In The Dark And Kitchen Waterfalls

When I returned home from my mini vacation, I had a mountain of dirty laundry to attend to. When I left, everything had been working fine. After the first load I noticed a small backup in the sink and poured a bit of Draino to help get things flowing again. Here's me hard at work with the old plunger. A while later, Friend and I were in the living room when we heard the sound of rushing water. Not ordinarily a sound one would hear coming from the kitchen. You haven't seen two people move so fast. Water from the draining washer was now back flowing into the sinks and had over flown both of them and was now pouring out onto the floor. We immediately did what we do best: Friend yelling at me to get something and me running around in circles answering what should I get. Lord, what a mess! We used up every good towel and every other rag we could find. Who knew that washing machines could hold that much water? I was trying to get the laundry done before the big round of thunderstorms came in that night. The weather folks were predicting possible tornadoes, hail and high winds. At 10:00 PM, the night of my birthday, the first gust of wind from the first round of storms snapped a pine tree across the road, which in turn, fell on a power line that snapped off the top of a power pole. Hooray! No power! What to do... Downed power lines across the road Of course, I stayed up most of the night waiting for the power to come back on. Without much luck. The automated line at the power company kept updating the expected "power back on times". After about six hours of updating, they stopped giving estimates. The damage around the area was quite astonishing. Trees down everywhere. I was lucky, my power was only out for about 24 hours. In Mom's neck of the woods, there was extensive damage. So much so that the area was featured on the national news and the Weather Channel. This resulted in several phone calls from folks back home that were concerned about her welfare. Her power was not restored for almost three days. She was really glad to see me that morning when I showed up with a hot breakfast. Anyhow, the plumbing problem got resolved. A pipe in the basement had rusted through and had to be replaced. Luckily, it wasn't a larger septic issue. All in all, I had a great birthday. Not many people can say they started the day at the beach, found a waterfall in their kitchen and had the power knocked out...all in one day. Almost a bit too much excitement for my blood. Next year, I think I'll spend the whole day at the beach...