61 Rainy Days and Mondays

This evening’s post has nothing to do with pretty pictures, holiday decorating, or cookie baking. I’m going to keep it very real here tonight. Here in Southern California we’ve been hit hard by an intense, record breaking storm for the past several days, and we’re preparing to get hit even harder tomorrow night with a second storm, and it’s going to continue to pound us through Thursday. 

We were so not prepared for this. We’ve been saving up all our pennies for a new roof, but we didn’t even think about having our storm drain checked out, and we have no rain gutters. It also doesn’t help that the land around our house slopes towards our foundation.

We were so close to our house flooding this weekend. Gulp. I’ve never had such fear of losing our house.

Our next door neighbors were our saving grace. They gave us their shovels for digging trenches and yard waste cans to help collect the streams of rain water pouring down from our roof into our patio. They even let us borrow their sub pump to exhume the gallons of water we were wading through.

Adam and I worked day and night for two physically exhausting days. We pulled our strengths together and we dug a 60 foot trench throughout our backyard to create a pathway for the water to flow, away from our house and out to the street. We bailed what seemed like enough water to fill a small swimming pool. We lined up sand bags from the local fire station around the perimeter of our back door.

At the risk of sounding corny, it’s times like this that you appreciate your spouse. I watched Adam breaking his back plowing and trodding back and forth through knee deep mud along side me. I felt this special bond between us. We worked as a team and we refused to give up and just take it, regardless of Mother Nature’s agenda.

Tonight’s plans include warm blankets and hot tea. Popcorn and a good movie. We are going to need lots of rest for round 2 tomorrow night.