Procrastination

Last summer my basement sump pump broke down. Now being the handy guy that I think I am I took it apart and fixed it … if that is what you call it. After I replaced it into basement floor, I discovered that the flotation switch was now not working as designed. So… did I take it out and fix it again? Oh no! Of course not! I gotta do it another day... can’t do it today! Too much to do! I should have replaced the entire pump in the first place but but did I? Oh no! Couldn’t do that! It wasn’t that high a priority on my list. So a week goes by and then a month.

Ahead four months later … I get home from work and call out for my dog but get no response. Figuring this to be unusual, I go down to the basement where she usually hangs out only to find her in her basket surrounded by a lake of water. Fortunately she had no where to float away and since she is just a weiner (she actually is), she hunkered down in her basket like Moses did. “Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!” I could not believe it! So here I was rushing around and not really doing much to solve my crisis. Fortunately I learned from my last flood 16 years ago that the first thing you do is look around for any valuable or sentimental stuff that may be sucking in the darn water... Next was to figure out a way to get the sump pump back up and running… successful. Next I had to secure a wet vac to suck up the water… done.

Forty eight hours later I was still working on the “friggen floor.” It was most certainly a weekend from hell. Now, one good thing did come from the flood as I found my new cell phone case that I had lost about eight months ago. I also found one other item which I had lost about 25 years ago and which I will talk about here at a later date. I was happy about the phone case as I had just spent $25 for it the week prior to losing the darn thing but it was the other item that I was ecstatic about finding.

I suppose that the other good thing about this major flood which I compare to the flood of Noah was that it made me clean out the basement. I couldn’t believe how much I really needed to throw away. Sometimes we all need a crisis to help us get on the right track. I suppose that good things do come from personal tragedy… not that this was really a tragedy since the real tragedy was that my basement was a total catastrophe in the first place!

So … one week later and I am still getting things straightened out.

Now, back to the sump pump… I ripped the old thing out and bought a new one from the hardware store… One that works! Today I will install it and hopefully the next time it rains, my basement will be dry! Ahhhhhhhh!Yes!!!

So the moral of the story is?... I don’t think I need to insult your intelligence… you already can figure that one out yourself…I just wish I had used my brain to figure it out four months ago… “Hey Dave (speaking to myself)… sump pump not working? Water comes in during a big rain storm…So instead of procrastinating, fix it BEFORE the next major rain storm…knucklehead!!!!!”