So, I should be at work. But I’m not. I’m sitting at the table in the front room of my house just praying the ceiling in the back rooms doesn’t collapse on the nice mahogany living room furniture and table that my husband and I just purchased from Pottery Barn. The table is covered with boxes and items from our hall closet. Blue tupperwares are filled with Christmas decorations that weren’t ready to come down.
The most ironic thing I’ve seen so far this morning is the white truck, probably filled with Andrews Family housing inspectors, trying to drive by our house on the street. Their tires skidded, and the truck fishtailed. Ha hah.
So here’s the story of why I am home. Last night, on the way to the gym, I was standing in our walk-in closet and heard a funny sound. I called my husband upstairs, and we were pretty sure the sound wasn’t coming from our house. We started listening to the common wall, and it was along the entire wall. We turned off our heat and the laundry that was being washed to make sure we weren’t hearing some sort of sounds from that.
I opened the door to the crawl space/storage area under our steps, and there was water on the floor. I felt along the living room carpet by our Christmas tree, and it was wet too. Mark ran outside, and the rush of water from next door can audibly be heard from inside our house. He called emergency maitenance. Water rushed out of the front door and into the driveway, seeping under the divider and into our driveway, as well. The sound was much louder than water seeping out of a hose.
We rushed quickly to move all of our new furniture away from the wet carpet and wall. Then we started emptying our interior storage area. More than thirty minutes had passed, and we still had heard nothing from emergency maintenance. Mark was ready to kick the door down next door and turn off the water himself.
He had noticed that the house at the end of our cul-de-sac had a maintenance van outside of it. He abandoned protocol and went and told the guy working what was going on. The guy came over and said it was the worst he had seen yet. Twelve other houses were dealing with the same thing. The house he was working on had the ceiling collapse inside, even.
After three hours of cleaning up water, taking down Christmas decorations, and praising the dogs for being so good, our house was stable, and the maintenance workers left to work on other homes that were being destroyed.
When I went upstairs to go to bed, I realized that the floor had shifted. The entire back side of the house is tilting toward the back. There are new bumps under our carpet, and a huge crack is in our master bedroom ceiling.
So what have we learned? In an effort to save a few bucks, Andrews Family Housing didn’t turn the heat on in vacant homes, despite the below freezing temperatures. This wouldn’t be a problem if they had turn the water off, but it didn’t.
So now, I sit here waiting for 11-12 p.m. to get here so that the cleanup crews can look at my house. We called a good friend who is a major, and she’s making sure the base commander knows what is going on. Mark drove through the neighborhood on his way to run a few errands, and we’ve learned that numerous homes that were vacant on both sides have also had pipes freeze and burst. So, the real number of homes that are messed up is greater than 12. I just saw a maintenance van drive by, but no one has yet come in to help us. And I’m hoping, while it will be a huge pain, that I get moved today so that I don’t have to fear the unstable ceiling/floor upstairs crashing in on my head and destroying all of my belongings.
Oh, what an awesome day. When I talked to my boss this morning, she was worried that if Mark gets transferred back here that I won’t want to work at Seton again because I’ll associate it with all of these horrible things that have happened in my life. During this academic year, I’ve had two miscarriages (one ectopic), learned that my husband is going to be in Iraq for a year with a four-month spin up of constant TDYs, had my dad die, and had my house flooded. Awesome. I told her that I am just surprised that Seton is letting me continue to work there with the number of days I have missed already this year and then ones I am schedule to miss.
So I keep my fingers crossed today. I pray that we get keys to a new place and Andrews Family Housing doesn’t fight us on moving. I pray the female parts of my body returns to normal, even though the last month and half has been non-stop stress. I pray my dogs don’t run away. Even though I don’t want him to go, I pray Mark is able to go to his training next week so my flights and our plans for the spring don’t get altered. And I pray that our awesome friends and military family will help us move and that it will just take a bribe of beer and pizza to make that happen.
