Standing in six inches of freezing cold water in a downpour with a bucket, desperately shoveling water into a large, rolling trash container so that it didn’t flood into the shiny, new, amazing Forever Home was NOT how I expected to spend Christmas Eve. But here we were!
They said we were going to just get a bit of this storm, nowhere near the worst of it. Either they lied, got it badly wrong, or Jeez Louise it must have been really, REALLY bad down by the coast.
It was a long, long night between the winds and the rain. Hey, did anyone else know that the cover on the flue to the fireplace in the master bedroom sounds just like a snare drum in a Neil Peart solo in a deluge?
(Image: Weather Underground app)
The yellow spots weren’t so bad after some of the orange and red blobs. And the City of Hesperia and County of San Bernardino do an extremely thorough and efficient job of notifying us of flash flood warnings, flash flood watches, tornado warnings, and tropical storm warnings by text, voice mail, email, and phone calls. Even in the middle of the night…
The problem in the back yard was annoying, but not much of a threat. It was when we noticed the rising water levels in the interior courtyard that things got exciting. There’s a drain, but it was apparently blocked by leaves. There are doors on all four sides, three of which lead into the house, particularly into my office, the hallway by the dining room, and the living room. Fortunately (by accident or otherwise), the fourth door is the lowest by about two inches and it leads into the garage where there was minimal damage to be suffered. Not a crisis, just a mess.
So out I go into the deluge and the ankle deep, ice cold water, to clear the leaves, set up a sump pump, and grab a bucket to help get the water level down faster than it was going up with all of the runoff from the gutters.
The joys of home ownership! Althought, to be honest, even if we were renting, I still would have been stuck doing this.
After about four hours we finally got the upper hand and the flow into the garage stopped. When the rain finally slacked off to just a Level 8 instead of an 11, I was able to get some warm and dry clothes again.
Being Christmas Eve, while I was bailing and pumping, The Long-Suffering Wife was cooking our first holiday dinner of the weekend. It was wonderful.
A quick check of the Christmas lights shows a couple of strands down on the ground due to the winds, but they all seem to still be on. No short circuits, no water damage. I love it when a plan works!
And we all lived happily ever after. Except, of course, for the mess that I still have to dry out and clean up in the garage. But given the fact that there’s rain expected every day for the next week, maybe we’ll just hold off on that.
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 