Wet

"Rain Rain, Go Away . . ."
"It's Raining, It's Pouring . . ."
"You'd better start building your Ark . . ."
"Animals are coming, two by two . . ."


Lots of comments around here about the rain. And if you are not reading this from your own rain-soaked home somewhere in metro Atlanta . . . YES, it's true. YES we are getting as much rain as you are hearing about on your own local (or national) news program. Inches and inches and inches. It's freakin' ridiculous here. More rain than anyone can remember having in a long, long time. So much rain that flooding has started to occur all over the place.

Even right here on Talimore Circle.

It's been raining for a solid week, and today was most definitely the worst day yet. SEVEN days into some very serious rain, and today was the worst . . . so what do you think happened? The ground is so soaked and the creeks are so full . . . the water is having to find somewhere else to go.

I-575 was a total lake this afternoon. (http://www.wsbtv.com/news/21043829/detail.html)
I could not see my neighbors backyard at lunchtime . . . well, I could see it, but the entire thing was under water.
Schools let out at 1:15pm today, and they are closed tomorrow. Meg won't go to preschool or dance class b/c we follow the county school closings.
And our basement flooded.

Before you start to worry about us . . . it really could have been much worse. Our unfinished storage area had about an inch of standing water over about a 10x10 ft area. The water was just ooozing everywhere . . . into my tubs of holiday decor, into some boxes of old books . . . ugh. It was a big ole' mess that I discovered about 10 minutes after putting the girls down for afternoon naps . . . so I proceeded to shop-vac for the next 2 hours solid in an attempt to clean it up. Our unfinished storage area shares a wall with our Media Room, so some of the water had seeped through into the carpet in that room . . . but again, only minimal damage. I caught it pretty early . . . had I not, it would have been sooo much worse. I was able to get the water out of the carpet and out of the unfinished storage room, and by the time I am writing this (nearly 11pm), it has all seemed to dry pretty well.

We had 2 thunderstorms come through before lunchtime this morning. BIG rain, lots of it, wind, thunder, lightning . . . the works. Once at about 8:30am, then again sometime shortly before noon. By 1:30pm -- when I went downstairs to check on something else and found the puddles and puddles of water -- the ground around our poor house was so saturated, there was nowhere else for the water to go. So, in the basement it came.

Did I mention that Jim left this morning? That he's not coming back until Thursday night?

I'm Super Woman. I moved box after box, storage tub after storage tub, even a giant roll of extra carpet out of the storage room and into the basement hallway as I worked the Shop-Vac all over the place. I had to empty that damn thing 2 times while I was cleaning up the mess -- which as the hardest part of the whole thing. I managed to do almost all of it during nap time . . . but thank goodness my cousin came by and helped me with the girls for a few hours this afternoon. While she played Candy Land and Cootie with Meg, I somehow got the mess up . . . but left my basement in total disarray in my wake. By 5pm, the water was up, the floor was drying, and I was recovering on the couch (momentarily). I'm sore from all the work!

Oh well, at least the water is gone.

Things are wet here. And the forecast: more rain. MORE and more and more. Through the week, I think . . . hence everyone making jokes about arks and pairs of animals. The Shop Vac is sitting proudly in the storage room, waiting to be used again in the event of another massive downpour like we had this morning. I'm just hoping I don't have to oblige it.

Hope things are drier at your house.