Drying Out, and Thankful

Yesterday, late afternoon, when it should have still been sunny, it suddenly got dark. Street lights started to flicker on. And then it started to rain.

And hail.

The first major storm of the year (as we’re just coming out of rainy season) was the kind of a storm you don’t see every year. Rain and hail, then rain, then hail, then rain, then hail, and on and on it went.

The water covered the street, and then started pouring over the curb. And then it started pouring into people’s houses.

As for us, the garbage can outside started to float, then tipped over. The leaks in the roof started. And water started to stream across our kitchen floor.

So the rest of the evening was full of moving things, putting out buckets and towels to catch the drips, mopping, and watching the doors to make sure the water didn’t get high enough to start coming in from there. Thankfully, it never did.

A lot of people had it far worse than us. Other than the flooding itself, in a lot of areas traffic comes to a standstill, and people trying to get home from work are stuck for hours.

We’re thankful for a number of things.

First, that we were home. It would have been a lot messier if we’d been away.

Also, we’re thankful that we have water in our taps and electricity. Yes, in these situations we do sometimes lose one or both of those things. The lights flickered quite a bit, but never actually went out. So we’re thankful for all the many people in our community that work hard to make sure that these things work and keep working.

So this morning we’re washing some of the towels and rags, sweeping up, and opening windows to try to get everything dried out. But it’s still pretty moist outside, and still cloudy, so it may take a while!