Water, and more water. One more thing to love about Maryland. Night before last we got home from picking up Daniel from driver's training (that deserves a whole blog of its own) and found water gushing into our house. Of course it had been pouring rain. Having no garage meant running from the car, in a deluge, through our muddy unlandscaped yard, into the house. The three of us were soaked. Laughing and in good spirits, it was no big deal. Clothes can dry. But then we saw the water coming in. Outside it was raining so hard that the excess water had no place to go but in our house.
My downstairs studio was the first to flood.
Because we are such a high tech family the risk of electrocution from various electronic devices was great. My husband sprung into action by unplugging everything. My new G5 computer made a narrow escape, but the new cherry stained solid poplar baseboards that I had installed just days before were under water...
Grabbing every towel in the house we tried to soak up the threat, but there was just too much. I grabbed my wastebasket, the only "bucket-like" thing in my studio, and dumped out its contents in a dry corner to use it as a catchall. Two blinks and Daniel and I began taking the soaked towels and together, him at one end of the towel and me at the other, twisted the water out of the towel and into the basket. Towel after towel we did this. Once one towel was wrung we would replace it. And so it went.
Meanwhile, Bryan was checking for water in the rest of the house. While Daniel and I tried to keep ahead of what was flooding the studio, Bryan was outside putting up a barricade to refocus the stream away from our front door. Once inside he discovered that the living room was flooding. More towels. Daniel went upstairs to assist him in moving furniture. We also had some drywall and lumber stacked in there for this weekend's remodeling project. More solid poplar. So the boys got the wood propped up away from the water. The drywall had to stay put. We worked for what seemed forever but what was probably about fifteen minutes.
Today things seem dry. My baseboards survived. The casualties were curtains in the living room and the hardwood floor. It is still damp, having wicked the water. It was the first project in this house when we moved in two years ago. It's restoration may be lost entirely, so I keep inspecting it hoping it will dry out.
Oh well, it's just a floor.
I guess this means my attitude is improving when I don't feel like the world is going to end with a little flooding. The worst of it may be a ruined floor. The best of it is a memory of Bryan, Daniel, and I in a frenzy, sometimes laughing, adrenaline pumping, working together to solve a problem. You can't manufacture that kind of family memory and you'd pay money for that kind of experience in a theme park. Complete with water ride.
Today the sun is shining.
oh blair! what a nightmare!
if you had said your G5 was destroyed i would have cried. :)
we came in the same night after ice cream through the pouring rain upstairs to our kitchen, but carter was shrieking in horror "water is touching my 'kin!!!" while madeleine and i, laughing hysterically, thought it was pure magic. go figure.
i hope your floor dries out just fine. do you have a dehumidifier? it might help.
Oh My Lord! Glad there were no electronic consequences. We had water coming into our house too - not as much, but unfortunatly, through the CEILING, re-confirming our already-felt need for a new roof. The cats were captivated.
we were also caught out in it, running from Borders to the car. Eric tried to hold the umbrella for both of us. Absolutely no hope of this activity being in any way fruitful. It was hysterical.
i got here through jen lemen's blog on your art - it's beautiful! thank you for sharing it with us.
i am so sorry your home became invaded by the storm. your perspective on it is so good though, i fear mine would be much less positive.