Random things I learned this week:
1. A washing machine has a valve for the purpose of shutting off the water when the tub has filled to the proper level. This is a mechanical device. It can fail. It sometimes does.
2. There are formulas for determining how much water per second pours out of an overflowing washer and how many gallons of water are required to fill a bathroom floor to a depth of one inch. When you’re busy mopping up water, you don’t care about these formulas.
3. Two flat-sided plastic bowls meant to store leftovers, one in each hand, are surprisingly effective tools for scooping up water from a vinyl floor.
4. A sponge mop and a large hand-held natural sponge, each capable of soaking up a pint or so of water, are useful items no household should be without.
5. Once a bathroom floor fills to a certain level, water will seep through the wall into the adjacent storage room. When there are two boxes of important papers and two boxes of rock samples against that wall, the law of inevitable consequences insures that the boxes of papers will be in the direct path of the water while the boxes of rocks stay high and dry.
6. The roughly 30-inch by 30-inch area of nice carpet just outside the door of a flooded bathroom can hold an astonishing amount of water.
7. Pressing this water out of the carpet can require all the old towels from the rag bag, all the dirty towels that had been intended for the next load of laundry, and several clean towels. (Household hint: use the dark ones first.)
8. Once the water is soaked up, what do you do with a pile of waterlogged towels? Why, toss them into the washing machine, of course. Um—never mind.
9. When someone has had a skin cancer removed from his forehead, he is sent home with a list of care instructions. Oddly enough, mopping up water and moving heavy boxes of stuff to drier ground are not on that list as recommended activities.
10. When the writer of a weekly blog post is scrounging for a topic, she may hope something out of the ordinary will happen. The writer should be careful what she wishes for.
Practical Prairie Woman 
Once again, Ginny and I giggled our way through your latest post! We had a water problem in our basement before I learned that one has to keep the eave troughs clear of debris so the water from heavy rain is directed away from the basement. I bought a Shop Vac and in no time, I sucked the water up, even did a fair job on the rugs. Beats sopping the water up with towels. Thanks for the fun.
That prompts me to add item no. 11: “A shop vac is a useful item that no household should be without.” It seems to me we used to have one of those . . .