Our cup runneth over

It's been an exhausting couple of months weeks days. We just dropped our last houseguest off at JFK International and right about now I could use a long, cold Gin & Tonic in a deep, warm bath to start a relaxing evening. Unfortunately, while I am certain to get the former, the latter will have to wait another day as we awoke this morning to the sound of water splashing over the basement floor. Normally we have a dry basement; the plumber pulled out the leaky copper pipes down there and installed new pex and pvc as part of the bathroom/laundry renovation and we had the water heater replaced eighteen months ago. That left only one other possibility: the cesspool had filled with water after the torrential downpours of the last week or two (several neighbors are still pumping groundwater from their basements). Running down to the cellar we discovered grey water coming up from the plug hole in the sink, not the usual way you expect the plumbing to work. After we sent two other houseguests home to shower we called the guy with the pumping equipment and an hour later - and a few hundred dollars poorer - we were pronounced "good" and instructed to go easy on the water use for twenty-four hours... Oh, the joys of home ownership!