Someone Angered the Rain Gods (and I don't think it was me...)

image found here

As I was arriving home this afternoon, it started to rain. Then it started to pour. I took video.


The end of the video is my feet showing how soaked the carpet is.

Here are some pictures:

the water coming into the basement rec room

the water outside my mom's basement office door. I had to clear the drain a few times to help the water go down. by the dirt on the wall, you can kind of tell how high it was.

me checking out how deep the water was outside the rec room door.
turns out it wasn't terribly deep where I was, but it was somehow all angled toward the door.

you can kind of see the water squishing out of the carpet by my toes.

we did a lot of vacuuming.
thank goodness for wet/dry vacs!

my forgotten lunch.
pulled it out around 12:20 or so... didn't eat it for almost another two hours.

see that dry-ish looking spot by the wall? that's where caitlin had vacuumed when this picture was taken. serious suction power on that thing.

the dirt line on the bottom of the door showing how high the water got outside.

and just a couple of hours after the rain...
a beautiful, sunny day.

during clean-up, I sent this text to my dad who has gone out on multiple disaster relief efforts through his job (the most recent being Haiti). it says - "is the agency going to send you to draper for disaster relief? i know this one girl* whose adrenaline is all gone..."

*"this one girl" = me. i was exhausted at that point.

the bathtub we used to empty the wet/dry vac (while vacuuming outside and in) after it got full (which it did, repeatedly).

a few amazing things from the day -

- three of us were home and able to start tackling the problem quickly
- my mom was in a session and her client saw water coming into the office as soon as it made it past the waiting room tile
-- if she hadn't been meeting with him, it would have been at least another 10/15 minutes before noticing the problem (that's when Guy woke up, and Caitlin would have seen it when she went down to get him)
-- also, my mom's client was willing to jump right in and start taking care of things, and had me invite his son (who was waiting in the car) to come in and help as well. two extra sets of hands made a big difference - especially in the beginning
- and thankfully, the storm was a micro-burst. furious for a while, but gone fairly quickly.

I Like Nice People

Lessons Learned -

Lesson 1:
when the bluest sky you can see is this far away, there's a reason for that

Lesson 2:
when it's been thundering and raining on and off all day, it's very likely that it will continue doing so.
Mother Nature doesn't bluff

Lesson 3:
there are nice people in the world

while walking with Dingo, the stroller, a blanket, my nephew, and a leash, I thought I could beat the next bout of rain.
that didn't happen.
while walking past one of many houses, I heard someone call out, "Do you need an umbrella? Hold on, I'll bring you one."
This nice man ran out holding an umbrella out for me.
I took it back to him after returning home - much drier than I would have been had I not had an umbrella to use.

I'll say it again - I Like Nice People.
I also love walks in the rain.
And I love thunder.

sidenote: when I pass this, it almost makes me want to buy a telephone poll and put it up in my yard so I can grow something that looks this cool.

a closer look