Old neighborhoods are cool until they aren’t. Like, when sewer work in the alley leads to sewage in your basement.
I had deadlines out the wazoo yesterday — a column and cartoon for Bicycle Retailer & Industry News, online editing for VeloNews.com, and a cartoon for VeloNews the magazine — so I was pretty much nose to grindstone all morning while the sewer guys labored outside my office window. When finally I leaned back to look around, it struck me that I hadn’t seen Miss Mia Sopaipilla lately; she wasn’t in her donut atop the ‘fridge, so I wandered downstairs to see what she was up to.
What she was up to was viewing with alarm from the window shelf in Herself’s bathroom, which was covered wall to wall in sewage that had fountained up out of the toilet, soaked the adjoining carpet and spilled into the laundry room. Ay, Chihuahua.
So I pull the dividers out of a couple wine boxes and lay down a cardboard boardwalk into the crapper so I can rescue the cat. Bad idea. Think of trying to rescue the radiator fan from a running auto engine. My Bicycle Colorado T-shirt looks like something out of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Let’s try this again later, I thought, with some oven mitts, a cat carrier and maybe a pistol. First let’s chat with one of these Ed Nortons outside.
Oopsadaisy, says Norton, who calls his supervisor, who calls his supervisor, who calls a “mitigation crew” that arrives in what looks like a SWAT van and starts swamping out the basement with pumps and pressure washers and a laundry list of various tasty chemicals. Now it looks like we’ve had the Irish in — carpet pulled up in vast swaths, ditto vinyl flooring, drywall sawed away, furniture piled up in a dry corner. Three massive dehumidifiers have been running since about 9 last night, sounding like a Nazi U-boat on the run from Limey destroyers and periodically tripping a breaker that crashes my entire office. Nothin’ but a party.
The toilet has to come up, a couple walls have to come down, and then will follow the rebuilding, recarpeting and repainting, all while the two of us try to get our own paying work done (yes, that basement was Herself’s office before it turned into a sewage lagoon). Half our house rendered uninhabitable in one fell swoop.
But the cats sure like it. Ordinarily confined to the basement come bedtime, they got to spend the entire night upstairs, either leaping in and out of bed like furry jacks-in-the-box or draping themselves across my legs for a refreshing snooze. Sure glad someone could sleep.
Mad Blog Media 
Eeewww….my deepest condolences. But would you have preferred that Rush Limbaugh move into your basement? You would still need the Clorox afterwards.
That same sort of hellish regurgitation happened to my in-laws in Waimanalo, Oahu back circa 1990 during a very heavy summer rainy period. Picture the same shit monsoon you are living with, only in a single-story house located in a tropical rain forest with 90% humidity and 85 deg. heat. Turned out that the landlord had miscalculated the need for drainage when installing the septic system.
They ended up moving out.
yikes …
that is a bad scene.
not funny, but your description of the events left me in tears, save the cats
Now if you had dogs you A) wouldn’t have so much sewage to clean up and B) being the sharing creatures they are they would have trotted upstairs to show you the really cool stuff they just found.
Dogs – the early warning system for when the shit hits the fan.
Sounds terrible, but at least the Norton’s boss seems to be making good on the situation.
LMAO, Ben…thanks!
I once worked in a bunch of horse manure in the back yard in prep for planting tomatoes. Our Aussie Shepard found it and considered it quite the delicacy. Later on that night, having had way too much, he barfed it all over the guest room carpet.
Looked like a scene out of a Stephen King movie.
Our late, lamented pooch Fuerte, daughter of Jojo the Mighty, developed a taste for burro droppings while we lived outside Weirdcliffe. Breath mints these are not. Knock a buzzard right off a gutwagon.
Ah, Patrick. I recall your essay ‘Fuerte’. Still lose it when I read it. For others not familiar, go here:
http://www.maddogmedia.com/fuerte.html
Eewwww. Condolences to Herself for the loss of her office. Here’s to your fair city making good on repairs and then writing you a check for any future trips to the doctor to cure cholera.
With the economy in the dumps and bad news coming around every corner, makes sense more shit would hit the fan literally…Seriously though, sorry for the unfortunate mess. Hope you guys get your house back in relative order post haste.
Ah the glory of public works departments… Sorry about that…
You might want to try arm twisting the Nortons to install a backcheck valve in case they have another “accident” in the future…
The old “fool me once” deal…
PLEASE tell me that the Nortons are covering the cost of having to rehab Herself’s office. They’re not sticking it to your homeowner’s insurance, I hope! And like Drew said, make sure they install a backcheck valve. In an old neighborhood, it’s not a question of “if” it will happen again, but “when!” Best wishes!
Patrick, bummer, did you at least make your deadlines before the festivities?
and what is with dogs and poo? My dog used to get into the cat box, gross
Sheeit, bro. With all the toxic waste that spews out of your laptop, I’d think you’d be used to it by now…