Yesterday, Lizzie and I were at Hobby Lobby getting a few things for the crepe business she is starting with her friends, Rachel and Danielle Saxey. Hobby Lobby has always been like a wonderland for her. Full of potential, and endless creativity. As we were about to check out she said, “I used to think this was a craft store. Now it just seems like a stuff store.”
Another disappointing discovery happened two days after we got home from our month-long road trip to Alaska this summer. Grant and I had been unpacking and catching up from being gone so long and had just settled down to relax and watch a movie together. We were bone tired! Lizzie appeared in great excitement and exclaimed, “I have grass growing in my carpet! Come and look!” I could just see what was inside her brain. She was imagining an eventual lovely, magical fairy glen in in her room. Grant and I looked at each other with dread, knowing that grass growing through the carpet meant a flood had occurred while we were gone. I moaned, “We aren’t coming down.” As if I could put off reality for a few minutes. We got up and went down with her. Sure enough, the window had not been shut all the way for the month we were gone and water had come in and damaged dry wall and soaked carpet and pad at least five feet into the room.
Now, it must be understood that when we moved into this house 13 years ago the carpet was old and needed to be replaced. We waited 12 years to do it and never once had any kind of flood or water damage in all of those years. Last year, we put in new carpet throughout the house. Since then we have had THREE floods, two the insurance didn’t cover since the water came from the outside and one they did, from a water softener we had installed that flooded our basement. (cracked coupling). We are getting really good at flood recovery! This time we pealed back the carpet, cut the pad out, cut the drywall out and we have a guy scheduled to put it all back together again.
Maybe next time we see grass growing through our carpet we will embrace it. Next time visitors come we will show them the beautiful fairy glen that we have cultivated in our basement.
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