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Last year, for my birthday, I got an appendectomy with a side of Iritis. Megan got to sit in the hospital with me and in the week following the hospital, deal with my whimpering and moaning and photophobia after she got home from work.

Put it down in the record books, we're two-for-two. It's been raining pretty much non-stop for two days now. Yesterday, while Megan was checking the basement window that we had a problem with last November, she noticed that there was a lot of water built up right around our sump pump, on the other side of the basement. We didn't realize until the plumber came later that the other basement window was leaking – we had assumed that the pump was broken and water backed up. (Oh, and the window isn't even fixed yet!)

Yesterday also happened to be the day we were planning on celebrating our birthdays with our friends. It was the day the stars and people's work schedules aligned, and if we missed the opportunity we wouldn't get another one for several weeks.

For the next couple of hours we soaked up as much as we could with our spare towels, ran them through the spin cycle, and at one point, the dryer, and (no rinse) repeat. Between towlings, I called our Home Warranty company and found out what hoops we had to jump through for them to cover fixing the sump pump, which as it turns out was rusted and broken too. It's stupid, but basically I had to call a licensed & insured contractor, have them come to the house, prepare an estimate, and call back, at which point they would take some of that information down, page an "Adjuster," call me back, and conference us together so the Adjuster could talk to the plumber. That might seem reasonable during business hours on a weekday but when your basement is flooding and Noah's Ark floats down your street, on a Sunday morning, it's pretty close to impossible.

I called Roto Rooter first, because I was familiar with the name. They gave me an ETA of 1:00. I could deal with that. Then they called back and said 2:00. Fine. At least they're coming same-day. When I called back at 2:30 – no plumber to be found yet – they said they weren't sure if/when he would make it out that day. So, particularly peeved with them, I canceled our appointment and dug out the phone book.

I called every plumber A-L in the phone book, leaving messages and paging people until I finally got a call-back from someone in the H's at about 3:30. He told me he had just finished a job and could come to our house next. Hallelujah!

He also told me that they charge $157.50 an hour, including drive-time to get to my house. Ouch.

And since the Home Warranty company needed to talk to him and get the estimate before approving the charge, I was weary about having him come out. After arguing with the Warranty company's answering service, I decided that we would just eat the cost if they wouldn't cover it, and told him to come on out.

Shortly after 4:00 the plumber arrives and starts working on the sump. Ten minutes later our friends call to let us know they're half-way here. We're already on Plan C at this point. We come up with some cock-eyed scheme to do Fondue if the plumber is going to be a while. Lucky for us, when our friends arrive the plumber says he'll only be another hour or so. We decide to go back to Plan B – wait for the plumber to leave, then go out to dinner.

By 5:00 the plumber is finishing up, but still no call from the Adjuster. I called back and was told that they had called me but it went to my voicemail. They re-paged the Adjuster and we went back to the waiting game. Clock's ticking for the plumber.

At quarter after I called back and complained again. This time they put me on hold and paged the Adjuster again, and when he called back they conferenced us together. Finally! I barely said two words to the guy – he talked to the plumber and then said he didn't need to talk to me, and hung up. Whatever, as long as they pay for it I don't care.

We practically followed the plumber out the door. We went out to dinner (Hibachi) and had a great time (caught flying shrimp) in spite of all of the trouble we had to put up with during the day.