29 Gifts, Day 8 - Wet

Today my gift was to give a big basket of Happy Heiny's cloth diapers to my sister-in-law, who is expecting my niece in June.  People thought I was crazy when I decided to use cloth diapers for Norah (like I didn't have anything better to do than wash diapers), but when I saw the video below, I was sold. 

Being the highly impressionable do-gooder that I am, I wound up buying a bunch of cloth diapers and really liked them. I had to use disposables for day care and I also used them while traveling, but I used cloth diapers the rest of the time until Norah was potty trained just before she turned 2. I'm so glad Josh & Rachael will be able to make use of them.

Speaking of wet, holy crap we've got a lot of water! The rivers are higher than I've ever seen them (photo stolen from my SIL, Monica - note the duck swimming across the yellow line), and lots of basements are flooded, including ours.  We had borrowed a pump when we had the last flood a couple of weeks ago, and we had used it intermittently until yesterday when the water came back in full force. Our friends who loaned us the pump needed it back, so we began the hunt.  I should have just ordered one but hindsight is 20/20.

Last night I went to Lowe's and they were taking names of customers to call when they received their next shipment.  My name was at the bottom of a double-spaced list on 8 1/2 x 11 paper.  I haven't gotten a call yet.  This morning I called about 10 Home Depots, and nobody had a utility pump.  One woman answered the phone, "Shrewsbury Home Depot, we're out of utility pumps, how may I direct your call?"  I got two leads from a couple of the friendlier H.D. customer service people - Home Depot in Worcester and Russell's Garden Center in Wayland.

I called HD in Worcester and they said that they had utility pumps.  Ben drove all the way there to find out that they only had sump pumps left - we need the kind that will take water off the floor, not out of a hole.  I called Robinson's Hardware when I dropped Norah off at preschool, and they said that they had some.  I was going to go in right then, but it would have meant driving Adlani and Aliya to school and Adlani really wanted to take the bus, so I went to the bus stop first.  By the time I got to Robinson's, they only had sump pumps too.

Ben went to the hardware store in downtown Framingham (no luck), and I went to Russell's.  I haven't gone to Russell's in years and I think we were buying a tree at the time so we didn't check out the whole store.  It's awesome!!  They have EVERYTHING for gardening, plus a lot of gifty-type things - there's so much to see.  In their water garden department they had koi (giant goldfish) and were expecting a shipment of bullfrog tadpoles.  They also had pumps!  They were pumps for garden ponds, so not ideal, but we didn't have many options.

A really nice and knowledgeable guy (Tim) helped me figure out how to rig up a pump to work for our basement, and I was on my way for $139.  I took it home and explained our plan to Ben, and then jumped on a conference call.  By the time my call was over Ben was all in a lather because the pump wouldn't work.  I called Russell's and explained the problem (the water wasn't deep enough).  Tim said we could return the pump and I asked him to hold the more expensive model that I had tried to avoid buying.

So Ben went to Russell's and I went to work for back-to-back meetings.  When I got home at 6, the pressure of the rising water had obviously gotten to Ben, because he was going ape-sh*t about how the pump was a rip-off, wouldn't work, blah blah blah.  Or I should say, BLAH BLAH BLAH.

I am now actively avoiding the situation.  Ben will be staying home for the third day tomorrow to try to deal with the water.  I will be finding somewhere to hide until it recedes again.

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