The Storm of the Century. Whatever.

When the boyfriend bought this house, I knew we needed at least 5 bedrooms, and this one only had four. He really liked this house, and since he was purchasing it, this was the house we got. It does have a finished basement, though, and I suggested we put our bedroom in the basement. The basement has carpet, finished ceilings, and over 600 square feet of space. It was called a "mother-in-law suite" because it has a separate kitchen. Plenty of room for all of my clothes, storage, the laundry room, my dressers, my shoes, et cetera. Oh, and his shit fits too. There was even a half bath, complete with raised "throne." I labelled it "his bathroom," and threatened to find a gold toilet seat.

I told him while we were moving that eventually I want to get a steam shower for the basement. It has always been my dream, a two-person steam shower. Yummy! Anyway, when I mentioned that eventually I wanted to put a steam shower in, he told me there wasn't anywhere to put it. I told him there was a disconnected shower in the room with the washer and dryer. There must be a drain.

"It doesn't have a drain. It's sitting on concrete."

"It's a basement, of course there's a drain. What if it floods?"

"It's a dry basement, it doesn't flood."

"Well, what if the washer overflows or something? There's a drain."

"It's concrete, there's no drain."

"Whatever."

Then, a week after we moved in, the basement toilet backed up. We called a plumber, who said there were tree roots. We got rid of the tree roots, cleaned the carpet in the half-bath, and went on with life. Until a few weeks ago.

That's when this area experienced record rainfall, massive storms, tornados, flooding. I was off that night, the kids were at Grandma's, and I fell asleep on the couch. Around midnight, I woke up to the sound of a sweeper. WTF? I follow the sound to the basement, which I had just vacuumed that afternoon. The boyfriend is running the carpet cleaner. Really? The urge to clean carpets came at midnight, that's helpful. I went down the stairs and stepped into water.

"What happened?" Captain Obvious, that's me. But I had just woken up.

"I came downstairs to go to bed and stepped into water. Obviously it flooded."

"Where's it coming from?"

"I don't know. The sink's dry, the toilet isn't overflowing, there's no water on the panelling or running from the windows. I think it's just seeping from the ground. The ground is too wet."

"Maybe there's a drain."

"There's no drain. It's probably coming from the walls. I'm running the carpet cleaner, but I don't know if it's doing any good."

I walk around the basement. "It's deeper in the laundry room, I think it's coming from here. There must be a drain. Can we move this old shower?"

"It's deeper in there because the basement is sloped that way. There is no drain!"

"Maybe it's sloped that way because there's a drain."

"I've walked all over this basement, there is no drain!"

"Whatever!" and I went back upstairs. I was looking up techniques for dealing with flooded basements on the internet. After a while, I went back downstairs to share my findings. He had moved the old shower. "Wow, look at that, a drain. Is that where the water's coming from?" Yeah, I can be subtle when I want to be.

"I don't know, maybe." We got into a discussion about draining the water, cleaning the carpets, and closing up the drain. He wanted to pour concrete in it and close it up. Or use a foam of some sort. "Just remember, eventually I want a steam shower. Whatever you close up the drain with, in 5-10 years, you'll be digging it back up to put in my steam shower."

"Well, this foam should be easy to dig out."

"I don't care what you use, or if you close it up at all. I mean, what if the washer overflows? And this is the storm of the century, it's not like it floods a lot."

"Twice in a year is a lot."

"Whatever."

We borrowed a pump off of his parents. It was the middle of the night, and he had to wake up his dad to get it. To turn it on, you plugged it in, unplugging it turned it off. It was draining down the washer outlet drain. We got the water down to floor level, and we used the carpet cleaner to suck up the rest. I told him to get some sleep, I could man the pump so he could get some sleep. I'm up all night anyway. He got to sleep for about 4 hours. I found out that if I waited for longer than 15 minutes, the carpet in the bedroom started floating again. Shit.

So the next day, while I'm running up and down the stairs every 15 minutes to run the pump for 4 minutes, he goes out looking for man-type-fixing-stuff stuff. (And breakfast. Dick.) He comes back after three hours with a dehumidifier. And says, "Maybe we shouldn't plug up the hole. It's only flooded twice in the past year, and we fixed the tree root problem. I mean, what if the washer overflows? It's got to have someplace to go. And once these storms are over, it's unlikely to flood. This is like, the storm of the century or something."

"Whetever you want, honey." And now I'm one step closer to my steam shower.