Winter Rain

I'm not sure where they get their "half an inch" forecast, because I think we've reached and passed that mark already, and it's only 7:30am. It's a dang typhoon out there. 

Here's hoping the temperature doesn't drop today and turn the streets into a skating rink. 

Thanks Spectrum

Weather forecaster on Spectrum News last [Saturday] night: "High of 88 tommorow with a chance of cloudiness. We won't see precipitation tho, until Tuesday at the earliest." 

Today, after taking my laptop outside to work on the patio:

Sitting on my porch, watching the rain.

 Quite the thunderstorm out there. LOVE this weather.

I love the rain

outside on the porch, enjoying the rain and thunder. The air smells funky tho, like it does when you clean out a fish tank. Odd.

Rain Rain Go Away

Tonight's rain reminded me of something Junie did a few wks ago. It was raining very hard, and she was reciting the "rain rain go away" ditty over & over. That's unremarkable - except for the increasing panic and frustration in her voice. To her it was a legtimate spell against the rain, & her tone revealed an absolute sense of betrayal that her magic had gone unanswered by the "powers that be".

Rain Rain Don't Go Away

sitting on my front porch enjoying the rain

On Rain and Motherhood

Man that Lump's a light sleeper. She was sound asleep when I tucked YaYa in and crept down the stairs. I made one little peep and she was on her feet, head leaning over the crib rail to look at me, a wail starting in her throat. She looked just like those little birds yesterday, and just like I did with them I walked away.

Never wake a sleeping baby, and if you do, run like hell.

* * * *

It's official. June of 2008 is far and away Milwaukee's rainiest month in recorded history.

As of this morning we took in an official 12.27 inches of rain, beating the old record (set in 1917) by more than two inches.

Is it any wonder a lot of this city was flooded in recent weeks? It was dry today, but rained yesterday and more is expected before the 4th.

Keep the ponchos and sump pumps handy.

Milwaukee's 10 rainiest months

June 2008 - 12.27 inches
June 1917 - 10.03 inches
June 1997 - 9.98 inches
Sept. 1941 - 9.87 inches
May 1933 - 9.56 inches
Sept. 1961 - 9.41 inches
Aug. 1987 - 9.05 inches
Aug. 1986 - 8.82 inches
Sept. 1872 - 8.72 inches
Nov. 1934 00 8.56 inches
Source: National Weather Service

* * * *

For the record: I do a lot with my kids and I try to be a good and active Dad, but I blog (naturally) from my own experiences. I am with the kids from 4:30 until their bedtime most days, and a lot of those days I'm not the only parent around.

My wife, on the other hand,  is with them from 7 am until bedtime, with her only respite being when she goes to work a 'real' job in the evenings, or when I can con a set of Grandparent's into taking one kids off our hands on a weekend (God forbid we ever get rid of all four).

She's the one who is the girl scout leader, and plans the parties, and takes them to the park and the pools, and soothes their scraped knees.

Not me.

So hats off to her, she does a great job.

Now, back to praising me . . .

Forget my basement - I was one of the lucky ones

Even as I wrote that post about the water in the basement I knew there were people a lot worse off. Heck, the front page of the Journal-Sentinel had a  picture of people canoeing down an intersection not more than a couple miles past my place of employment.

When I got to work my story was put to shame. One guy had three feet of water in his basement; many more had some degree of flooding and the mother of one of our employees had to pull out the wall-to-wall carpeting in her rec room. My friend Tre chimed in with news that a co-worker of his had 41 inches in his basement, while his own garage took in an inch. My daughter's had school cancelled when their cafeteria flooded badly enough to make the news. A customer told me her newly finished basement near Sherman Park had been destroyed, costing her all the electronics in her rec room, damaging her electricity and sending her to room in a hotel overnight.

I guess I can thank my lucky stars my situation wasn't much, much worse.

Wisconsin was hit hard, and the news out of Wisconsin Dells was staggering. Lake Delton is a popular attraction around that resort community.

Or rather it was. It jumped the banks and flooded a local river, draining the lake down to the bottom in a matter of minutes.

We're not talking a pond here, or a lagoon. This is a decent size, decent depth lake. It was large enough to support beach resorts and the locally famous amphibious Duck rides. Now it's gone, completely gone, and people are mourning their sole source ofrecreation and income.

Along the way, the Lake took out four large 'dream' vacation homes along the banks.

What a mess. And more rain to come this week . . . Hope everyone is well and stays dry.

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.