I'm at my house taking a five minute break from the chaos. The basement is, by my estimate, somewhere around 85-90% empty. Except for Thursday, when we spent the day at work trying to do all the critical stuff there since we'd been out on Tuesday & Wednesday, and knew we'd be out on Friday, we've spent our days here at the house pulling stuff out of the basement. It drained when the storm drains were cleared, except that we had many plastic tubs, buckets, storage bins, bottles & other containers that were either were below water level during the storm or that were knocked off a high shelf and fell into the 27.25 inches of water that came in. These continued to hold water until we manually dumped or bailed the contents. I found what I hope is the last one of them this afternoon.

We will have no trouble proving our loss to the satisfaction of our insurance company since the type of water/storm/drainage problem was insured to a maximum of $1000 and any one of the things they will take as proof had losses far greater than $1K. New furnace, new hot water heater. Don't know about the washer & dryer yet. Got a $7,500 quote on storm remediation services -- tearing out damaged/contaminated walls and then disinfecting the floors and walls. I'm hoping for a better price and will all another firm tomorrow from work. I'm too wiped out to try right now plus I don't know what time i'll be here tomorrow. We both have to go to work but whether we'll stay there all day remains to be seen. Plus I have a previously scheduled doctor's appointment.

Emotionally I'm doing fine and my biggest complaint is that I'm pissed off at the appliance repair department at Sears. We have Kenmore brand and I called to ask if I should expect to need to replace the washer and dryer. I got the same answer to every one of my questions -- "You'll have to ask your insurance adjuster." I wasn't asking them for warranty work, or asking who would fit the bill, I wanted to know if we need to haul the washer & dryer out of the basement along with everything else.

New furnace and water heater are scheduled for delivery on Friday. I suspect Gabe will work from home that day. Home being our house, not either of our home-away-from-homes, Gini's house (where we're sleeping) and work (where until the flood we spent more time than any other spot on the planet).

I see from the clock I've been typing for 15 minutes, so time for me to sign off. Miss you all.

This entry was originally posted at http://mrs-sweetpeach.dreamwidth.org/790454.html.