When it rains, it pours....Then it floods my basement !!

OOOOooohhhh Man.


I’ll tell ya. There’s nothing like cleaning up a decade old “hoarder’s” mess that gets flooded in rain water, knee deep, for re-aligning one’s priorities.

The last 4 day down pour, flooded my basement damaging my hot water heaters and my furnace. Now I’m under the impression that I’ve got a break line between my home and the sewer!



Anyway..



I had to put on garbage bags over my pant legs and rubber band them up to the top of my thighs. Then I waded into God-knows-what’s-in-that-water to position a sump pump to drain it all out into the street. I felt like Mike Rowe from “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel.

Once I had all the water drained out of my basement, I called 1-800-GOT-JUNK to deal with all the soaking wet “crap” left over from an old “hoarder” tenant who skipped out on me years ago when I took her to court for 6 months back rent.

Honestly I should have dealt with all that stuff when she first left, but I just couldn’t do it.

There were old clothes everywhere. There were half full bottles of soda and water everywhere. There were old lottery tickets everywhere. Dog and cat food cans, used and unused, everywhere. Underneath all that, a totally wrecked floor from her dog scratching it all up. I ignored it and put it off until I finally I went down there with a flashlight to find boxes of her crap literally floating on knee deep water.

The “GOT JUNK” people I had to call twice because the first team they sent out over quoted me to get out of doing the work! They told me it would take 2 full trucks to haul that stuff out of here. I knew that it was only half that amount of stuff! (they charge purely on volume.) So I let them go. I called them again thinking I’d get a different crew. Sure enough a different crew came and quoted me what I expected. That was all well and good but I knew that if I wanted them to deal with that stuff properly, I had to work right along side them, so I did just that, dry heaving every once in a while as I did.

While I was dealing with the junk, I had my plumber install a hot water heater. I was really looking forward to a nice hot shower.

After the “JUNK” guys and the plumber left I went to feed my brother’s cats ‘cause he was away at the Poconos.

After that, I went to feed my upstairs tenant’s cats because they were away for a week for their anniversary. ( and thank God too! It would have sucked to have them breathing down my neck for heat and hot water while all this was goin’ down.) While I was up there I checked the hot water. All was right again. They had hot water!

Now for a well deserved hot shower!!!! I get naked. Turn on the water. I wait for the water to heat up….. and wait…. And wait. Hmmm. So that’s what that other water heater was for! Jeez.

So again today, I have my plumber over to fix another water heater.

Then after that, I have to have my furnace fixed and I have to have the Jersey City Sewer Authority look at my sewer lines so they can tell me what my problem is.

It’s strange. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, I actually feel more motivated. The real trick, I guess is to be more proactive about things instead of reactive. Whatever.