Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Today it rained in Chicago. Think Noah and the Ark...that's the sort of weather we had in Chicago today. I was talking to my dad on the phone when I suddenly thought I heard the sound of dripping water. I look around and realize that the ceiling is leaking...onto my computer. I said, "Oh, (expletive deleted)...I have to call you back." I ran over, disconnected all the cables to the computer and moved it out of the room. Then I pulled out some trash bags and covered everything that was in the drip range.

Once, done, I went out to the couch and tried to call my dad back. I didn't get an answer and so I relaxed and watched Judge Judy for a minute. A few minutes later, I noticed that Furio was acting funny on the stairs. I wondered what he was staring at and wandered over there. Meme shot up from the stairs and bolted across the room. I started down the stairs and thought to myself, "What's wrong with the carpet?" It looked really dark. I flipped on the light to discover that our clothes and possessions were floating. The bedroom was flooded with about 4-6 inches of dirty water. I flipped out. I called Mike, Dave the manager, Bob the landlord and then our insurance company. Dave and Bob both said that there wasn't anything we could do until the water went down and to stay out of the water and off of the metal stairs in case the water reached an electrical outlet. The insurance company told us that we were on our own as renter's insurance doesn't cover any sort of flood damage. My question was this..."What exactly am I paying you all this money every month for?"

Bob stopped by and tried to help us clean up the mess. He's paying for us to take as many clothes as we can to the laundromat to try and save them. The problem is, a lot of them have been ruined/stained by the dirty water and anything that doesn't get taken in today will be gross and moldy by tomorrow. So we've had to try and sort through our possessions to try and figure out which of our things are more necessary than the others. Matt's old shirts had to be tossed as did some of my mom's old clothes that I use as house clothes. I cried after I threw them away because I wasn't ready to let them go but I knew I didn't have much choice. It's more important to save the clothes we'll need for day-to-day wear and work clothes. I've lost some of my dress shoes which were stored under the bed and one of our bookshelves will have to be scrapped. We're still assessing the damage, if any to our bed, dresser, hope chest and the bookcase that my Dad built me in college. Some of my books are goners too. And we've lost a digital camera which was in a duffle bag from a previous trip. Thankfully it's not our brand new one, though. Mike's loaded up as much as possible and headed off to do laundry. I was going to try and wash a few more clothes here at home but the laundry room was flooded also and right now the washer won't start.

Bob's going to replace our carpet downstairs...which means that we'll have to move out all of our furniture in order for them to pull out the gross, soggy stuff and put the good new stuff down. Times like these are when I wish that we lived close to family. It's going to be such a pain for Mike and I to be schlepping that furniture around.

*Sigh* I need a hug.