natural disasters suck

We have been rather settled in my sister's garage. We had it arranged and setup in such a way that, save for the garage doors, it didn't feel like living in a garage. Just a small extension to my sister's four bedroom, two and a half bath house. It's been working quite fabulously. Except for the occasional bug in the spring/summer, I have no complaints.

Until today.

The past three days have been horrendous, weather wise. I think it's been like that pretty much all across the country, though. We had some heavy rains and early morning tornado warnings. Winds, lightening... nothing too spectacular, honestly. Save for the sirens at 6:00 AM, everything was peachy keen.

Until this morning.

I slept on the couch in my sister's den because I couldn't get comfortable on the bed or couch in the garage. I do this frequently, actually. She has a really comfy couch in the den. I fall asleep almost instantly whenever I land on it. This morning I woke to my sister telling me about the bad weather again. Third day running, like I said. So I drug my tired behind out of bed, poured a bowl of Special K, and went to the garage to turn on the news and keep tabs on the weather-of-doom. I stepped on a tiny (think nickel-sized) wet spot on the carpet by the couch. I thought nothing of it, chalking it up to the cats knocking something over or what-have-you. I ate my bowl of Special K and then went to return my cereal bowl to the kitchen so the cats wouldn't try and devour the bit of milk in the bottom of the bowl (inevitably making a mess).

Imagine my shock, terror, suprise (mostly shock) when I got up and my foot was SOAKING WET. I yelled at Tony to get out of bed that the carpet was soaked! He jumped up and said Holy SHIT it's a freaking PUDDLE over here!

My day did not start off well. And it only got worse.

By the time my sister and I got back from our rush run to Lowe's (we bought a wet/dry shop-vac to suck up the water which was, at the time, about an inch deep in some places) the water had risen to about two inches and the ENTIRE carpet in the garage was saturated. Completely soaked through.

I am devestated.

We don't have anywhere else to go. Of course my sister isn't going to leave us high and dry. We're "camping out" in their house for the next few days (week??) until the insurance adjusters come out and figure out what the HELL is wrong with the foundation of her house. (The water was seeping up from the ground into a crack along the wall in the garage floor.) Thankfully none of our electronics or furniture was badly damaged. Tony got the notion to take the mattress/box springs off the frame a month or two ago so our box springs got soaked. My mom is pricing new ones; possibly an entirely new mattress set. (Something I'm not sure we can afford right now.) We got up as much water as we possibly could but it just kept coming in through the crack in the floor. Our labor would've been a moot point except that we're sure it kept the water from getting any deeper.

Thankfully, around 3:00 PM, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The weather man says it's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, though not very warm. We're going to have to rearrange all the furniture in there so we can pull out all the soaked carpet. Then...well, I don't know what. Hopefully everything will dry quickly once the carpet is gone. Then we can try scavenging for some new carpet. In the mean time, the insurance folks will hopefully come out and the root of the problem can be rememdied before we have to deal with another torrential downpour. Now that it's happened, I am 100% sure that it will happen again. And again. And again... until the root problem is fixed.

Mostly I want to crawl under a rock and hide from all of this. I'm not dealing well at all. :(