This Weekend Sucked

It started out swell. Lisa took the girls swimming (Lump too) on a gorgeous sunny day, while Smiley and I went rummage sale shopping and hit Home Depot to work on the kids project of the month.

Then it started to rain.

YaYa was (by that time) at a friends house and her friend's Mom called and asked me to come pick her up before supper. As I was loading up the van tornado sirens went off in my neighborhood for the second day in a row.

Tornado's are rarely an issue in Milwaukee. In Dodge and Walworth Counties yes - hell, they should change their names to Kansas and Oklahoma already - but not here, and not by the lake.

["Didya ever hear tornado sirens on back to back days?" Socialist would ask me today. "Yeah, me neither. Not in thirty years"]

I burned rubber getting to the friends house, grabbed YaYa and headed home, narrowly missing a drenching rain. I had the TV tuned to the local ABC affiliate and went outside on the front porch for a looksie.

Soon both YaYa and LuLu ran out "Dad, we have to get to the basement. Now!"

"Relax," I said. "The storm will pass. We'll be ok."

"No, the man on TV said to get to the basement. Let's go. Hurry!"

I am not one to shrivel in the face of a storm. It is my strong and certain conviction that I will eventually perish from obesity, which oddly brings a sense of karmic peace to my encounters with the occasional  quote 'danger' unquote. Still, it'd be a pretty lousy example for me to say "hey, ignore the legitimate figure of authority who only has your safety in mind. Come join me as I fly a kit in the rain!"

So we packed off for the basement. We got a bushel together first. A few diapers and wipes, baby formula and bottle, some books to read, a notebook and pens, a crucifix, stuffed animals and some snacks, and went downstairs.

We huddled in the basement bathroom, really  pretty close quarters. YaYa read a Junie B Jones book, the baby crawled around beaming her new surroundings, Smiley stretched out on a bench I'd moved in there and tried to take a nap, and LuLu conversed with me. They were all well behaved for the duration of the tornado warning, some 45 minutes or so. It was actually kind of a sweet experience.

Yeah, the baby's holding onto a vacuum brush. Relax, it was right out of the box, brand new, and despite the permanence of a photo, she had it for all of 3 seconds before I grabbed it out of her hand.

Of course the minute I let them loose - the very minute - LuLu broke YaYa's music box and YaYa punched her in return. Smiley jumped in to back up LuLu and exchanged a few swings, and the whole kit and kaboodle came running to me to tattle.

The rest of the day - the rest of the weekend really, went to hell right then. I noticed water coming into the basement. This is not the 'Lion King' water, which as you may recall was caused by a neighbors damaged gutter system (that area remained bone dry through all that follows). This was a seperate leak caused, in part, by water backing up in the back yard and filling our cellar door steps.

I was/am not alone. My place of employment had significant flooding, as did Chris' Dad's house, Socialists, and many many more. 3.1 inches of rain/hour were coming down at one point (it rained ALL night).  I read newspaper stories of people swimming across intersections and I personally saw a  . .hmmm.. I guess it would be a manhole cover, although it seemed mighty small for one, pushed up by the force of water and unleashing a stream of water across a road. Lisa's place of employment gathered customers and staff together in a break room, angering a lot of customers, and she came home early at my request to lend a hand. So yeah, the weather did a number on a lot of people.

Who cares, you know? The whole dang town could flood so long as my digs remained dry. That didn't happen. The whole family (minus Lump) got into the act of cleaning up the basement and surprisingly even the kids proved helpful. I did however scold them for treating one stretch of the basement as a slip and slide - God knows what infections are now awaiting them.

Socialist came over today to loan me a pump and talk over plans to install a sump pump in the basement. [once again, a last minute call for help answered on the spot; thanks man]

As I write this it's pouring. But I"m sore from lifting and dumping a score and more of 12 gallon shop vac canisters (I misplaced the drainage hose for it and had to lift and dump it into the utility sink),  I've got cuts and scrapes everywhere, I'm probably half on my way to gangrene :) and I'm done. For tonight I'm going to ignore it all and act as if I was a 75 year old cripple who not only isn't aware of water in my basement, but is blissfully unable to even go downstairs to check.

Ahhh . . peace.