I've always known I hated Mondays,

I just never knew Mondays hated me back.

The MS flareup is still ongoing, making it very difficult for me to do anything much more than type with my left hand (and at that, I'm wishing I didn't need to capitalize any of the letters I type with my right hand). I still managed to get the bathroom cleaned and the laundry done yesterday, at which time every thing in the house was normal.

I knew today and tomorrow were going to be absolutely crazy at work, because Mom has a big trial coming up on Wednesday and so there'd be a lot of copying, collating, etc. for me. I was already half-dreading the day as I showered, got dressed and packed my lunch, but that was nothing compared to the fact that when I went to put Piggie Pie in the basement there was standing water at the bottom of the steps. I left her down there, went in to work, went through the mail from Friday and Saturday and called both of Mom's afternoon appointments to cancel. I also made all the copies of the finally balanced accounting from last week and got them ready for Mom to take to court and checked the voice mail. By the time Mom got there at 9:15, I had the decks cleared enough so that I could come home and call my insurance agent.

Of course, said agent isn't sure whether the damage is covered, but he gave me the name and number of a cleanup guy and started the claim process. Michael, the cleanup guy, was booked solid today and is hopefully going to come out early tomorrow, because I made a point of telling his office that I had to be at work to do trial prep.

Please note that at no point in this process did I call my father. Dad is pretty much out of the home repair business after almost killing himself with work on his own house last summer, and right now, I can't manage cleaning up the basement, even if he had brought me a mop and bucket. I couldn't even do my usual trick of putting towels down and then taking them to the washing machine in a basket--there's just too much water!

I did put on my boots and go down and check, and the water appears to be coming in the west wall, and it's pretty much all gone towards the south (front) and east walls, which means that it is away from the furnace, water heater, washer and dryer (good) but far away from the sump pump (bad). At some point while I was exploring and evaluating, Mom called Dad.

Dad called me, told me he couldn't do anything but said he'd come over after dinner with his mop and bucket. I have not told Dad about the flareup, because he's going through enough medical crap on his own, so I didn't tell him that wouldn't work, just said that my insurance guy wanted me to have the pro clean it up. Dad then yelled at me for not keeping better track of the one piece of paper we have regarding the alleged basement waterproofing done two decades ago. I declined to get into that with him, because while I believe that Mom has said piece of paper, I also know that I could have stuck it "someplace safe" and I'm tired of hearing about it from him.

Mom called about 6:30 and said she'd found it, and gave me the name of the company plus the phone numbers from the sheet of paper. Dad said he'd looked them up online and they had a good rating both with Angie's List and the BBB, but he couldn't give me the url because he used Google and just went straight to the site. I used Google too, but got several different companies in different states with the same name. I finally found it and wrote down the number. The last thing Dad said to me was, "Don't make an appointment for tomorrow." I said I had to, because I can't leave Little Miss in a wet basement. His response was, "Your mother needs you more than your dog does."

I hung up on him. I am SO sick and tired of him being a crabby ass bastard that if he were here, I'd hit him with his own damn mop.

*breathe breathe breathe*

I did reach three different guys at the waterproofing company, and someone will be at my house between 8:30 and 9:00 tomorrow morning to take a look. I tried to call Mom to tell her, but the phone's busy, and since they have call waiting, I think maybe crabby ass bastard took the phone off the hook. Fine, I'll call in the morning and wake his crabby ass up.