sigh (a real estate update)

sorry for the lack of blogging. we've been scrambling to get the house ready to go on the market so we can be in philly in july. we were really rocking things out and we were all set to go on the market on march 1st (2 weeks ago) until we were hit with back-to-back nor'easters a couple of days before. the massive amounts of rain caused our annual puddle-pond to appear (see 2008 version.) we didn't really want to go on the market with 1/3 of our yard (i.e. 1/3 of an acre) underwater so we decided to wait a week and see what we could do to expedite the disappearance of the water. - first, jeremy bought a pump and tried pumping the water into the woods behind our house. he left it running for a couple of days with no visible progress. so jeremy called every septic company, pool company, and flood restoration company he could find to see if someone could come pump the water out and haul it away, but no one could help us out. one of them did recommend that we call the fire department about it (?) and since we were desperate, jeremy called. our adorable little town fire department sent a guy out to scope things out. he said there wasn't anything he could do to help, but also added that he had been here about 4-5 years ago (before we lived here) when there was 5 feet of water in our basement. he said that the sloping of our yard that causes the puddle-pond was actually the solution to keeping the water out of the cellar. i guess that's a good thing but still doesn't help us with the unsightly lake in our yard. fire dude put in a call to the town highway department to see if there was anything they could do for us. the highway guy came out and said it was too bad we didn't have a catch basin near us to pump the excess water into. jeremy did some scoping and found one at the end of our street, about 1/4 mile from our house. he went down to town hall to ask if we could run a hose to there and pump it out. miraculously, they said ok. when jer talked to our next-door neighbor to tell him that he would be running hose across his front yard, our awesome neighbor offered up his super-strength pump. so he and jer set up both pumps and just started pumping the water to the other side of our yard. after 3 days of pumping and nice weather (last monday) the lake was gone! woo hoo. so we gave the realtor the thumbs up to put the house on the market. we went live on march 8th. - on wednesday, we ran into another of our neighbors who has lived here forever and we learned that the land our house was built on used to be part of a farm before it was parcelled out to build houses. and there was a pond in our yard. like a real pond. good thinking 1960 house builder. that won't ever be an issue. eye roll. - so over this past week we had a couple of broker tours to build awareness of our little house and today we were scheduled to have our first real open house. but alas, another nor'easter rolled into town yesterday. 5 inches of rain later, the puddle-pond came back bigger than ever. and it is still freaking raining. ugh. there is also water coming into the cellar in a few spots through some teeny tiny cracks in the foundation i guess. nice. - we still had the open house and four families came through. i guess it's a good thing that the rain seemed to keep people at home. now we just need it to stop raining so we can try to make it disappear again. and the news just said we should expect 2-3 more inches of rain tonight before this finally stops. good times. - some pics of the pond as of this afternoon. these do nothing to illustrate the fact that this thing is more than 2 feet deep. swimming, anyone? -