need to dry out

The storm arrived as predicted last night just after supper. The middle kid and I whipped up a meal, her special shrimp dish, as fast as we could just in case the power went out. Best to face a storm on a full stomach.

The rain came, the thunder rolled, the lightening struck. I unplugged my laptop from the wall and ran on batteries as miraculously, the cable/internet was still working. I looked up and out my kitchen window and realized that either I was having serious vision problems or a lake was forming in my back yard. We have a huge storm water drain in the corner of our yard as our subdivision was built in a low area. Water wants to return to its former stomping, or in this case, puddling grounds. Yes, a lake had formed and was creeping closer and closer to the patio. It was over ankle deep in spots. Soccer balls and other toys floated around the yard. The water actually was deep enough to ripple in the wind. Scary.

But not as bad as what caused the water to collect in my yard. You see, the drainage creek that runs behind a row of houses along one of the main streets in our subdivision had burst its banks and was pouring in a flood between homes, into the street and was mid-calf deep in short order. Folks were out taking photos. Long time residents shook their heads and remarked they'd never seen it this bad. A few houses had the creek water come inside....I expect to see repair trucks over the weekend.

After a week of rain almost every day, this last storm was just more than the drains could handle. I guess the Wolf River had risen over the big bridge and was a foot deep on top of the pavement. The storm did tornado damage northwest of us and tore off part of a Kohl's dept store as well as damaging other businesses and homes.

We were lucky it was just water and not worse.

I've never seen a flash flood in person, but the mini one I witnessed last night was enough to give me the real good idea of how fast and dangerous they are.

The sun is peaking out today and I hope we have a chance to dry out now.

wet hens

Our one day of sunshine has given way to yet another rain system. The rumbling woke all of us up during the night. My yard is an unearthly shade of emerald green and the flower beds are lush with new growth of all sorts. Yes, I will have quite a bit of weeding to do if it ever dries out enough to step into the beds!

I'm off to B&N this morning to get the latest Sookie Stackhouse book by Charlaine Harris. Reviews have been mixed on B&N's online forums. I'll decide for myself after I devour this novel. An added bonus for me: I printed off an extra 15% off coupon this morning! Yeah!

Then we have our Friends meeting for this month. We've had one pre-meeting meeting and will have another right before 1:00. Lots of things going on with this agenda; the new fee proposal is up for explanation/discussion. Lots of ladies, lots of rain....let's just hope we don't turn into the country cliche involving wet hens.

caution, rainy days ahead

The weekly weather forecast is located on the last page of the sports section in our newspaper. I often turn to that first to see what I will be up against for the next several days as I seldom watch TV in the morning. Other than today, rain is predicted every day this week.

Of course, that doesn't bode well for the three soccer games we have on the schedule, or the 4 practices, or the weeding I need to do again in the flower beds or the grass mowing that should happen. But, the good thing is, often the weather prognosticators are wrong. So, I will keep my fingers crossed that all goes well and we can get everything done we need to get done this week.

The huge soccer weekend we had turned out pretty well. The oldest kid's team went 1-1-1 and the middle kid's team went 1-o-2. Both played well and came out unscathed....no injuries is always a good thing after that many games in that short of a time frame.

The youngest endured being at the fields for 6 hours on Saturday and 3 yesterday. Of course, the food cart helped as did ice cream afterwards down at the square on Saturday. Nothing like a twist cone to sweeten his disposition.

I finished the Karen Miller "Empress" book....interesting read. I'm always intrigued how you develop a sympathetic character and then gradually devolve the character into a very unlikeable person. Haunting book in many ways. I also read the second P.C. and Kristin Cast book. Loved it. Can't wait until the oldest brings home book three...we are borrowing them from a friend as the Library never has these books on the shelf and to buy the whole series would be quite an outlay of cash.

Happy Monday!