Rubber ducky

As Southern California residents, we aren't used to a whole lot of water. I do remember lots of rain as a child - though I grew up in the Bay Area - and the actual season of "winter," (I recognize that winter in California is not winter elsewhere). The leaves would turn, the air would get crisp, we'd experience frost on the grass and our car windows. I loved it! Then the rain would start, and that was even better. We'd have rainy days at school where you'd get to play games like "Heads up 7 Up" and eat lunch inside. As a teacher, I know now how not great this was for the adults in my life, however, as a kid, the rain totally rocked! I remember driving to school with my mom and looking at the level of the creek behind our house. "Whoaaa it's so high!" and mom would agree. As a mom now, I can only imagine the internal dialogue happening "if it gets higher, there's a good chance it'll get into our yard/house...flooding...kids..." and on the thoughts go. We also had a home on the Sacramento Delta and it was the same there. We'd use the break wall (the wall that separates the fast water from slow water nearer homes/docks) to gauge how high the tide was. Sometimes it would get really high! How cool!!! Or not...if you're the adult in the situation.

Anywho, I've always loved water. I love rain, I love puddles, I love swimming, I love water sports, I love!! As I reflect on my love of water, I also can't help but think I've cursed a water spirit in a past life. As I mentioned in another post, this home that we are in is less than a year new to us. It was built in 1967, but we have occupied it for 10 months. It's amazing, it has the space we need, the layout is great, we have a backyard and a bonus pool. Very exciting! But old houses come with issues. Like seals drying out in tubs and exposing the overflow outlet to the wide open world of your ceiling...

Monday, January 30, I learned that indeed, the seal to our overflow in our tub had disappeared. I came home from work not feeling very well with achy joints, sensitive skin, chills and a fever...those toddler germs got me! For the first time since moving in, I decided to take a bath. The bathroom with a tub is connected to Lincoln's room, so we tend to leave it alone after the boys go down for fear of waking up the monster. I came home midday and got the bath nice and warm and soaked. It was glorious! I was in there long enough that the water cooled down a bit, so I drained the tub a little and added more hot water. Pure bliss! I got out, wrapped myself up and had enough time to go lay down for a bit before Easton woke up. Or so I thought. On my very brief walk from the tub to our room, I hear the sounds of aggressively dripping water. Keep in mind, our roof had also had a leak recently, and it had rained the night before this day, so my brain went to "oh no, the roof is leaking...that sounds extreme!" I hustled downstairs, still in my towel and found water streaming through our ceiling into the kitchen directly under the bathroom that the tub is in. Oh. My. GAWD!!! I hollered up to Ben who's home on Mondays...something like "BEennNnnNNN?!?!?! HELLLLLLP!!!!" (You know that question mark that usually comes with a call of distress...your voice just gets progressively louder and higher) He came running down the stairs and stopped in his tracks. Not because he saw me whip my towel off, but because he could not believe the stream of water coming from the ceiling. Me, naked now, used the tiny bath towel to attempt to soak up the water on the floor. Right...but what else are you going to do? I ran upstairs, still naked, threw down a stack of beach towels, put on leggings (which is the wrong thing to put on when you're still damp...) and what felt like 13 minutes later (after dancing, kicking and jumping my way into my leggings) I ran downstairs to see Ben bringing in a cooler to contain some of the water dripping. We were wildly unprepared for this situation. We realized the tub was still draining, so I ran upstairs and stopped it, at which point there was only about 1 inch of water left in the tub. Great *eyeroll*

Anyway, the water slowed and we went outside to look into the panel that gives us a view into the pipes that connect to the tub. Turns out the overflow from the tub was just dumping water straight into our ceiling. The tar seal around that sealed the pipe to the tub had long since shriveled up and disappeared - I could communicate with Ben through the tub (him on the outside world and me in the bathroom) - I had a visible look into the outside world from the gap between the pipe and the tub. So the great thing with that is at least that was an easy fix...sealing that gap. The bad thing...there was a lot of water that came through the ceiling - something we very likely could not fix by ourselves. Sooooo, we had a mitigation team come out and test for water in the walls, cabinets, floors, etc. The water is literally everywhere. And moving as we walk. They sent a team to come and test for asbestos and lead before setting up fans and potentially blowing all of that around. You guessed it though, we have asbestos in the walls. So we needed an abatement team to come out - take out allllllll of the drywall. Our kitchen...is gutted. There is nothing left. Except for maybe one of Lincoln's toy cars.

So this whole thing is to be continued - I have about 82 tabs open for alternate housing because it's going to be nearly impossible to a) keep Lincoln from entering the containment bubble that is our kitchen/living room (I will post pictures) and b) feed the very hungry monsters without a kitchen. I thought - oh ya, we can do this. Did a takeout meal and what not - except...where do I wash the dishes? We're about to go full-on camp mode over here. Set up a basin in the backyard, cook on the BBQ, get out our sleeping bags. This experience is going to be WILD!!! Stay tuned...