What a strange title for a post, right?
Well.......it all started like this........I'm a teacher, right? Well, I was teaching one of my third grade classes when I heard over the loudspeaker of the whole school: "EmahS to the office" (of course they don't call me EmahS and they don't speak in English, but you get the point).
I ran to the class nextdoor and got the teacher to cover for me as I ran to the office in a panic. I had forgotten my cell phone at home and was worried that there was something wrong with my little guy at his preschool. On the way into the office I saw the assistant from my older son's class standing there and I freaked that something happened to him. But thank g-d they were both fine, and it was an emergency call for me from a neighbor.
We have this little lady who lives upstairs. I think she's like 90 years old or something, but she remembered when I told her that I work at the local school. She apparently heard water outside of her window and when she looked down onto our patio, she saw that it was GUSHING like a fire hydrant. She called to tell me that she thought we had a flood in our house. I ran home immediately to a complete nightmare.
Before I even got to the front door, I was sloshing in about an inch of water. As I opened the door, afraid that the fish tank had broken somehow, I realized it was much worse. Water was GUSHING out of one of the walls, and was filling the house. It was a good 2 inches high in places, and was flowing down the stairs. It took me a while to get a hold of my hubby, he was in some important meeting or something, so I also called some friends who live 2 buildings over and luckily they were home. They came immediately and helped me with damage control. We called the city when we realized that even though we turned off all of the water to the whole building, and it still wasn't stopping.
LONG STORY SHORT.........a pipe underneath the ground at the street/sidewalk/parking space area burst, the water gushed through the appropriate drain pipes to the patio, but also took a detour into our home through the wall that backs to the mountain essentially.
We pushed water out for a good 4 or 5 hours, then for another 4 or 5 hours, we dried, swept, and then mopped to clean. not cool at all, we're exhausted, but at least now our floors are clean, and honestly, the damage wasn't too grave. We're just worried that something like this COULD happen again, scary.
One good thing in this.........we were really warmed by friends. The couple I mentioned helped for hours, and even offered to take the kids, to have them or us sleep over, etc. etc. But we were ok and decided not to take them up on that. Then, hubby ran into the husband this morning at the hardware store and he invited us to dinner tonight. Such good people. Another friend, another teacher who works with me, brought over lunch for hubby and I during it all yesterday, and offered her hubby to help if we need assistance with anything. And yet another friend offered to come and help clean, fold laundry, etc. Good good people.
Anyway............my sitting break is over and I need to go put groceries away, hang more towels to dry from the wash, put more in the wash, and so on and so forth. All in a week's work, right? ugh.
Shabbat Shalom!
