The Epic Flood

My sister was here last weekend and she reminded me that I hadn't told y'all about the epic flood.  (And she said lots of other things, too, and we went to the zoo and the Dallas World Aquarium, and had dinner with some friends and stuff, but anyway):  It all started, as these things often do, at two o'clock in the morning.  I woke up to hear a tremendous crash, which Joan apparently slept right through.  And as it goes when one has cats that are primarily nocturnal, I lay there listening for another crash before deciding on whether or not to get up.  No subsequent crashes followed, so I went back to sleep.  I mean, I figured somebody had just knocked some precious knickknack off a shelf and broken it or something, and if that was the case there'd be a mess to clean up, and I always deal with messes better after a decent night's sleep.  I don't know about y'all. 

Anyway, the next morning I got up (and two innocent-looking cats, lying at the foot of the bed, also got up).  I headed into the kitchen and put my stockinged foot down in an enormous puddle of water.  Lights, please. Ah, there we are.  Yes, it appeared that the entire kitchen was flooded to a depth of about an inch, which, in our kitchen anyway, is a lot of water.  No idea where it was coming from or such, but it did appear to have stopped. Which was good.  If it had gone on it might have filled up the entire house. 

So Joan got up and brought many towels.  This was an eight-towel job, including wringing some of them out and going back for more.  I mean it was really a mess.  And the tremendous crash I'd heard?  Well, that was the younger cat apparently trying to climb a chair in the middle of the night to get away from the floodwaters and bringing it and herself down on the floor and right into the cat food bowls. Which spilled everywhere,  making cat food soup.  And in the midst of the cat food soup were the three bras which had been hanging on the chair drying.  They, uh, weren't dry anymore.  They were soaked in cat food soup.  And kind of weren't wearable, at least not before serious washing went on.

At this point, the only thing more important than determining the source of the water became the quest for a decent day's lingerie.  I was going to wear one of those bras to work, thank you very much.  I have only one other and it was missing a hook.  So while I was hunting all over the kitchen for suspicious wet things to blame for the cat food soup, Joan was executing an emergency lingerie repair so I'd have something to wear to work. 

At about 7:30, our normal time of departure, Joan finished the emergency lingerie repair right about the same time I discovered the source of the leak.  The dishwasher. Aha, now we could call a plumber.  The plumber couldn't come until the next day.  So, the wet towels went into the washing machine and the cat food bowls got refilled and I got dressed and then we headed off to work, only like 15 or 20 minutes late. Yay, go us.  But don't think we're superheroes or anything. We totally stopped at McDonalds for breakfast and coffee.

Anyway, the dishwasher guy told us to have funeral services for it, and so we no longer have a dishwasher. Well, we have a dishwasher but it can't be used because of its potential to cause epic floods.  (Hey, on the plus side that was soapy water all over the floor. So at least the floor got washed.) We're doing the dishes by hand.  Kind of like in the old days when your cell phone screen was lit by candlelight and the Internet was all in pencil.  There's some possibility that we can catch a post-Memorial Day sale and still get one at a decent price.  Otherwise we're stuck with the rubber gloves for a while.  (And I have to wear rubber gloves, even though they make me clumsy, because otherwise my hands break out from the dish soap.).  Number of glasses broken so far: 3.  (Hand washing is rough on glasses.)

So that's the story of the epic flood and the cat food soup.  I mean, I guess it could have been worse.  We could have had wet cats.  Cheers!