Holy Crap… Part Deux (in case you were wondering, deux is a fancy way of saying two)

The following post was written by Merritt. My wife accepts no responsibility for anything that I have decided to post today. I think she is slightly embarrassed by her wonderful husband.

When we last crossed paths, we were all eagerly awaiting news of Maggie’s impending bowel movement.  Seriously, how sad does that make us all?  To our great relief, although we expected something like Mt. St. Helens, it was really more like Craters of the Moon (okay, that may have been a little too much information). 

Needless to say, we were very happy that Maggie’s little belly was feeling a lot better.  We thought that our adventures in bodily functions were over.  Nothing could be further from the truth…

9:00 am Friday May 21st…

Mandee calls her wonderful husband at work.  “Hey, dear… did the house smell really bad when you left for work?” 

Merritt responds with great tenderness.  “No… I think I would have noticed that.  Why don’t you go down to the utility room and see if the drain traps have dried out?” 

Mandee replies… “That makes sense.  Oh it definitely smells worse down here.  Let me just open the door, walk into the utility room and turn on the light…  AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH (imagine a very girly high pitched scream right here).  I just stepped in poo!  In my bare feet!!!  It squished right through my toes!!!!”  (Now, imagine Mandee, while holding Maggie, standing in her bare feet in raw sewage… your are welcome for that very pleasant mental image).

Merritt, in a very understanding and comforting tone says… “That is quite unfortunate, my dear.  I will make my way home quickly, while obeying all traffic laws, and will take care of the problem in a jiffy.  Love you bunches.”

Sometime in the wee (probably not the best choice of words) morning hours, the pipe connected to the sump pump in our basement decided to fail catastrophically.  As Alex took his morning shower, all of the varied contents of the septic drain pipes in the basement were deposited onto the floor of the utility room.  AWESOME.

I immediately jumped into my truck and raced home as I called the restoration company (who strangely enough, I have on speed dial… if you haven’t heard about my previous basement sewer tragedies, I’ll have to tell you about them later… let’s just say this isn’t my first experience with a poo-filled basement… that one did teach me, however, that two office garbage cans make pretty good wader boots in a pinch).  Mandee, in the mean time, was crawling on her hands and knees (so as not to track  the fun stuff through the rest of the carpet), struggling to make it the bathroom and wash off her feet, all the time with a very concerned Maggie in tow (you are welcome again for that very pleasant mental picture).  I think Mandee scrubbed her feet until they bled.

I got home and raced into the house to survey the damage.  Thankfully, the damage was much less than it could have been (although, I’ll never look at that room the same way again… also, I am beginning to doubt the wisdom of choosing brown carpet in the basement).   A few shop vac loads of smelly stuff, several sprayers full of anti-microbials and about 5 high powered fans later… we still felt like crap (no pun intended)… but at least we were on our way to getting cleaned up.  The good news is that the damage was confined to our utility room and just a few feet of carpet around the doorway.  The bad news is that, apparently, you can’t just replace a few feet of carpet when it is part of an 800 square foot room.  Crap (again, no pun intended).  We are going to have to recarpet our entire basement.  Our carpet is only a little over two years old.  The thought of having to tear it all out is making us sick… but, hey… I guess we can use it to carpet our unfinished spare bedroom, now.  Gotta look on the bright side!!

And now for the actual news that you have all been waiting for… Maggie is doing wonderful.  We have been amazed with how well she has done.  You would never guess that she had open heart surgery just a little over a week ago.

Mandee took her to a follow up visit with the pediatrician on Friday (after she washed her smelly feet, of course… because that just would have been awkward).  Maggie has lost about pound during this ordeal but should start gaining now.  Other than that, she is doing incredibly well.  We were even brave enough to take her to church today.  I did, however, make the mistake of telling her no when she was trying to sneak away during one of the meetings and she had a meltdown.  Are hormones really supposed to start this early?

And now… here are the the pictures that you have all been waiting for:

 

Please disregard the little brown specks.

Okay… you really didn’t want to see those ones.  But I’m sure you wanted to see these.

Not too bad for open heart surgery.

I promise… that is from the brownies.

This is Mandee hijacking my blog back. I just wanted to set the record straight. I was the one who responded calmly and rationally (even though I was the one standing in poo), not Merritt, even though that is what he would have you believe.