"i think it's in my basement...

let me go upstairs and check." - M.C. Escher

For those of you out there who are concerned that you're missing out on the joys of home ownership, I have two words: leaky basement.

Though we feel lucky that we have had only a few problems since buying our house in March, it does seem that all of our mini-crises have been related to water...the clogged sink, the dripping pipe, now the puddled basement...I do hope no Jumanji-style floods are in our future.

Fortunately, last night's interior waterpark could be measured in towels soaked (eight) instead of inches. And the rain that caused the puddles was nearly of the flash-flood variety, not some wimpy morning dew. Perhaps the best news, though, is that we managed not to freak out about it! Yeah, us! We investigated, evaluated, and then ended up in the back yard dragging pipes around to extend the sump pumps' outdoor piping.

Oh, yes, I said sump pumps. (We have two. Alexandria is low-lying. Fortunately, we're not in an area that floods so frequently that we have to hook ours up to car batteries!) And I was out there without shoes on, people -- this exercise did not seem worthy of a shoe-ruin. I also stepped on one bug and picked up three flower pots that had other bugs in them. *shudder.*

If old age ain't for sissies, then home-maintenance certainly ain't either.