Alarums and excursions, the final chapter (I hope!)

Previously, on Curmudgeonette:

Our heroine's garage flooded and she went to work anyway.

Jammies took a day off to clean up the garage and it flooded again.

Then the basement flooded!

Jammies took another vacation day.

We join the story with our heroine discovering that her sump pump wasn't pumping, which was the cause of the flooded basement!



After checking the breaker, which was tripped and which tripped again after I reset it, I put every rag in the house on the puddles in the basement floor and called Dad back to tell him he was right, the pump was off.  When I asked who he thought I should call, he told me he'd be over with a spare pump and the shop vac, and did I have a garden hose.  He also told me to cycle the heating and the air-conditioning to de-humidify the house and explained how.

While I waited for Dad, I cleaned up the garage, listening to the rain and keeping an eye on the driveway drain.  The scrap metal guy came and took a bunch of crap I'd been saving for a friend who no longer maintains his license.

Dad arrived at 1:00 with a shop vac*, a blower fan, and a big-ass floor air conditioner/humidifier.  When we got everything down to the basement, he asked if I wanted to do something about lunch.  I offered to order pizzas and did so from a place down the big hill from my house.  Dad went back down to the basement and I went back out to the garage**, and we did our respective work for about 40 minutes until my phone rang.  It was the idiot pizza driver, who claimed that my address wasn't on his GPS, and could I give him directions from Portage Path in Akron to Portage Trail in Cuyahoga Falls.

That was an intensely frustrating conversation, because he had a very thick accent and didn't understand any of the landmarks I tried to give him.  I even called the store and told the guy who'd taken my order about the problem and gave him direction.  One hour and ten minutes after I placed the order, I called the store and cancelled it, and the manager said the driver was near the store, so he'd have the driver come in and the manager would bring the pizza to my house.  I told him that it would be cold by now, and to just cancel the order, to which he replied that he wanted me to be a happy customer.

Yeah, the ship has sailed on that one, sorry.  >*click*<

So Dad made an Arby's run and we had a nice lunch and talked about things other than home repair.  After that, I called the library and extended my hold on five books with no problem, which was a nice change of customer service from PizzaBogo, and then went back to work.

Dad left around seven, having shown me the ins and outs of the garden hose going from the sump through the basement to the yard and the AC/humidifier.  He also got the old sump pump out, and the oil from it smelled so vile it nearly made me vomit.  Turns out the motor casing was cracked, although how Dad could tell from what looked like a giant lump of rust, I have no idea.  Dad was almost blocked into my driveway by someone taking the remains of the chair I heaved out of the basement.  I took a thorough shower with lots of scrubbing, ate something, checked in on G+ and went to bed.

Today's agenda includes getting the remaining puddles in the basement vacuumed up, re-arranging the newly cleaned garage so I can get my car in, picking up library books and laundry, laundry, laundry and laundry.

*Dad hadn't used the shop vac in so long that a very industrious mouse had gathered every scrap of cat fur in his garage (from a cat that died in 2001) and built a nest in the hose.

**The garage got first blood when I put a long shallow cut along my right thumb trying to deal with a filing cabinet that had fallen apart.  As of 9:20 a.m. I am still waiting for the city to come pick up the trash.