Our condo got flooded on Saturday. Yeah, that was a good time. I was at work, actually, and Adam called me telling me I had to get home immediately. I literally ran there (falling down the stairs at some point… yeah) and when I finally stepped foot inside, I saw at least 4 inches of water all over the living room, wet carpet in the hallway and a few inches of water in the kitchen. Basically the sewer drain in the back of our building got clogged when it started to rain, and all the water started rushing into our patio and pushed our back door open and flooded the place. It was a lot of dirty water (use your imagination here) and it was just a horrifying experience. Our neighbors helped us undrain the sewer, which stopped the flow and allowed us to bucket water out of the living room. Meanwhile, I used every towel we had in the house (and our neighbors’ house) and tried to soak all the water from under the cabinets and the floor. My wrist still hurts from all the squeezing. My parents were on a mission to find us a water pump, but eventually we told them to just bring us a wet shop vac. Until they got there, towel by towel we soaked up every inch of the living room. Here are a few photos of the blood bath. I was covered in gunk but Adam made me wash up and take these photos for insurance or any city claims we may submit.

As you may have guessed, we spent most of the afternoon/evening trying to clean up the mess. We extracted over 10 gallons of water just out of our carpet in the hallway. Thankfully Adam built up this little barricade between the living room and hallway so at least it prevented the water from going too far into the rest of the place (our bedrooms are dry). Our living room floors are 100% okay (we are still trying to figure out whether there is a risk of mold growing under there, but the carpet is soaking wet days later. The shop vac is unable to extract that much water at this point so we’re not sure what to do.

Anyways, we’ll get through it, I’m sure. Maybe we’ll at least become friends with our new neighbors out of this. They were extremely helpful – unclogged the sewer drain, brought lots of towels and around 7pm on Saturday even brought us dinner, fresh out of their oven. How incredibly nice is that?!!!

We weren’t going to stop until the mess was cleaned up, but when she came over with a hot pan of lasagna and meatballs, we realized we were actually starving. Talk about a random act of kindness. Adam and I couldn’t get over this. Definitely one of the nicest things a stranger has ever done for either one of us.

By the way, my laptop charger got submerged in water and is not currently working so I’m using Adam’s laptop which is painful (switching from a mac to a pc is not as easy as one might think), so I’ll try to keep it brief. Basically, this whole flood in our condo is a metaphor for my life. It been ridiculous at work, I feel like I can’t catch up with anything at home and the last drop in the bucket which I can’t ignore is that I gained so much weight recently that it’s affecting everything from how my clothes fit to my fitness level at the gym and how I generally feel about myself. I stepped on the scale last week and let’s just say that I haven’t seen that number in 4 years (!!!). I’ve been ignoring this issue since then but it’s time to clean up the flood mess!! I am not going to feel bad about myself, I’m going to do something about it. The plan of attack:

- Plan meals for the week and stick to the plan!! It’s ok to make minor adjustments based on taste preferences at the moment but I will stick to 3 meals + 2 snacks + 1 dessert (in moderation) equation until some progress is made in the weight dept.

- No mindless snacking/eating. My hours at home are going to get all out of whack over the next few weeks as I spend majority of my time in the office. That usually means stress eating. As mentioned above, I will make sure to stick to the pre-planned meals and snacks only. When life gets crazy like this, structure should be a good thing. I can do this!!!

- Continue making exercise a priority. I’ve been pretty good about this recently. I hope I can continue to keep it up despite the longer hours at work. I usually need a mental break mid-day anyways. A good sweat session should kill 2 birds with 1 stone (or something along those lines that’s less gross ).

How does this sound? I think it sounds good. I did A LOT of prep work last night for the next few days. Hopefully this builds up the momentum I’ll need.

So since I haven’t blogged in a few days, here are the highlights of this weekend’s eats.

Iggy’s ww bagel with olive jalapeno cream cheese and tomatoes

These tasted like sugar cookies with a pomegranate twist. Amazing!!

Beet/pesto/goat cheese and pecan panini + leftover b.good southwestern chicken salad

Spinach/artichoke hearts and mushroom calzone from Mangia (a treat on Friday night)

It was really delicious. We’ll definitely order from that place again!

I had the leftovers for lunch on Saturday. Yum!

+ Carly’s Confection 7 layer bar with a twist. So much white chocolate goodness. Another amazing treat for sure.

Sunday brunch at Sel de la Terre

Virgin bloody mary (I had to go to work!)

I had 2 of these. They weren’t very spicy but were definitely delicious.

Bread basket - I helped myself to a mini cinnamon roll and a cracker

For my entree I ordered the brioche French toast, strawberries, honey roasted almonds and vanilla butter.

It was really fantastic!! I removed that big butter blob and didn’t use any maple syrup because it was already rich and flavorful on its own. The strawberries were amazingly fresh and sweet as well. The sides of the french toast were perfectly grilled and the middle was kind of goey (souffle like) which normally would gross me out but it was so tasty that I didn’t care about texture. I would order this again in a heart beat (I ate half for brunch and then ate the other half later in the day as a “snack”).

Garlic/thyme smothered pork chop over qunoia and roasted rhubarb (adopted from this recipe).

It was great having a home-cooked meal again! Adam and I ate every morsel of our plates and I can’t wait for leftovers which I plan on making into a sandwich tomorrow.

All right, time for work! I apologize in advance for my random blogging schedule. I’m thinking of doing a picture collage at the end of each day and noting how my plan of attack is working so far. What do you think? Are you up for it?

I’ll be back with a bang in a few weeks. I have some giveaways in the works and a few posts that just need a little more research time. Happy Monday!