Flood.
As you know if you read Byron's previous post we have had a huge flood in our house this week. I cannot even get close to describing what we went through on Monday afternoon on a blog entry. I am known for being a story teller, for juicing up and embellishing stories as I retell them but I honestly don't have the heart to do this this time around.
On Monday I got home from work just ahead of the school bus and found water flowing out under our garage door and down the driveway. I ran to the front door and when I unlocked it all I could see was water. There was a sound of running water coming from further back in the house. I started yelling out "Is there anyone there?" in a frantic voice as though someone would wander out to me and apologise for accidentally causing the flood??? Of course there was no-one home. I ran to turn off the mains water but it was too stiff to turn so I ran back through the water and into the kitchen. I heard the water coming from behind the fridge so I managed to pull the fridge out of its recess and saw that the water filter had exploded and mains water was rushing out of a tap in the wall. When the tap was turned off I just stood there and stared at the water that was ankle deep in the kitchen, TV room, hallway, computer room, living room and just spilling over into the spare bedroom. As I looked at all the electrical items in the water, sewing machine pedal, laptop charger, floor lights etc I realised how stupid I was to be in the water while the power was on so I ran outside and shut it all down at the fuse box.
The next hour passed in a blur. I rang Byron, he jumped in the car to come home. I rang Anne, she threw her bucket and mop in her car and came straight over to help. The school bus pulled up, I tried to stop the kids from walking into the house to see what was wrong. I rang my friend Karen, she came over to take the kids away so we could start the clean up. 
Anne and I mopped and wrung, mopped and wrung, mopped and wrung. Byron rang the insurance firm, they had a man there within the hour taking photos and making more calls. 
Within another hour there was a crew of men using industrial vacuums on the carpets sucking the water out of them, then tearing them out underlay and all, propping furniture on plastic blocks so that 10 industrial blowers could blow hot air under everything and installing two huge dehumidifiers could suck 7o litres of water out of the air every 24 hours. 
The next morning the builders arrived to tear out all the wooden skirting boards, door jams and to drill holes every few centimeters along the base of our kitchen cupboards to insert more tubes that would blow more hot air from another machine. This one hotter and noisier that the other 10 put together. So hot and noisy I swear the devil himself must use it to keep hell ticking over at a nice unbearably hot temperature....This has been our life ever since. 24 hours a day noise that you cannot talk over. 36 degree hot air blowing in our faces downstairs. No windows allowed to be opened. Noise so bad that we put earplugs in our ears at night upstairs behind shut bedroom doors so we can get to sleep.
It looks like the only thing to do is to spend as much time out of the house as possible. There is nothing like stepping outside into the cool air of a balmy summers morning with a gentle breeze to keep you cool. Oh yeah, there is NOTHING like that because this weekend is forecast to be the hottest one in living memory. 47 degree Celsius on Sunday. New South Wales is headline news with the weather men saying that nowhere in the entire planet will beat the heat that we are in for tomorrow.
I think I'm going to head for the local ice-skating rink when I wake up....
