What a day!

I was just relaxing with the kids this morning and then decided to hang up our dry erase board because it would be more accessible and get used more if it was where it should be - on the wall. I went downstairs to our furnace room to look on the shelves for a level and when I got there I saw that the whole room was flooded! Also flooded was part of the adjacent bathroom and the carpeting just outside of the furnace room! We grabbed some black garbage bags and started pulling stuff out of there and hubby ran and got the wet/dry vac and I started sucking up the mess. The walls weren't wet so we knew it was something towards the floor. Turns out it was our septic backing up! Luckily it was all water because hubby had just taken a bath in the garden tub and that's what caused the overflow. He took my Dad's snake and tried to snake out the drain and outside pipes and nothing helped. So, at about 5:30 I called a local septic guy to come and at least pump it out. That way we'd have time to figure out what the heck was going on. I didn't know if the drainfields had frozen up or what. So I called around and finally found someone that let me "dial 2 for emergencies". I got in touch with a guy and he asked if we needed him to come out tonight and I said yes because I couldn't sleep wondering if my house was being flooded. We have 2200 square feet of floor down there and all but the furnace room is carpet and laminate. No matter how much it would cost to have him out here this late on a Saturday night, it would be way less than the alternative. He was here within the hour and luckily there wasn't too much snow for him to get through the yard. He pumped it out and then was talking with the hubby about what was going on with it and he offered to snake the outside pipe with his longer snake. He hit a big blockage and fixed it! When hubby came to the patio door I knew he'd have the big number that was going to make me gasp. I sure did gasp when he said it was $125! Can you believe it! Emergency service on a Saturday, that could be considered a holiday for goodness sake, for $125! I gave him $150 cash and thanked him over and over for coming to our rescue. I'm sure he had much better things to do on a Saturday night than this.
When we put our addition on a few years ago they just ran the septic pipe out through the yard and connected it half way to the septic line that was already there. I'll bet you anything it was at that spot that it got stuck. There are probably rough edges that catch on paper there.
Anyways, I'm so thankful that it's fixed, I can sleep, and we didn't go broke.
Our house is 14 years old now so it's time for everything to go to crap. We've already upgraded all the appliances in the kitchen and laundry and got a new water heater when we put the addition on. But, it's only a matter of time before the septic, furnace, or air conditioner go out. Especially since we almost doubled the size of our house and didn't upgrade to a bigger furnace and AC. We had our water stop one day last Summer and thought we'd be getting new well. We got lucky then too and it was just the pump fuse that had went out. That cost only $125 when we thought it would for sure be a huge bill too.
Our luck is going to run out :o) I'm sure the 3rd one will be the charm :o) Hopefully it won't be until the economy is doing a little better and the budget isn't quite so tight.
Ooh, for those of you that are local, it was Schluender Construction that saved the day :o)