It’s been one heck of a week.

Since we live at the Jersey Shore, we were in the path for Hurricane Irene last weekend. Fortunately we’re not in a flood zone, but after we piled all of our outdoor furniture into the library:

And made sure the gnome and the hedgehog were safe:

We packed a bag and headed to Allentown, PA on Saturday morning (more on that trip another time). We enjoyed the weekend as best we could with all the news and family reports of insane flooding coming in (my mother lives at the top of a hill next to a creek, and for the 1st time in her 41 years there water came to the top of the hill!).

On Monday we drove home and were thrilled to find that we had power! We also had this:

Our sump pump died. First we had to get a temporary one installed to pump out enough water to uncover the pump. That took about 12 hours. Then we were able to replace our actual pump with a strong one that didn’t have to be unplugged every time the water went down. And then, of course, there was the fact that our water heater is at ground level and had been sitting in standing water for 2 days. We had that replaced yesterday.

Then yesterday evening my brother and my nephew came over to help Adam turn our backyard into a wet cardboard graveyard:

Adam is downstairs now running the shop vac for the umpteenth time to clean up the puddles. I’m trying to figure out what we’re going to do with the basement casualties like this:

But, we’re alive. And it was expensive, but it could have been so much worse. We’re almost back to normal now. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll actually be able to go into work and sort out my library for the new school year. We’ve had so many repair folks in and out this week that we’ve both had to take a time out from work to get our house back together. But we’re getting there.