"We ourselves may be beauties in unwanted places"

Matthew as a youngster head to head with the doggie love of our life, Max, back in the good old days, now at the head of the cellar stairs with a plethora of vases and pots from Washington Park Florist below.

This is awesome in a funny way. We sent mutiple emails to various addresses for the Carnival of the Cats, our long-time weekly showplace for all things Tiny and Baby because of late our posts haven't been received there for some reason we can't fathom so far. Presumably as an unintended result, we got the following message from the totally awesome Pat Santy of Dr.Sanity:

Did you send me something that I didn't include? You sound upset . . . I looked through my email and didn't see a post from you for the Carnival, but I get so much email it is certainly possible that I missed it. If so, I humbly apologize.

Tuck continues vacuuming the flooded basement this afternoon. We pitched in for awhile, baling bucketful after bucketful, but soon tired and retired upstairs to the blog.

Dear Dr. Sanity: You are the light of our life. We'd love to be your patient but are still trying to be strong and keep up our end of things as your fellow freedom fighter. You are so beautiful to us. Her latest:

Cheer up. We ourselves may be beauties in unwanted places, but we're beautiful nonetheless.

This woman is too good to be true.

Update: Meanwhile, Tuck has devised a poor-man's temporary sump pump, a siphon system with two hose sections (weighted down, left, by a container) going from the hole in the concrete where the water is entering the cellar across the floor and out the door (right) onto the driveway.

Comments

[Laura Lee Donoho]

Oh Sissy, this is awful. I feel for you. When we lived in Germany everytime it rained it would flood in the laundry room in our basement. The Germans refuse to allow the military post to cut down any trees and the roots of one tree was causing the flooding. We just had to live with it, maddening as it was.

[beth]

I have some wonderful photos of my kids 'swimming' in our flooded basement from years ago when we lived in Pennsylvania.

Actually, it looked a lot like the picture you have on this post.

It was an unholy mess - but the kids had a blast with it.

I feel your pain :(

[Tara]

We had similar problems in a house we lived in Birmingham,Alabama.

A french drain and hiring a waterproofing company finally did the trick.It was expensive but it had to be done in order to sell the house.

Every time we had a hard rain..the entire garage would flood and sometimes enter into the basement we had converted into a living area.We did have an installed sump pump but it would get overwhelmed with the deluge..hence the french drain before finally giving in and hiring the water-proofing people.I wish we had done that at the very first sign of trouble to save us a lot of mess.

So I am in sympathy and hope you can get relief soon.I just heard on Fox News that it's still raining.

[Teresa]

Tuck is a resourceful man. Good for him! {{{HUGS}}} for you both. Clean up is a b*&^%