Three-Alarm Flooding

I found the Steenky Bee via Captain Dumbass when I first started blogging. Jen is one of my favorite bloggers and has cultivated quite an audience in the last couple months. I am honored to have her post over here at 3 Bedroom Bungalow. She is a great mom and a wonderful bloggy friend. Please make her feel welcome while she is staying at the Bungalow.

When the lovely Kat over here at 3 Bedroom Bungalow asked me to guest post while she moved her family to England I was thrilled for a few reasons. First, I love Kat. She’s the second person to ever comment on Steenky Bee without requesting money. Second, she’s moving to England. She’s only person I’ve ever known to make good on the threat “If this country doesn’t get out of the crapper soon, I’m moving to Europe”. I begged and begged her to stay in the States until she at least knew the outcome of the election, but she claims she’s had this move planned for months.

Anyway, her move to a foreign country has brought back memories of a move my husband I made just a little over eight years ago. At the time, we were just newlyweds and shacked up in a tiny, one bedroom basement apartment in Salt Lake City. We had only been living there about three months when we were forced out due to a water main break in a sprinkler line just outside our front door.

When I say “forced out“, I don’t mean that someone actually came and forcibly moved us, unless you count the fireman that showed up at our door after the building manager called them. They eventually gave up trying to stop the flooding and just concentrated on hauling our furniture and other belongings out safely to dry land. I guess in theory, Jeremy and I could have tried to give it a go and live in four inches of water, but most of my shoes had leather uppers and entertaining in those conditions would have been next to impossible. I mean, have you ever been to a water party where you didn’t feel just a tiny bit self-conscious?

Before the fire department arrived on the scene, Jeremy and I were frantically gathering up irreplaceable items like photos, heirlooms and our PlayStation II. When the first fireman knocked on our door, I immediately threw the box of photos I was holding for safe keeping aside and ran squealing with excitement into the bathroom.

As I ran off in the ankle-deep water, Jeremy shouted after me, “Good idea, honey! We’re going to need a few toiletries to tide us over at the hotel for a few days until we get settled somewhere else.”

What was he smoking? I wasn’t in the bathroom packing up shampoo and cotton swabs. The last thing on my mind was where I would be sleeping that night. I had much bigger concerns. If I was going to be hanging around glistening and well-toned fireman that afternoon, I was damn well sure going to look my best. After all, I was the proud owner of many “Three-Alarm Firemen Calendar” years 1987-1999. I knew from studying those things intently that firemen were likely to hang out wearing just those pants with red suspenders and nothing else. They also seemed fond of leaning against fire polls wearing their jackets while seductively staring forward. And for some odd reason, they spent a great deal of their time just standing around in groups of three or four leaning against miles and miles of fire hose. No matter what they were doing, or not doing, to me, they looked like all kinds of fine.

So there I was, locked in the bathroom furiously primping away. Once I freshened up my make-up and got Jeremy to confirm several times that the jeans I was wearing did not, in fact, make my butt look fat, I was ready to approach my first fireman.

When I walked out into the living room I was did my best coy little strut as I cornered the one in our living room. Looking hot proved more difficult than I originally thought. The water was now nearly up past my calf so wading in freezing cold water while trying to look sultry was pretty much out of the question. I was disappointed when I noticed that the fireman who was busy emptying out my book shelf had his shirt on. In fact, every fireman on the scene was fully dressed. They had shirts, pants, boots and everything. Each one of them was even sporting a bulky yellow rain coat. Now how the hell was I going to see any freshly waxed chests if they kept themselves covered up like that?

As the hours passed and more and more of our stuff was being hauled outside onto dry land I grew more desperate. It wasn’t every day I had the opportunity to rub shoulders with actual firemen. While Jeremy was busy calling our insurance company and loved ones, I was dialing every girlfriend I could think of to tell them that they better hurry over to see the firemen at our place. Of course, the only person that showed up was my mom, and being the smart lady that she is, she brought her camera with her so she could get some picture of the hot men in suspenders.

The fire crew eventually left after all our furniture was safely out of the apartment. However, a few of them left even earlier when my mom and I threw buckets of water on them in hopes that they would remove their wet clothing, thereby exposing their chiseled abs. No such luck. Not only did it upset the fireman, but my mom and I lost our bucket privileges all together.

Eventually, almost everything Jeremy and I owned dried out. We were able to salvage most of our valuables including our wedding album, my fireman calendars and our two cats. The building manager put us up in a spacious two-bedroom apartment on the second floor. We had a spectacular view of a pond, a winding walk-way, but more importantly, we had a perfect view of our previous tiny basement apartment. Like clockwork, every two weeks or so, that area would flood completely and someone would call the local fire department out to deal with the mess. I was able to scope them out from the privacy of our apartment window.

Jeremy and I only stayed in our new apartment for about six more months We decided it was time that we invest in a home of our very own. We settled on a four bedroom, three bath nestled in a more rural setting. We wanted somewhere with quiet solitude, somewhere for our children to grow up close to family, somewhere close to good schools and parks. But most importantly, somewhere that had a fire station just around the corner. After all, a girl can never be too safe.