She woke him at around five in the morning, and said, “We have water in our basement.” He stirred slightly, as a slight stir is generally all he’s capable of at that particular time of the day, and somewhat consciously mustered, “Hmm”, and drifted back to a mostly unconscious state, rationalizing that it surely can’t be that much water.

Rationalizing towards the best case scenario is the default mode when one isn’t ready to be pulled away from their preferred allotment of shuteye.

The mostly unconscious state he had managed to rationalize himself back into was soon interrupted by what sounded a bit like furniture being moved about in the basement. Not so much “moved”, but the halting push, pull, and drag sound objects make when one person is struggling to move more than what one person should be moving.

We are faced with choices of varying magnitude and significance throughout our waking hours each and every day of our mostly upright, mostly breathing existence. Some choices we can choose to not choose a choice. Without our assent they flitter by and drift into the abys of choices not chosen, sometimes never to be seen nor heard from again, but often times not.

The wisdom we gain from the act of living life often informs us as to the choices we should heed and those not in need of our attention, immediate or otherwise. Whether we listen to the wisdom life is laying before us is another matter.

The life wisdom one gains from being married for 23-years informed him that ignoring those halting sounds of struggle would not be wise, and this was a choice in need of his immediate assent.

The earlier settled upon drowsy rationalization that there “surely can’t be that much water” quickly subsided as he stepped from the last basement step onto the basement carpet. The carpet squished beneath his foot, and that squishy indentation soon filled with enough water to cover his foot. With rationalization dead in the water, he uttered a string of words that made the sailor adrift on the ottoman blush.

As you’ve most likely surmised, the “she” and “he” of this tale of the babbling Berber brook is my wife and I. We had plans to spend our 23rd wedding anniversary lounging unrepentantly at our cabin in Montana. We had plans. We had a dry basement. We had dry carpet in our dry basement. We had dry sheetrock in our dry basement. Plans change. So it goes.

Surprisingly, wet carpet is heavier than dry carpet, and much like an intoxicated college roommate, not very helpful in getting itself up a flight of steps. The whole “life wisdom” deal soon had me cutting the carpet into smaller and smaller pieces, as the steps seemed to get steeper and my legs seemed to get stubbier.

Note that I don’t recommend using these same measures with the previously mentioned intoxicated college roommate…most of the time.

It’s been a very wet spring here in the Black Hills, so our basement isn’t the only one that failed to stem the seepage of groundwater. It is the only one that we’ve had to spend large portions of our time and energy attending to, so it is one too many.

I’m well aware that it could be worse, most everything could be, but we had plans.