Not the drinking kind :)

Imagine the mental picture that would form in your mind as you're driving down the road, your day planned...it's going to be a fun one! You've had a great music rehearsal, now headed to football practice, perhaps fit in some book store shopping, meet up with your sister-in-law and then head out for an evening of fun with some friends...you get a phone call, it's Mom. Probably wanting an update on how the afternoon is progressing, how sweet of her to check on us...no wait...something is wrong. The distress in her voice the panic to get a hold of us, this is not good. I hear Katherine saying, "OK Mom, we'll head home right now". No wait I say, we can't go home. The boys have practice, we have tickets for tonight, what's going on? Katherine hangs up the phone. (Now back to the mental picture thing)...an enormous part of the lower level of our house is flooded. Oh not your usual flooding due to rain/refreshing water fight type clean up. Are you kidding? The septic...you've got it...water from you know where...not a good thing! We headed straight away to pick up the guys from football. Anthony was able to stay at practice due to the generous offer of Zack Clark to come with us and help (I still don't think he was in his right mind when he spouted off the idea of lending us a hand). All the way home we imagined what awaited us...what would this water look like? Just laugh I told myself, you have too or the scare of the possibilities will get the better of you. I actually went kind of over the speed limit to get home...remember we purchased tickets for our night on the town...non-refundable. Got home in pretty good time...man was it wet...everywhere. The actual water didn't look bad but the thought of where it came from and what its operating function had been was killing me! Here's how our whirl of activity went for the next hour and a half... don our armor (change into clothes that definitely didn't matter and gloves...thanks guys for stealing them all, (the sandwich bags were a delightful substitute), sop up water with towels, ring towels out, reapply the wet towels to the puddles, move everything out that touched the water (this included toys, chairs, plants etc.), sterilize everything, wash all the floors, disinfect door handles from our touching them to go in and out. We were practically rolling on the floor as we discarded of 5 pound rolls of toilet paper, chucked bags of potatoes in the field (that had been soiled by you know what), the accidental splash of bleach water on clothes, the smell that followed Dad's digging a hole to the septic system, the thought of drying out our waterlogged wrapping paper and using it in spite of of it's smelly "history"...ooh gross.

Anyway, it was a joy ride! We survived and even made it back to town in time for the evening's activities! We still can't get over how generous Zack's offer was to help...what a guy...you are our hero (temporarily anyway). It could have been worse! At the least it was an interesting experience that might come in handy someday...who knows :) and...we got a clean house out of it!