Tuesday, September 16, 2008

10.5" of Rain

We had a doozy of a rain storm over the weekend. We got more than 10 inches of rain in three days. Our backyard didn't get the memo about it because it happens about every ten years and the house is only nine years old.



The boys thought it was great fun..."swimming in the backyard!" Or, rather, "turning the backyard into a water park."





I let them play out there for almost two hours. It was about 70 degrees. It was raining the whole time. Hard. At one point, the rain was just pounding down and I thought to myself, I better get them out of there. So, I went to the door and watched them playing in the pounding rain. And I thought to myself, What's the big deal? So they'll get even wetter! So I quietly went back in. A bit later, I made some tea for them to warm up with and called them in. I figured that I should get the cool mom award, but they were bummed because "the water is getting really high now and we can really swim!" Oh well!


On a bummer note...our basement flooded. Everywhere. Hundreds of gallons of water. About an inch or so. Everywhere. It started as a trickle in a known-to-be-affected area, which we thought was under control. Then, it started coming in the other known-to-be-affected area, which took awhile, but became under control.

Then it started coming up from the ground. That's right, the water came up through the floor of the basement. Perhaps it's because there were "water puddles" under the grass outside. They raised up, ever so gracefully, like a mound of grass. When you stepped on them, you squished down about 6 inches of water underneath.

And all of that water came into our basement.

We started with the carpet cleaner, sucking up the bits of water here and there. Then we got the wet/dry vac. We both worked down there for hours upon hours. My asthma acted up big time with all that humidity and I was panting and panting, trying to catch my breath. M would tell me to go up, but I would shake my head, No, I'm staying to help. Finally, he'd help me see that I couldn't BREATHE and breathing is rather important to living. So, he stayed and I collapsed upstairs, finally catching my breath an hour or so later.

We went to bed at midnight with most of the water cleaned up. We woke up to a basement full of water...even in places where it hadn't been before. Ugh! It kept coming up until about noon on Monday. Now we have a commercial dehumidifier going (along with our regular dehumidifier) and a commercial fan (along with our box fan). Yesterday, we kept the AC on at 65 cold degrees to help dry everything out. It's finally dry.

The irony is that the boys and I had just spent three hours cleaning up the basement on Saturday morning so that they could show their grandparents their Nintendo Wii games next weekend. I organized all of the Cub Scout stuff and consolidated it from 5 boxes to three. Lots of work. The boys picked up their toys and rearranged some things. At first I thought that all of that hard work was for naught, but then I realized that it was a blessing because we were able to quickly move things to higher ground since it was all organized. I'm definitely looking at the bright side -- like, good thing our basement isn't finished with carpeting -- it would all be ruined.

Now, the basement is water-free, but has mountains of things piled up upon couches and tables. So much for the Nintendo Wii demonstration -- as R says, at least I saved the electronic equipment from the flood. That's a nice optimistic view for sure.

6 comments:

CaliforniaGrammy said...

Oh.My.Gosh! Unbelievable! Every ten years???

Buy, hey . . . now Wii demo?

I'm do glad you were able to catch your breath, breathing IS important!

I'm so sorry, though, really. What a bummer.

The boys sure had a memorable time. Great pictures.

See you soon!

CaliforniaGrammy said...

Wooops! I meant NO Wii demo?

I'll just have to wait 'til next time, I guess.

A.J. said...

Oh, man. Big time drag. There' a lesson for us all to get organized, in case we have to move stuff in a hurry. I'd be in trouble at this moment in time. I'd better go get something done.

Always take care of the breathing first.
And just come back to the west coast!

CaliforniaGrammy said...

Amen, AJ!

Aunt Patty said...

What a comeria!!! In Italian that is slang for a nightmareish or lots of hassle type situation. At least that's how I've heard it. Glad you attended to the breathing part, that is pretty high on the list. On the positive side, you have another nine years of dry time, yeah? Or you could come out to sunny CA and keep warmer and dryer. Like Big Pine, we rarely have rain here. And it's close to Mammoth winter sports, and we have lots of lakes for M. Love you, AP

jennavar said...

Woweesh! That is a lot of rain! But man oh man that lake in the backyard looks like a lot of fun! A water slide even. Bummer of a birthmark Hal on the basement situation. I'm glad everthing is okay now.