a sh*tty weekend

Considering the sh*t i had to deal with this weekend, things actually turned out pretty well. As some of you know, my basement sorta flooded on thursday morning, and it didn't just flood with ordinary water, it flooded with sewage. What's could be worse that your basement flooding with sewage?...your basement flooding with someone else's sewage. Yep, as it turns out my house shares a sewage pipe with the neighbors on either side of me and since my basement is the lowest point, when things back up, they back up on me. The plumber pulled out all sorts of junk that didn't belong to me and it in order to clean it out more sewage had to be emptied into the basement. For those of you who are more visual, i've included some pictures! Finally, at about midnight on thursday, the plumber finished his work and gave me a number for a cleaning company. While I had been gone to work, my mom (have i mentioned how much i love my mom) had been cleaning up what she could in the basement and had knocked on the next door neighbors house with a bag full of used wipes that had clogged the pipes and said, "are these yours, because they just came out of my daughter's basement?" Mom's got guts. I slept in my smelly house on thursday, and went to work on Friday for what was supposed to be an "easy day" for me because I was going to leave early for a work conference. So I left work early as planned and when I got home there was mom, cleaning out my sh*tty basement. "What happened to the cleaning company," I asked. "They said it'd be a thousand dollars and I'm not paying it. We can do it ourselves. C'mon, let's get to work." So I pulled up my sleeves, put on some industrial strength rubber gloves, and spent the next couple of hours cleaning the basement. My papa (that's pronounced like pa-paw) came over with his pressure washer and helped as well. Thanks papa. I had to leave again for my conference, which I felt awful about since mom and papa were still cleaning my basement. When I returned papa was gone and mom and I finished up after about an hour or so more of work. What did I learn?

5. No matter how much you may think of yourself, you're never too good to clean up sh*t
4. Sometimes the sh*t in our lives isn't just our own, but other people's as well.
3. Complaining about the sh*t in your life won't make it go away.
2. Sometimes the solution is to throw out the sh*tty stuff...and sometimes you gotta clean it up.
1. My papa and my mom are AWESOME (and they can really put up with a lot of sh*t)

After all was said and done, I survived and ended up having a really good weekend...which I'll write about in another post 'cause I gotta go to work now!