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Friday night Sarah and I had a lovely anniversary dinner while my parents watched Olivia.

Saturday morning we all sat on the front porch watching the rain with our coffee and cinnamon rolls.

Lots of rain. A good old fashion downpour, the likes of which I haven’t seen in a while. It was nice.

The rain didn’t stop dad and I from working in the garage. He was going to help me build a storage loft. Even with the short dash to the garage we got pretty wet.

We planned our attack and cleared some clutter out of the way to give us working space, but I hadn’t changed into work clothes yet. So I ran to the house and down the stairs, splashing into the basement.

Splashing? That’s not right. Our basement doesn’t normally splash.

I looked down. I was standing in 2″ of water. I thought the washing machine may have overflowed, until I saw the size of the puddle. Oh yes, we had a flood on our hands.

About 80% of the basement was covered in water. My mom quickly began moving things that weren’t wet to high ground and triaging wet things. I began shopvacing water. Sarah was feeding Olivia. Dad calmly walked around and assessed the situation.

Our house was built in 1927. Originally all of the water was supplied by a cistern, which is still there. The downspouts from the roof fill the cistern. We no longer use the cistern. There is no overflow mechanism.

Turns out, once the cistern is full (all 1196 gallons), it spills out onto the ground and walk around it — including the spot next to the basement window. Either the window sill leaks or there is a small crack in the wall in that vicinity. At any, some 200 gallons of water was making its way into our basement.

I whacked the downspouts so they drain into the yard and dad helped me lift the cistern’s cover. In went the emergency pump (glad I have one) as we tried to out-pump the rain.

With the flood under control, we dried off and had some lunch. I held Olivie while Sarah ate. Mom and I were making faces and cooing at her when she, well, scrunched up her face and pushed. A wet sound followed. Isn’t that nice. Then another wet sound started. It kept going. It was like that scene when Austin Powers is thawed out — she didn’t show any signs of stopping.

Then my arm began to get warm. Mom’s eyes bugged out. Overflow number two began. Olivia filler her diaper; her onesie; her shorts. She got a bath shortly thereafter.

By 7:00pm my parents left (yes, dad and I did finish building the storage loft), I sat down and just began laughing. What else is there to do? We were just glad that they were there. It would have been ten times worse without them there.

In the end nothing was really damaged — we lost a couple of cardboard boxes and minor stuff, but nothing important. Since it was only rain water, there was no real harm done. Everything has dried out nicely and I just need to pull off the paneling in the laundry room to find the source and fix it.