For a bit of background, I have three windowsills in my new basement bedroom, one of which continues to fill up and flood during nearly every storm. It's the reason why I had to get the carpet replaced, and why I'm forced to stay in a guest bedroom for now. The window was replaced before and also sealed, but that hasn't done anything to stop the water. 

The window flooded last night, so my mom partially ripped up the carpet and scheduled it to be fixed tomorrow. But, the window flooded again today, and it was exponentially worse. I'm just glad I was around to witness the start of it. 

It started as a faint trickling I didn't really pay attention to, and pretty soon it sounded like a fountain. I glanced over my shoulder away from my laptop, and was immediately hit with a wave of panic. My windowsill was filling up with water, and it was filling fast, so I sprung out of my seat, calling for help!

My mom's boyfriend immediately ran outside, while my mom ran to get our next door neighbor's help. The whole time, I'm stuffing towels around the window and on the floor below, as well as moving everything I could away from the window and ripping up the carpet. My mom ran down with a few buckets, while the neighbor helped my mom's boyfriend identify the problem and figure out how to fix it. Thankfully, we had a water pump, so they worked on getting that going before doing anything else. 

By then, my window was literally a fish tank, and the water was spewing out of it like a hose. The water was pooling at my feet, and no matter what we did, it just got worse. Eventually, the men got the water pump working, and slowly the water subsided. Meanwhile, my mom was running up and down the stairs, taking buckets that were full of water and giving me empty buckets she dumped out. The water was coming out so fast, that the two gallon buckets would fill up before my mom could come down with an empty bucket. I was ready and waiting for my window to shatter from the amount of water inside it, but it luckily never did. 

Finally, after a half-hour of chaos, it was finally over. The water pump did its job, and we put several layers of plastic and tarp over my windowsill, and nailed it to the house and the ground. It stopped raining, and hopefully it'll stay dry until the morning when my windowsill will hopefully be fixed. 

The issue? The gutter was aimed at my windowsill, which is how it filled up so fast. It only took 30 years for someone to figure that out, and we took out that part of the gutter and will work on rerouting it tomorrow. Also, we'll install a drain in my windowsill, re-calk my window after the 5th time, replace the carpet that got wet, repaint the wall, and hopefully after all that, I'll be able to settle into my new house. 

To be honest, this isn't the first time something like this has happened to me. I'm probably on my 30th life, and I'm ok with that. Previous houses have tried to kill me with black mold, carbon monoxide, tornadoes, bad wiring, mice, wasps, radon, 7 feet of snow, and more. However, never in my life have I seen water shooting out of a window into my bedroom before, and hopefully that won't happen again. I guess I should just be thankful God has my back, even though He really has to work way harder to keep me alive. 

For the next few days, I'll be keeping an eye on that window and on my health. Who knows what was in that water, and I could definitely get Pseudomonas from that. However, I've washed myself off and that water was pretty fresh, so that's the least of my worries. 

This house has had a lot of unexpected problems since we got here, but nothing like this windowsill incident. I can work with coyotes, huge wolf spiders, an inoperable garbage disposal, and annoying rich neighbors. But I don't mess with water! Nope! I'm done with illness, and I'm not about to get sick again!