A Fine Mess

Following a night of raging thunderstorms last weekend, we woke Saturday morning to find our grandkids Jack and Autumn sitting quietly watching TV. They casually mentioned, as though we may or may not be interested, that the bedroom carpet downstairs was wet and squishy. (I surmise that they thought twice about waking us early on a Saturday.) Curt rushed down and found the cat’s litter box floating in the utility room where the sump pump is; the water had also seeped under the walls into the bathroom and both bedrooms and closets. The insurance company puzzled with us as to why the sump wasn’t running even though the electricity stayed on.

Ho, hum. This was a recurrence of the same scenario from three years ago. No explanation then either, but the faithful insurance company came to the rescue. That time, instead of recarpeting the whole “lower level” (the term we pretentiously prefer to “basement”), we wisely upgraded to ceramic tile in all but the two bedrooms.

In yet another incident last fall, a hose burst in the first-floor laundry room, flooding the kitchen and the newly installed hardwood floor of the living and dining rooms. Of course, water being water, it trickled and streamed its way down the ductwork and through floors into, you guessed it, the “lower level.” The insurance company came through again, and we even ended up with some spiffy new upgraded trimwork.

This third time, it’s just a matter of moving stuff around, drying it all out and re-laying the same carpet—an inconvenient mess. Our friends Paul and Nancy had been using the Welsh B&B while their own grown kids took over their house, so we were forced to downgrade their accommodations to an air bed in the upstairs TV room.

Well, fine. If we’re to learn from experience, there’s got to be a lesson in here somewhere. Might we be a bit “incident-prone”? Should I apply for a job in the PR department of Nationwide Insurance? Should we allow the "lower level" to revert to a "basement"? I think I may be missing something here.