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Late March Thursday

Thursday 25 March 2021

Today, we ran one of the students’ favorite activities: a Socratic seminar. There are few things fourteen-year-olds love more than arguing, and a Socratic seminar (obviously altered for Covid safety) is the perfect way to wind up a week. Today’s discussion: who was the most morally upright of the minor characters in To Kill a Mockingbird.

After school, we got to hang around a bit because of a tornado shelter-in-place order.

The few kids who were still around sat in the hallway and made silly poses.

The last time we had a shelter-in-place order, the whole area got flooded.

The journey home was dark.

Day 74: Rainy Dickens

Thursday 28 May 2020

Another Rainy Day

We are sick of the rain. Simply sick of it. Every day for the last — how long has it even been? A week? Day in, day out, at some point during every single day, it rains. The air is heavy and moist, and it’s just not a pleasant experience — though it could be worse with all the flooding others are getting.

Today, we finally got outside in the afternoon. It was muggy but sunny. What else could we do but head back to our new fort location and work on it. Doing what exactly? Well, chopping things down.

Some things were much easier to chop than others. The mushy, termite-infested stump we discovered to be such a few months back when I gave what appeared to be a 10-foot stump a push and broke it off about two feet from the ground — that stump is quite solid a little further down.

Of course, the sprinkles that filled the morning and early afternoon and kept us inside came back with friends in the early evening just as we got back from our walk.

I took a few experimental shots — long exposure. Long exposure for daylight pictures. The above image was about 15 seconds. I don’t know what I was hoping to accomplish — get streaks of rain in the image, I guess — but it just turned out to be a bland shot of our front yard.

Later in the evening, we tried it inside. When I explained what a long exposure inside would do, the kids thought it was a very unique idea. “Make us ghosts!”

Done.

Dickensian Commonalities

I’ve been listening to Dickens’s Dombey and Son on Spotify this week — the first time in close to 20 years that I’ve read a new (to me) Dickens book. One of the things that I’m enjoying most is the simple pleasure of discovering new examples of Dickensian acerbic wit, like this:

After the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense time to little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor’s walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out his right foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semi-circular sweep towards the left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about him as though he were saying, “Can anybody have the goodness to indicate any subject, in any direction, on which I am uninformed? I rather think not.”

Add to that a classic Dickensian name — can there be a more inept educator than someone named Doctor Blimber? — and it just brought out of me a loud laugh.

I’m discovering too that this is another example of Dickensian exposes on the Victorian view of children, which often enough bordered on abuse. And as always, Dickens does it with a flourish of humor that still has enough darkness around the edges to make the reader shudder just a little at what the child must be going through.

Poor Paul Dombey, at six, has been deposited at a boarding school in an effort to make up lost time in his education due to his generally ill condition. The headmaster, Dr. Blimber of above, is known for instilling in the children a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin grammar and little else and of assuming that he’s aptly prepared his pupils for the challenges of life. Paul, on his second day of school, is given a pile of books to read and master. He does the best he can with them:

‘Now, Dombey,’ said Miss Blimber. ‘How have you got on with those books?’

They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin—names of things, declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and preliminary rules—a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights and measures, and a little general information. When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereof afterwards obtruded themselves into number three, which slided into number four, which grafted itself on to number two. So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him.

‘Oh, Dombey, Dombey!’ said Miss Blimber, ‘this is very shocking.’

‘If you please,’ said Paul, ‘I think if I might sometimes talk a little to old Glubb, I should be able to do better.’

‘Nonsense, Dombey,’ said Miss Blimber. ‘I couldn’t hear of it. This is not the place for Glubbs of any kind. You must take the books down, I suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day’s instalment of subject A, before you turn at all to subject B. I am sorry to say, Dombey, that your education appears to have been very much neglected.’

‘So Papa says,’ returned Paul; ‘but I told you—I have been a weak child. Florence knows I have. So does Wickam.’

‘Who is Wickam?’ asked Miss Blimber.

‘She has been my nurse,’ Paul answered.

‘I must beg you not to mention Wickam to me, then,’ said Miss Blimber. ‘I couldn’t allow it’.

‘You asked me who she was,’ said Paul.

Bear in mind that Paul at this point is six years old. “How is your Latin grammar?” asks the headmaster. “I am sorry to say, Dombey, that your education appears to have been very much neglected,” declares his tutor, the headmaster’s daughter. Just what were they expecting of a six-year-old boy?

Day 70: Flood

Sunday 24 May 2020

It started raining around two this afternoon, first sporadic rain with fat, lazy drops, then steady rain, then torrential rain.

In the past, such rain worried me because of flooding in our basement. With the leak in our roof, I now have different concerns. As the storm grew and the wind blew harder, I wonder whether or not I’d secured the two tarps protecting our roof well enough to keep them in place with such a storm. There was really nothing I could do about it at the time, of course: it would not have been remotely safe to head onto the roof in a storm to put down additional weight to keep the tarps from flying off.

In the end, my worries were for nothing: the tarps stayed in place; the sump basin didn’t even have much water in it, so the basement wasn’t even close to being threatened.

Yet we still had a lake in our backyard: the creek didn’t crest but we had essentially one big puddle in the lowest part of our yard, so after we finished playing a game (“Ticket to Ride” — I never play to win; I play to block other players — you can’t lose if you’re not trying to win!), E and I struck out to see what was going on in the neighborhood.

We weren’t prepared for what we found:

To begin with, there is a house basically in a hole that has an enormous backyard — I thought it was a park when we first moved here.

The road that goes by it was closed because their yard, which is in reality just a drainage basin for the surrounding community, was completely flooded.

Completely.

So much so that the culvert under the road was completely submerged, creating a whirlpool as the water tried to drain.

We stood in the road looking at the whirlpool, right at the edge of the water. We’re past the time of E asking questions like, “Daddy, what would happen if I fell in that water?” He knows. He likes to show he knows. “Boy, Daddy, if I fell in that…” and his voice trailed off for effect.

It gave me a little shudder, the shudder of a parent having nightmarish visions of the worst possible outcome. Once such thoughts enter my mind, it’s hard to shake them. The Boy seemed to realize that. “Come on, Daddy, let’s go back to the other side.

All that water — undoubtedly the worst flooding we’ve seen there. It was still nothing compared to what we saw later, downstream. We walk by here almost every night — it’s K’s favorite walk.

The creek that was forming the whirlpool earlier joins with another creek at this point, and the two completely covered the flat land around it.

We headed back home, still having fun on the way.

In the evening, we went for a walk to show the girls what it looked like. Of course, most of the water had subsided, but there was still enough to be impressive, and just enough to enjoy safely.

The Flood of 2020: Aftermath

Friday 7 February 2020

Today we got to see what the county looked like while the rain poured yesterday. It was pretty much as you might expect.

We also go to see what damage the food did to our backyard. It was pretty much as you might expect.

I was on my way to school when K called to say that school had in fact been canceled, so returning, I stopped by our favorite park to see how the dam looked. It was pretty much as you might expect.

Finally, I searched for video footage of what people were experiencing in the county and Google delivered to me a couple of videos of what people have done in previous floods in the area.

It was pretty much as you might expect.

The Flood of 2020

Thursday 6 February 2020

We knew the storm was coming: the forecast for our area was around two inches. “That’s enough to flood our basement if it comes fast enough,” I thought.

When I left for work, it wasn’t raining; when I got to work, it was. Still, I thought we might be able to squeak through without much harm.

K took L to the doctor in the morning and then went back to the house before heading to work. She texted me at 10:36: “I’m back home. I am working from home today. It looks pretty bad. I’m going to keep an eye on the basement.”

At 10:42, she sent me another text: “I just saw the sump pump turn on and pump out a little bit of water. There is a little water under the plastic [vapor barrier in the crawl space]. It doesn’t look good for today.”

She sent me a picture a minute later:

“Oh, there’s no way we’re going to escape a flooded basement,” I thought. Still, it’s usually no big deal: we work for a couple of hours with a shop-vac and everything’s fine.

“Those hammocks will get destroyed,” I replied. Then ten minutes later at 10:54, I text: “Can you see water going into the pump basin? A trickle from the basement side perhaps?”

At 11:04 she sent me another picture.

And then two minutes later, at 11:06, the next text from K: “The basement is flooding.”

The trouble was, I couldn’t just dash away. We at school were having our own adventure: not a drill but an actual shelter-in-place reality. Three hundred eighth graders huddled against the wall in the corridor for almost forty minutes.

At 11:25, I texted our neighbor: “You guys flooding?”

“Creeks are bad…house is fine,” he responded. With pictures.

“K said we’re flooding,” I texted. “I’m stuck here because we’re in a tornado lockdown.”

“Want me to go help her?” he immediately replied. And that, ladies and gentlemen, would be exhibit 344,038 for the argument that he is the best neighbor one could have.

Finally, when we had everything under control at the school and the kids fed and watered, I got a text from K at 12:35: “I have been pumping for an hour and a half now. G[, our neighbor,] is here to help. I think you should come home as soon as possible. The rain is not going to stop and water is coming in like through a faucet.”

I went to the cafeteria and found the eighth-grade administrator. “My wife just said that our basement is flooding. I’m heading home. Someone’s going to have to cover my last three classes.”

“Go,” he said.

I went to the front office, where the sixth-grade administrator was talking to the receptionist. “My wife just said that our basement is flooding,” I began. “And you need coverage,” the receptionist said. “On it.”

“Go,” said both the administrator and receptionist.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, along with the calm way they implemented the tornado shelter-in-place lockdown would be exhibit 344,038 for the argument that our school faculty knows how to work an emergency.

“Water is coming through the termite treatment holes,” K texted me on the way home. A few years I’d dug out the “filler compound” with which whoever did that patched the wholes. The material crumbled under the lightest touch of a screwdriver blade. I had cleaned out all the holes on the out-facing walls and patched them. “Guess I didn’t do a good job,” it thought, stopping at the hardware store on the way home to buy some rubber plugs for the holes.

But this water was coming from holes in the inner basement walls — where I hadn’t touched any of the holes. “What can possibly happen here?” I thought.

A lot.

The water was jetting out of the holes, making little fountains just about two to three inches high — that’s how much hydrostatic pressure had built up under our house. We plugged the holes, moved some shelves and found more fountains, plugged those, and vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed.

It was a first: both rooms of our half-basement were flooding. And so we vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed.

K went to get the kids. I stayed behind and vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed. And vacuumed.

We finally got everything under control around dinner time. At 5:48, I texted our selfless neighbor, “I can only just now say that I think we’ve got both rooms completely under control.”

And now, at 9:46, I hear the sump pump kick in for about the tenth time since I began writing this, so I guess it’s about time to head downstairs and see if it’s flooding again — it’s not supposed to stop raining until after midnight…

But we’re not the only ones on our street, or even the worst off. And this flood seems to have enveloped much of the South itself.

At one point in the evening, shortly after dinner, the power flicked off and stayed disconnected for a good fifteen seconds — long enough that I’d started running options through my head. When the lights came back on, K and I looked at each other, thinking about all the reports of downed trees and power lines, realizing just how much worse it could have been.

We had it worse than we’ve ever had it, but we could have had it worse still.

Previous Floods

Flood 2018

Water

Flood 2014

Flood

Autumn

Saturday 13 October 2018

Last night at Bethel Bash, I wore a long-sleeve tee-shirt for the first time, and by the time the sun had set completely, I was a little chilly.

Which means that autumn, finally, is on its way.

Michael Arrives

Thursday 11 October 2018

K and I woke at three in the morning to the sound of the most torrential rainfall we’ve ever heard here. It was as if an enormous tap had been situated above our house and turned on fully. Assuming it was the first rains of Hurricane Michael. “I guess this will be what we go through for the next several hours,” I thought.

I began imagining what that might mean. “Our sump pump will get its first real test,” I thought.

At six, I woke. The Boy had woken and shuffled down the hall toward the kitchen. K guided him to our bed. “Go back to see, E,” she instructed, “you don’t have school today.”

The wind, the rain — the school board (or whoever makes the decision) decided it was too much of a risk. K told us when she got back from work that it was indeed a wise choice: “There were just sheets of rain, with no visibility.”

As for the rain of three in the morning — it never really re-materialized. It rained, quite heavily at times, but only until about eleven. Once it calmed a bit, the Boy and I headed out for inspection. And a bit of play.

In the afternoon, muffins.

As part of a literacy project from school, the Boy had to read and follow a recipe with a little help from me.

Dickensian Afternoon

Thursday 11 January 2018


It was so foggy this afternoon that I could think of only one thing: the opening to Dickens’s Bleak House:

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

The dog and the kids spent the day indoors. A miserable day if you want to go outside. Dzien barowa.

First Day Out

Tuesday 9 January 2018

It’s been cold here lately — ridiculously cold for South Carolina. The majority of the nights over the last ten days have been below freezing, which is something here; a substantial number (a majority of that majority?) have been below 20 degrees. In Poland, nothing out of the ordinary; K and I are used to such things. Here? It’s ridiculously cold.

Add to it the tragic fact that we’ve all taken turns getting sick over that same period of time and it’s obvious why no one has done much of anything outside these last few days. The dog is the only exception: she doesn’t really care. The rest of us have done our best to stay warm.

So when we all were home and it was 59 degrees this afternoon, there was only one thing to do.

The Boy and the Girl were happy to jump on the trampoline again. The new trampoline, which should actually have some bounce to it, is still in parts on the basement floor.

“Let’s wait until it warms up,” K encouraged. That was Christmas. It’s still on the floor.

“Daddy! Today it’s warmed up! Can you work on the trampoline?” was the refrain from both the kids, but I was too busy laughing with K as she jumped out of the swing like a teenager.

The dog was thrilled to have someone to play with her again. She’s really such a gregarious dog. She’ll play outside by herself for a while, but she’s always happy to have a companion. And don’t even think about doing something outside the newly fenced area: she’ll stand at the fence and whimper like she’s being abused.

Rainy Sunday

Sunday 4 December 2016

“It’s cold and rainy!” I said as I came back inside from taking pictures of the Boy, who was more thrilled than I was that it was cold and rainy. After a blistering dry summer, to have finally some cold, wet weather is a blessing.

It made the rosół we had for lunch all the tastier, the cuddling with Papa and Nana all the more comfortable, and family movie in the early evening all the more enjoyable.

The automatically created URL for this post indicates that this is the fourth time I’ve used “Rainy Sunday” as a post title:

Rainy Sunday
Rainy Sunday
Rainy Sunday

All within the last three years.

New and Old

Sunday 7 August 2016

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Slowly, we’re returning to the old within the new. The grandparents were over for lunch yesterday, eating in our new kitchen at our old table a meal that was cooked in our soon-to-be-outdated field kitchen.

Afterward, we had quiet a rain — unlike any we’ve had this summer. The ground was so hard and dry that puddles formed immediately, giving me a chance to walk around the house and see how our filled in trench from our unexpected sewer renovation was draining. A few problems there, but the rain didn’t last quite long enough for those problems to actually materialize (i.e., start to flood the crawl space). Which means we still don’t know how our sump pump works, whether or not it takes care of the problem.

Autumn Sunday

Sunday 18 October 2015

It’s during this time of year that the early morning sun is so spectacular. It’s not that the leaves are kaleidoscopic for they’re all still green here in the South. It’s the angle of the sun at this time of year.

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“It’s the best time of the year in South Carolina,” K always says. Sunny cool days that invite backyard play.

And it’s time to begin decorating — first Halloween. Pumpkin ghosts to hang on our Crepe Myrtles in the front yard.

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Of course, there’s always time for the sandbox.

Water

Monday 5 October 2015

The key is to keep things in the proper perspective, as it is with most things in life. We just came out of a mini-drought, with very little rain at all for weeks, and the rain of the last week has replenished our water supply.

As the forecast worsened, I was confident. I’d just redone our basement work space that had flooded twice before, putting heavy-duty waterproof paint on the floor and up to the ground line and sealing the previously-unsealed holes in the concrete that were evidence of some previous owner’s battle with termites. We were ready with a pump in case it did flood. I’d redone the draining system, the failure of which had caused the first two floods. We were ready.

Sunday morning, though, we found water in the basement. Not much, but a bit. By the time I had gone back upstairs to change into more appropriate attire and had returned, there was noticeably more water. Significantly more water. I scanned for the source, but it didn’t seem to be coming from corner that was the usual source. I soon discovered the breach: one of the termite-poison-injection points had been compromised: water was literally bubbling out of the small hole as if it were a spring. I plugged it with a wine cork and set up the pump, only to discover that the two or so inches of water was not enough to trigger the pump. No fear: we had plenty more water in the crawl space and a shop vac. In the end, I pumped probably seven or eighth hundred or so gallons out of the crawl space at about two hundred gallons out of the work room.

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The nicely-painted floor, though, was a wreck. But the overall damage was minimal, and the situation could have been much worse:

  • We had power.
  • We had a working pump to empty the crawl space.
  • We had a working shop vac to suck up the water that’s too shallow for the pump to draw up, which was basically all the water in the basement — but still.
  • Even if it totally flooded the basement, nothing down there was critical to daily living or irreplaceable.
  • The living area living of our house was highly unlikely ever to flood at all.

By the time we got the basement situation under control, the only real concern was the forest in the backyard. With such saturated ground and such relatively strong winds, everyone was saying that the compromised root systems of trees wouldn’t hold indefinitely. But they all held, and we escaped with no damage to speak of.

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Throughout the day, the routine was the same:

  • Grade some papers.
  • Check the water level in the basement.
  • Hang out with the kids a while.
  • Repeat.

We all knew that the situation was worse the closer one got to the shore. When the pictures of the damage started appearing on the Internet, though, it was far beyond anything we’d expected.

So today, we went about our normal routines, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thankful for the ability to go to work this Monday morning.

Flood 2014

Friday 1 August 2014

The Boy woke up this morning at four. Well, that’s what time it was when I finally looked at the clock. We finally got him calmed back down, we were back in bed, and the thought occurred to me: “It’s still raining.” It had gushed all day, with enough of a deluge in the morning that the drainage creek at the back of our backyard had overrun its banks again. Not nearly as badly as last year, but still a substantial amount of water.

“There goes our mulch,” I said, but it miraculously survived.

The basement was another story. It has flooded before, but K and I were hopeful, with all the dry weather we’d been having, that we wouldn’t have that problem. At four, I thought, “Better go check the basement.”

Probably three inches of water in the storage room. The crawl space was worse.

Lowes opens at six; I was there shortly after six. By around six forty, the newly-purchased pump, which pumps up to twenty-six gallons a minute, was at work.

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Two hours later, it was still sending water gushing out.

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Another hour later, it was a trickle but still going. So if we had an average of ten gallons of water a minute (a very conservative estimate, I think), that would be 600 gallons of water an hour. At three hours, that would be close to two thousand gallons. Is that possible? Two thousand gallons in the crawl space alone? It doesn’t seem possible.

But after looking at what happened in Amherstburg, Ontario, I realize how fortunate we were.

Puddles

Saturday 29 June 2013

Take a six-year-old, some puddles, and a pair of gum boots and what do you have? An obsession with every (and I mean every) mud puddle.

Cold, Rainy Day

Thursday 27 June 2013

Who would ever have guessed that in southern Poland, a day in late June could pass without the temperature ever rising above the low fifties? Such a thing has never happened before today, certainly. Who would have thought L would have spent her first day in kindergarten here inside because the teacher judged it was too hot to go outside and she would have spent her last day in kindergarten here inside because the teacher judged it was too cold to go outside?

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I’ve experienced it more times than I care to mention, but every single time I’m here during the summer, the cold catches me off guard. Last visit, K and I really simply forgot about how cold it could get. Perhaps “misjudge” is a better term. We came completely unprepared and had to buy clothes, just as my folks did when they came in 2004 for our wedding. This time, we came during a real Polish heat wave, and I thought, “Well, it looks like we might get through this visit without freezing weather.” Now naive. How silly.

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We came prepared for the cold, but not this cold. So we hunted for something warmer for L (she has a sweater on underneath that sweatshirt) and me.

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Yet a six-year-old cannot stay inside all day. She has to get some of that accumulated energy out. A bike helps; a scooter is in some ways a bit better; a dog that loves to play fetch and then be chased adds more motivation. All three mean a tired girl come bedtime.

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Of course, Babcia was neither surprised nor unprepared. Nor unknowledgable, for that matter: she predicted correctly that, despite the forecast, the morning rain would stop by afternoon.

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Since L and I are planning a trip to Krakow tomorrow, we’re both hopeful that her weather forecast is more accurate than the ever-changing “professional” forecast.

Polish Weather

Wednesday 26 June 2013

My general color association with the sky in this region is gray — a mix of dark gray and light gray, a whole palette of grays. Some days, the sky was a solid, single gray. Other days, there were lower gray clouds with higher clouds of a lighter gray. But no matter what shade of gray, there was one thing in common: the sun was invisible. Hidden. Nonexistent.

For the first few days here, the sky was blue, the sun was out, and I actually found myself thinking from time to time, “Wow, it’s actually almost hot.”

But of course it wasn’t to last. For the last week or so, the gray has returned (with the exception of a couple of hours yesterday morning), the temperatures have dropped: the Polish weather I loathed has finally arrived.

Call Me Noah

Saturday 22 June 2013

What is it with me and flooding downpours lately?

Surveying the Damage

Friday 7 June 2013

We head down to our once-lake-front and take a look at what thousands of gallons of water flowing over a small area in a few minutes can do.

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Mud, sand, limbs, leaves, cans — this is what it looks like after a flood.

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Plants destroyed, swings caked in muck, belongings strewn through neighbors’ yards. I can only imagine what a real flood would be like.

We go out into the neighborhood, checking on what gifts others received, eventually heading over a couple of streets to a house we’d looked at when we were house hunting. It had been love at first sight. The yard was magnificent; the kitchen/dining area was open yet homey, almost cozy, with a fireplace in the corner. The full basement was finished on one half that opened out to a fenced dog run. Yet a friend advised against it: too much cracking in the foundation walls. “It won’t be a problem now,” he said, “but in a few years, it will cost some significant money to fix.”

We were heartbroken.

As we walk through the neighborhood, I remember that on the other side of the dog run was a small creek — a draining stream just like the one that runs behind our house, and so we head over to see. I couldn’t remember how much elevation there was between the drain and the house.

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Not enough.

Talking to neighbors across the street who were out in the yard, we learned that the owners had well over a foot of water in their basement, and that the water had risen to just below the bottom of the window on the outside. I suddenly became very thankful for the two or three inches we found welling up through the slab in our basement.

Flood

Wednesday 5 June 2013

It started around five. I called K to see if she’d need to stay late at work and asked her if it was raining.

“It’s coming down pretty hard here,” I explained.

And down it came, through dinner, through clean up time, into play time. E and I were by the window when I realized how significant the rainfall really was.

Sheets of rain; gusts of wind. I had these terrible images of one of the enormous trees in the backyard falling onto the house. What would we do? How could I protect my children, my wife?

And still it came down.

Looking into the backyard, I saw we had a lake. And it was growing. Within a few minutes, I realized why: the stream was no longer a stream. And within a few more minutes, we were all standing in the carport in shock.

But it was nothing compared to what I saw when I got to the neighbor’s yard. Looking into her neighbor’s yard, I saw something that literally made be question my grasp on reality. Water flowing out of the house. Pouring. Torrents running out of the house.

The poor folks were getting it from three directions.

Seeing the owner in the garage, I walked in and asked him if he needed help. I could only imagine what might be going on inside the house, and I thought if I could help him move anything at all to higher ground it would be more useful than standing around with a video camera in my hand.

Fortunately, at that point, nothing had gotten into the house. It was just flowing through his garage, he explained. He’d lived in the neighborhood for close to forty years, he explained, and he’d never seen anything remotely close to this.

I promised to return later to see if the situation had worsened and if he needed help.

It turned out, though, that we had our own issues to deal with.

“Where did the water come from?” K asked. Walls? Floor? Who knows. When this much rain falls in such a short time, the answer is probably, “All of the above.”

I vacuumed for at least half an hour before I really felt I was making no progress at all.

“Surely I’m just imagining this,” I muttered to myself. “Surely I’m making progress. I’ve emptied this thing at least ten or twelve times, and it supposedly holds sixteen gallons. That’s a lot of water for it to show no change,” I continued, still rambling to myself. (The more confused I am, the more likely I am to begin talking aloud to myself. Perhaps I’m not the only one?)

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I decided to take a quick break and see if the water rose any. That would confirm my obvious suspicion that water was still flooding into the house.

By this time, though, the rain had almost stopped and the water was lower, almost returning to the confines of the small creek.

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What remained was a fetid mess.

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An expensive fetid mess: the house, about a half a mile away from our humble home, with a backyard so gloriously landscaped I thought it was a park, no longer had a beautiful garden. In its stead was a lake.

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It was no Katrina. Flash flooding at the most. Still, enough of a view of what water can do to put famous floods into a more meaningful perspective.