I was brought back to wakefulness by the buzzing sound of David’s phone clear on the other side of the room. It was around 5:30 am. I let it buzz, it was his phone and I knew all my people were safe and sound. A few seconds later my phone started buzzing… It was my sister’s voice “Where is the water shut-off valve to your house?” I was still half asleep, thinking my super slow processing of the overwhelmed brain was playing tricks on me. What, wait, water? I gently tapped Dave on the shoulder and asked him the same question, “Where is the water shut off for our house?”.
While he was rebooting from sleep with the same bewilderment as I was a minute ago I raced downstairs of my neighbor’s house and heard Tucker bark again. I thought, since I’m awake, the dog is awake, maybe I can save a few minutes of sleep for everyone else in the house by taking him with me. I grabbed the leash and both Tucker and I set off to our house next door to find my brother-in-law. They got my texts from the night before and came to check the house as soon as they woke up. Imagine his surprise as he was walking around the perimeter to find the sound of a smoke detector blaring and water pouring out of the exterior door of my daughter’s bathroom that doubles as the poolside bathroom.
As I looked at that in disbelief David caught up with us with the valuable knowledge of all the inns and out of water shut off valves. We opened to house to find a river flowing long the center of the house and our step down living room with the piano in it filled with water. We also smelled smoke and were surprised by the sound of the smoke detector. All was quiet when we locked up with the firefighters last night. Dave and I looked at each other, do we call the water department or the fire department. I place the 911 call this time while Dave opens the doors to let the water run out of the living room. The all familiar sirens came quickly, it was the same guys from last night, bewildered as we were as to what to make of this development.
Lightning is a very unpredictable phenomenon, from what we can gather another hot spot in another part of the house developed overnight and burned through one of our PVC plumbing water pipes in the attic and the water from that put it out. The firefighters checked everything over and carried all the belongings out of my daughter’s room, covered it with a big red tarp to prevent any further water getting to it, and set another big red tarp on the floor. An extraordinarily surprising turn of events to an already big unpredictable week.
The rest of the day was spent in slow motion again. We did our best cleaning out the water and waited for the phone call from our insurance company. Thankfully there was camp for the kids and I did my regular driving them back and forth. So many thoughts filled my mind, the logical brain wanted to race ahead and play the “what if” game. I did my best to keep it in the immediate actionable future. I called the camp leader where Theodore was spending the week and told him what happened, we decided to hold off telling Theo until camp was done and he was loading up for the long drive to come home.
That night we went to sleep at my sister’s house, once again grateful that some vacation dates, lined up with this adventure and we were once again safe, together, and taken care of.