2023, Family, gardening, home, Uncategorized

The Air Turned Blue

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Saturday was supposed to be a day of house cleaning and weeding, a less vigorous Saturday than the previous weekend when we exhausted ourselves with garden work.

The day started off calmly enough. We went to church to check on the garden and plant a couple of bedding plants a parishioner had left for us. We drove back home, and I noticed that there was water gushing out of the hose in the front yard. I knew that neither of us had turned on the faucet that morning, and Husband said he must have forgot to turn off the water the night before when he washed his hands. The end of the hose was right by the egress window in the smallest basement bedroom. The water had been running for 12 hours.

We have struggled with water filling up the egress window well during heavy rains, especially when the down spouts are plugged. We have replaced drywall below the window in that bedroom twice, and removed some of the carpet right below the window after it flooded. We solved the problem with the down spouts by building up dirt around the window well so water from the down spouts flowed away from the window. Husband ran downstairs and came right back up and said there was water everywhere.

There was about an inch of water on the bedroom floor, and it had spread under the walls into the furnace room and the larger adjacent bedroom. The carpet in the hallway was also soaked. We got the wet vac and started moving things out of the bedroom. We pulled up the remaining carpet in the small bedroom and removed the pad. After 90 minutes of using the wet vac the pad was still sopping wet. It is now in pieces in the garage. We were too exhausted to pull up the wet carpet in the other bedroom and hallway. We are waiting for a water damage company to send a crew out later today and they can remove that carpet and pad. Husband feels awful about this.

Our plan for next winter was to paint the basement and put in new carpet. The basement looks dreadful now. I haven’t cussed like I did Saturday for a really long time. My mother would have said that the air turned blue had she heard me. I don’t know the origin of that phrase, but it was pretty blue around here.

What are some of your favorite phrases and euphemisms? Have you ever had water damage?

I

54 thoughts on “The Air Turned Blue”

  2. Tip from a carpet lawyer…er…layer.
    Never try to save the padding. Drying out the carpet can work but don’t be in a hurry to have it put back in place.

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    1. We don’t want to save the carpet, either. It is a berber style that has been in our basement for about 25 years through foyr terriers and six cats and two children and their friends, and it is time for it to go.

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  4. nervous as a pregnant fox in a forest fire
    nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs
    slick as snot on a doorknob
    slower than a one armed paper hanger
    slower than whale shit

    i’ll bet more will come

    i had water issues at my former house where we had a water relay station that broke regularly
    all the water went into a big tank then got pumped up to sewer level and off to reclamation
    when it first happened i didn’t understand what was going on and the pump stopped and the basement filled with sewage after they i knew what i was dealing with but it was no fun

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  5. Our house two houses ago tended to admit water in the basement during heavy rains. It had a walk-out back door and some of the water would flow in there but water would also percolate up through the floor. The soil must have been mostly clay under there. More than once we had to wet vac the carpet and pad and then peel back the carpet until it dried. Usually this happened in the middle of the night.

    We tried various solutions to divert the water but the proper solution, I think, would have been a sump system. At that point we had no experience with sump pumps and no one had suggested one. Our current house is fitted with a sump pump, as are most of the homes in our neighborhood, and we have never had a water problem here.

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  6. We did get some good rain here yesterday (wish we could have sent some to Ben). Unfortunately, there are some design flaws at the Art Center where we’re on the Board, and water was gushing in the basement there. Needs re-thinking before next rain.

    I happened to think yesterday of the term “fuss budget” – think Lucy in Peanuts. My sister and I were talking about one of her friends… I am happy to say she is here now, visiting till Thursday morning, so I’ll be on the Trail sporadically at best.

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    2. I’m glad you got some rain. And I’m hoping Ben got some rain. The radar looked like there was some rain south of the Twin Cities. Unfortunately in the Twin Cities it only rained for about 2 1/2 minutes.

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      1. Yesterday in EP (before I left for Iowa) it rained slowly for about 3 hours. When I got to Faribault on 35W it poured for awhile. I was going to go to the Cantus Father’s Day concert, but before I could even look at the schedule, I got the call to drive South to be with my mother. Next year…

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  7. This is the second time we have flooded ourselves. The previous owner had water from a backyard well pumped into the house for general use. That entailed drilling a hole in the foundation to run the pipe. We have never used it, relying on city water. About 25 years ago we had a really heavy rain. We forgot that earlier in the day we had removed the downspout extention while mowing, and neglected to put it back on. The water from the downspout poured right along the foundation, and through the hole in the basement wall into the basement family room. That was when we had our current carpet installed down there.

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  8. Major league bummer, Renee. 😦 We only had a water issue once when the sump pump died. Fortunately, we caught it fairly quickly and confined the water to less than an inch in the laundry room.

    Warning to all with sump pumps in the basement: THEY DON’T LAST FOREVER. Our sump pump guy says seven years is about average if yours frequently runs (as ours does). We’re on our third in 23+ years so that’s about right for our situation. Check yours regularly, and it doesn’t hurt to have a backup just in case . . .

    Not big on using euphemisms, but I appreciate clever ones like tim’s. I tend to stick with the basic four-letter WASP cuss words.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. We’re on our third pump too, though the second one burned out when the outtake pipe jammed up with ice and the pump kept running without being able to empty out the well. I replace the pumps myself when they go.

      I have to be alert to that late in the season. I’m always conscious of the pump when it’s running and can tell when something isn’t right.

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  9. Oh, for crying in the sink!

    Wow, sorry for the water damage, Renee. That sounds awful. Right after you finished all the work over the winter too. I hope there is a good outcome for you.

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  10. My mother said the air frequently turned blue whenever my dad’s family was around. She told me one of my first words was “dammit” after hearing my father.

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  13. These are some misc. phrases that landed in our Glossary:
    About a horse apiece
    All hat and not cattle
    Blogular verbosity
    Compassion fatigue
    Ingrown narcissism
    Latent utility
    Procrasti-tasks
    Tortured Acronym Rule
    Truffle shuffle kerfuffle
    Yikes meter

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  15. Like Watching Paint Dry:

    Oh, Renee, what a mess. We had water damage in our condo after a pipe got nicked. It damaged our unit, and the two below it. This was in 2020(I think). The worst part was when the repair company moved in with the drying fans. We listened to those for 5 days.

    I am in my mother’s room in Ankeny, Iowa. I travelled earlier than expected due to mom’s breathing becoming more uneven, but now her vital signs stabilized and her breathing is intermittently uneven. I ‘ve been talking to friends on the phone and chatting with staff, but mostly this is Like Watching Paint Dry. Her heart must be very strong.

    I brought the puppy down with me to play with my brother’s dogs. They have their dog’s food out, and Phoebe is “like a kid in a candy shop,” getting to eat all she wants.

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  16. Merriam-Webster releases a a list of the most Googled words from the previous week. Back in May, ‘anecdotage’ showed up. I remembered that one since I thought it might come in handy. Here’s what they had to say about it:

    “Words Worth Knowing: ‘Anecdotage’

    Our word worth knowing this week is anecdotage, defined as “garrulous old age.” The word is a blend of anecdote (“a short story about an interesting or funny event or occurrence”) and dotage (“the time when a person is old and often less able to remember or do things”).

    The retiree generation isn’t dead yet. They have their fears, especially of falling. They have financial worries. They go to the doctor quite often. But they’re still capable of using their talents, energies and experience for the benefit of the community, in order to keep busy and to contribute to society–unlike the past, when grandparents were expected to sit home on a cushioned armchair and creak through their anecdotage.
    — Raymond Apple, The Jerusalem Post, 8 May 2023”

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  17. Older people here (even older the I am) use the phrase “run around girl” to describe a promiscuous young woman. There is no comparable phrase for similar young men.

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  18. Daughter has picked up some four letter words and just uses them in her random conversations with her self. What age is it when most kids start using swear words? None of the hard-core ones, just the H and the D, once in a while GD.

    From watching the TV show Modern Family, we’ve started using “sweet-and-sour chicken“!
    We often say ‘dumber than a boxer rocks.’

    We used to get water in our basement after a heavy rain. About 12 years ago we had our garage cement replaced and it turns out they punched rebar from the driveway into the basement block walls. Making about a 3 inch hole. So it was pretty easy for water to come in there. They didn’t do that when they poured the new driveway and that solve the problem. We’ve never had a sump pump, but we have lots of extensions on the gutters. And now the only trouble we might have is in the spring if we get a rain storm before the ground thaws or snow melting, it runs right along the foundation and comes under one wall. The spring, our new water sensor down there alerted us. I went outside and tried to divert the water while Kelly vacuum with the shop vac. I think we got about 3 gallons was all and a little bit of carpet got wet. Nothing serious.

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  19. Oh, frabjous day! There is a young man on our roof clearing all the downspouts and rain gutters, so the water shall go where it is directed instead of cascading over the sides of the gutters and into the basement!

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  20. I realized this morning that I have changed my blue air habits when I’m in the car. In my younger days, if people were being idiots around me, I could lay on the horn or flip them the bird. If the windows of the car was open. I could even yell out that someone was a moron. But in this day and age, I’ve decided it’s not all that safe.

    This morning, while driving YA to the airport, some moron decided he needed to be right up on my tail. (I was actually going a bit over the speed limit so shouldn’t have been too slow for him. ). Then of course when the emergency vehicle appeared in the rear view mirror, I started to pull to the right, and my tailgater decided that maybe he should try to go around me quickly. This didn’t work out as the emergency vehicle coming up fast. After the emergency vehicle passed by this guy did finally drive around me. As he drove by I bent all of the fingers of my left down, except for the middle one. . So the finger was extended, but not out the window, or at the driver, but just alongside the steering wheel. This is as far as I’m willing to go these days with people carrying guns in their cars.

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  22. The carpet is gone, the fans are blowing, the insurance claim is filed, although I don’t think State Farm will pay a penny for this. They return on Friday to remove the fans.

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  23. For more than 20 years, I’ve always carried liability insurance for my gardening work. it was just this sort of oversight that I was worried about – forgetfully leaving a hose on near a foundation. I’ve never actually needed the insurance, but better safe than sorry.

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  24. I’m so sorry about your basement flooding! Ugh!

    Here are some euphemisms I’ve picked up ….not sure from where as I’ve moved a few different times while growing up.

    Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya…
    Let me get off or on my soapbox…

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