there's no place like...home?

so i have an apartment.  which i have been unable to live in for going on four days now.

for most of last week, hampton roads saw nothing but rain.  for most of the week i felt as though i was walking on eggshells, because i live in a basement unit.  and we all know that apartments can almost always be counted on for one thing...poor plumbing.

we made it through most of the week with no issues and i thought i was in the clear.  friday's forecast showed no rain, warmer weather and a break from puddles.  so thursday night me and my partner in crime were lounged out in the living room, catching up on our dvr'd shows and chit-chatting.  suddenly R. jumped up from the couch, "do you hear that?" me: "hear what? i can't hear anything."

he ran around the couch and down the short distance to our bathroom and thats when the horror began.  their was sewage spewing out of the bathtub drain, covering the tub in this black/ink-like liquid and the toilet was just flowing all over my bathroom floor.  we quickly grabbed all the towels we had to create a barricade between the bathroom and the hallway (this did not work).  everything people had flushed was suddenly in my bathroom, hallway and kitchen.  i'm not going to get into how disgusting it was or how badly it smelled.  but it got to the point where we couldn't make it stop or scoop the water up quickly enough.  the maintenance guy i had called as soon as we saw the water finally showed up about 45 minutes after i initially called him.  he came with no tools, no shop-vac, nothing.  all he did was come in and say: "wow...thats bad!" and then returned outside to wait for a plumber to show up.

about an hour later, he (the maintenance guy) shows back up, knocking on my door and exclaims:  "so...good news! its not our fault or anything we did, its the city's. so you guys are gonna have to call the city of newport news and hopefully if enough people call tonight, they'll get someone out here earlier than in the morning.  so yeah, call the city and have a good night."

are you kidding me?!

at this point i am holding back tears.  my apartment is ruined, i have now lost all my towels and a good amount of clothing and you're not going to do anything to help me?

we quickly packed up a few things, grabbed iain out of bed and headed to R.'s mom's house.  showers were taken as quickly as possible, shoes were thrown away and the waiting game began.

friday morning we returned back to the apartment to see that nothing had been done yet.  anger had set in again.  and the smell made me nauseous.  friday was supposed to be a great day.  i had my workday already planned out, it was iain's birthday and we were gonna go out for a family dinner later on that evening.  however, i ended up having to call out of work because of the flooding which kind of turned the entire day into a nightmare, but i still tried to make the best of it.  after noting that the apartment was still a wreck, we returned to R.'s moms house and waited until the afternoon before we checked again.

at about 1pm, we returned to check on our place and they had been in the apartment.  from what we could see some of the carpet padding had been ripped up, water had been sucked out of the carpet and out of the bathroom.  but that was it.  the smell was horrifying.

obviously we couldn't stay there again, so we decided to spend one more evening with R's mom and saturday we would go get lots of cleaning supplies and deal with it ourselves.  we spent a good 4 hours cleaning yesterday and the smell would not go away.  there is extensive damage to our bathroom and in my opinion, that carpet needs to be replaced.  of course, our rental office is not open on the weekends (how convenient).  so tomorrow after my dental appointment, i am going to have to go speak with property managment and see what they're going to do.  at this point, they have two options.  they can replace the carpet, fix all the damage in the bathroom or they can move me into a new unit.

the apartment is unsanitary.  its as simple as that.  you cannot expect a couple with a child to continue living in a unit after something like that has happened.  renters have rights and i now know mine thanks to a friend, so i know exactly what i am entitled to.

i'll keep you all updated on the status of this problem.  i'm hoping i will be given some good news tomorrow.