of sewer-water soaked towels. I think I'll run them through the rinse and spin cycle twice before I even start the wash....eeeeeew....

Rites of Spring

Well, it's official - spring is finally here!

At least for a few days, anyway, here in good ol' Wisconsin.

This past week was a doozie for me. I finished organizing, data-entering and spreadsheeting all of our tax information to get to our accountant by Tuesday. UGH. Then I went back to work officially full time after being on maternity leave, and it was a 9 service week. (A service, in orchestra parlance, is any unit of 2.5 hours, such as a rehearsal or performance; a normal week is 8 services. For those of you who are doing the math and thinking, "that's nothing!": factor in at least 10 hours of practicing and score/recording studying, as well as the physical and mental exertion of high mastery performance, and it's a long week.)

And the repertoire last week was awesome. We did Beethoven's 6th Symphony, the Pastoral - think shepherds in their fields, bunnies hopping, birdies tweeting. It's a total Disney movie. Oh wait! It was! In the original Fantasia, it was the one in the meadows where the goats (I think?) were hopping around? And then we did Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", which was awesome. And it was also in Fantasia, I believe! Wasn't it used for the dinosaur bit? Anyway, it was amazing. The Rite of Spring is probably my favorite piece of all time. It is so intense, difficult, and pulsing with energy and rhythm. I adored listening to Ted Soluri play the opening bassoon solos - they sounded so effortless and sweet. All three concerts were well attended, and we got standing ovations after every performance.

It was an appropriately timed concert, with its spring theme. We've had two consecutive sunny days in the 60's now, here in the upper midwest, and after the abominable winter we've had, they seem even more precious! We have three crocuses in bloom in our front flower bed, and shoots of tulips and daffodils are poking their way through the thawing soil. I went to a Buddhist meditation seminar at my church yesterday so couldn't get out for much of it, but today David and I took a walk with Benny in his stroller. It was so nice. I have the windows open here at the house and the cats are excitedly sitting on the sills, sniffing the air enthusiastically.