So how’s your week going?

[greatmutah]

Because mine has been a shit show for the last few days.

Sunday we left to go on vacation. Drove to New Buffalo MI to stay near Lake Michigan, hit up a beach and check out the tourist stuff there. Well that hit a bad start because immediately I forgot my cpap machine so sleep became scarce for me. Not the worst thing. We wound up coming home a day early because not only could I not sleep, my wife couldn’t sleep in the hotel either and it didn’t help that their cleaning crew was short staffed so our room wasn’t getting serviced. Plus my son, who does have ASD, who had been so hyped about going and playing at the beach with his sand toys hated it. It wasn’t all bad, as we found a couple good food spots, I still got a couple hours in the lake and checked out the botanical gardens in Michigan city Indiana. We joked with him that we were time traveling too because the time zone shifts 1 hour between the border of MI and that part of Indiana. Anyway…

So we get home Wednesday and unpack. Go to bed. I get woken up at 2 am by some serious thunder. Check outside and it’s pouring. Check my basement and it’s clear. Nothing. I watch the rain level off and don’t think to move a couple more things up off the ground. Stupid me. When I woke up at 8:30 (still on vacation) there was about 4 inches of water on my basement floor that had backed up from the drains. And not just my basement. The whole subdivision. A little backstory to this subdivision. It’s primarily built on wetlands. It wasn’t a problem when it was built 50 years ago. My wife has lived in this sub her whole life and I lived in it too during high school. Never had a problem like this. Since then they’ve built additional communities surrounding this main subdivision but the township has never invested in expanding the existing sewer and drain infrastructure. It also doesn’t help that we got damn near 6 inches of rain Thursday morning. So I spent all day trying to draw out my basement, bagging up and throwing away a bunch of stuff and I still have some more to go.

Positives: my vinyls are ok, my comic collection is ok and most of the things we lost were just things. However the things we lost were most of my old video game systems from 16 bit to Xbox/PS2 era and a bunch of games. My wife lost a few Barbie’s she’d been collecting and had in plastic totes on top of heavier totes that shouldn’t have become buoyant. We lost some Christmas decorations, some of my kids toys (the ones that hurt the most were things he played with as a baby) and a lot of stuff that had memories attached to it. And about half my CD collection is gone because it was still in boxes on the floor.

Gearwise no major losses. My Crate 4x12 got water in it so it’s going. I might be able to salvage the two Celestion V30MFs out of the top of the cab. My unloaded avatar 2x12 also got it so it’s got to go too. And a crate bass amp. I don’t usually keep much gear in the basement but the garage isn’t an option because our house backs up to a forest and mice like to come in and eat there. 95% of my gear (well now 100%) is in my studio room/office upstairs.

So that was all of Thursday. I got that worked out, the floor is dry and I need to mop and clean it up and disinfect the basement. Which I would have done today except…

Round 2 of rain came Thursday night. And it was violent. The forecast expected is to get hit around 7-8pm. It didn’t come until 10:30 but what came was fierce. We got hit with 70 mph winds, heavy rain that somehow didn’t back up our drain system any further, heavy thunder and lightning. Power was knocked out quick. Still hasn’t come back on. We had two tornado touchdowns in both towns adjacent to ours and while not official, I’m pretty sure we had one in our sub. It was legit scary. We took our son and hid in the hallway between the bedrooms because with the doors closed their were no windows immediately there. I did look out my bay window and when lightning hit, the sky went from black to green. It was seriously evil looking and not in the fun Halloween way. My kid for his part was more annoyed that we got him out of his bed and had him in the hallway (again, he’s 4 and on the spectrum). Once it quieted down, he got up and defiantly said “I’m going to bed!” stormed down the hall and closed his door. All we could do was laugh then.

The aftermath has been something. I haven’t been able to really work in basement today. I didn’t sleep well last night due to no power for my cpap. I’m going to be buying a backup battery soon. I’ve got my gas generator hooked up so I can run the fridge at my house along with my dehumidifier. I also have an extension cable going to my mother in laws house for her fridge as well (she lives right next door funnily enough). Trees are everywhere. Several houses had tree damage. Several had parts of their house ripped off by the winds. Fences were destroyed in some places. I saw one house got it’s chimney yanked off. Another had pieces of its siding wind up hanging on a powe line. We got super lucky here and at my MIL’s. We had one medium size branch fall behind my shed. My MIL had two large ones fall off her oak that landed beside my son’s swingset there. The set and slide/fort is ok, minus the beam on top of the fort for putting the roof over getting destroyed. I’m sure we could get some lumber and replace that but I’m just going to take it off for now so he can still play on it safely.

We still don’t have power but that’s kind of to be expected. At least four poles got knocked over and DTE was out getting them back up today. And they did. Now it’s the micro part of trying to get the sub back up. I really hope it’s tomorrow. Because then I can get a hop on cleaning and sleeping properly before I go back to work on Monday.

So, how’s everyone else’s week going?

[skybluegary]

Damn dude, sounds like hell. Total sympathy for you.

[greatmutah]

Thanks man. I’m hoping we get power today so I can do some cleanup and test appliances like our furnace and washer/dryer. I was at least able to get our hot water tank back on and it’s pilot lit so we have that.

[TurboPablo]

Shut your main breaker off. You don't want anything that is soaked to fire right up when power comes back on. So, kill the main and the whole panel. When power returns, turn the panel on one circuit at a time.

[greatmutah]

That was already taken care of. Basement was dried when we lost power and all the actual outlets are a foot above ground and those were untouched. Unplugged everything else from there.

[TurboPablo]

Ok. Good.

[greatmutah]

My dad, a close friend and I have been working in there all day. I start doing some mopping and got some floor cleaned up. When they got here we started yanking the MDF panels and plywood from the bottom half of the wall. The upper half of the wall is drywall and untouched. Sucks but at least this way it’s easier to pull down and cut shit out. Got half of it done. Have a contractor coming to help with the dry out and spraying down antimicrobial stuff once our power is back.

[ajaxlepinski]

Man, I'm a bag of shit when I don't get sleep. Can't imagine dealing with all that without sleep! Major mojo bro!!!

My basement floods whenever it rains more than two days straight - which is about once or twice, every two years.
I use a 20 gallon shop vac to suck up the water and then, I transfer it to buckets to carry upstairs to the street.... about 50-60 buckets... lots of exercise!!!
One of these days, I'll buy a pump and a garden hose so I don't have to carry buckets up the stairs.

[Tortuga]

My God, man. So sorry to hear.

[greatmutah]

Thanks all. It’s been a few days for sure. I’m crashing at my parents house tonight so I can get some proper sleep. Still no power. DTE keeps telling us it’ll be done today… until the day is over. Then it’s tomorrow. My dad, my friend and I got a lot of my basement done. The bottom half of each wall was MDF panels and trim so we cut that all off in the main room of the basement. Mopped where I could, dried shit off and sprayed down the studs and structural stuff with some bleach and water mix to hopefully kill anything before it starts to grow. One more room to do tomorrow. Filed the insurance claim with State Farm, been taking tons of pictures and trying to document everything lost.

[VTM]

Damn dude, hope the claim is paid and it all works out.

[greatmutah]

Power is back on. I got one more room to yank the wainscoting out of. Thrown a bunch of shit out. Light at the end of the tunnel.

[Dave]

Damn, that’s a hell of a week man. Mojo and glad to hear you’re making progress

[greatmutah]

Thanks man. I’m done for tonight but gonna try to get back it tomorrow after work or even after I put the kid to bed. Just so damn beat.

[primeholy]

My wife can’t sleep if I don’t use my cpap because of my snoring. Good luck going forward

[Devin]

Damnit that fucking sucks ass bro

[greatmutah]

I got the last of the wainscoting out today. Sprayed everything underneath the plywood I pulled out with a bleach solution. Insurance called back and they’ll have an adjuster come out this week. I’ve been taking pics as I go. I can now focus on the last few things of garbage and work on mopping up the floors again. Amazingly enough none of my guitar cases fell or came down and got soaked but there’s gonna be some new shelving bought to make sure those are always above ground by at least a foot. Light at the end of the tunnel.

[GuitarBilly]

Jesus man, this is awful. Have you checked the Inspire system? My uncle is using it now and he likes it. I don't know exactly how it works but he said he's been able to stop using the CPAP

[greatmutah]

I’ll check it out for sure. If I started exercising a bit more and cut some weight that would surely help a little too. Not completely but a little. I do need to look into a backup battery for it at the very least. The worst part of Covid was that before Covid I had been swimming 2 - 3 times a week for an hour or two each day. I used to swim competitively in high school and built myself up to some good stamina again. Never got back to a pool post Covid. And I need to do something for sure.

On a semi related note, my son has been an absolute joy this whole time. Even when we didn’t have power. So there’s that.