Looking really, really hard for a silver lining on this one

The new living room, sans carpet. : (

It was going to be one of those lazy weekend days when the Boy and I pal around the mall, abusing the Xbox demo at Game Stop, buying too many baseball cards at Double Play, trying on the baseball mitts or getting free samples of fudge at Scheel's.

But no.

Of course it didn't go our way.

We walked out of Game Stop and my phone rang.

It was my wife. Frantic. Full freak-out mode. A disaster had hit the house. I needed to race home immediately.

We reside in lower North Mankato. When we bought the house, I remember someone telling me the backyard is one of the lowest points in town. Since then, one of our favorite pastimes each spring has been to watch in amazement as the melting snow turns our backyard into an aquatic sideshow. I call it Lake 619 (our house number is 619.) I've taken pictures of it, posted them to Facebook. It's been fun.

Until this year.

We got a bunch of snow last week, you may recall. And then on Saturday morning, the rains came. I watched as Lake 619 grew from a giant puddle to small pond to a large pond to a lake. And eventually, it grew large enough so that it came right in the back door.

That's when my phone rang.

We raced from the mall over to A to Z Rental and picked up a sump pump, then raced home. The Girl, having just returned from another behind-the-wheel driver's training, was with my wife in the back yard. Water collected in the well that surrounds the back door -- water was two feet up the back door and seeping in the cracks.

I dropped the sump pump into the well, unfurled the hose and got the water pumping out. Then I checked out the inside of the house, where nearly every inch of our carpet -- some of which was less than two years old -- was soaked.

We decided to try a second sump pump, so off I went. I also picked up a Rug Doctor to suck water out of the carpets, and some burgers (and a salad for the vegetarian) from Culver's.

One of two blowers I rented to dry the carpet. : (

Several hours of Rug Doctoring later, we realized it was pointless to try saving the living room rug. So on Sunday morning, after a cup of coffee and quick perusal of the Free Press, I got out my sharpest utility knife and started cutting. It's a rather surreal experience to cut up your carpet. Usually, you spend you life doing whatever you can to keep the carpet spotless. Taking a knife to it seemed so brutal, so wrong.

Within a few hours, we had all the carpet out of living room, dragged all the sopping-wet sub-padding out. We're holding out hope that the carpet in the other rooms can be saved. But frankly, the way our luck is going, I wouldn't bet on that happening.

To help the rescue effort, though, I went back to A to Z (my third trip there in two days) and picked up some floor dryers. I also picked up my own sump pump at Home Depot, just in case the water starts to creep back toward my back door again.

There's no moral to this story. At least not that I can find. Only suckiness. That carpet didn't need to be replaced. Even the older stuff was fine. And I'm guessing our insurance won't cover this. Why would it? That would actually be helpful, and insurance companies aren't in it to help people. They're in it to make money.

So basically, we're screwed.

If anyone can find a silver lining in this crap sack of a weekend I've had, please let me know.