Had heavy rain this morning. Then some friends came over for coffee in the late morning. By noon we had a huge storm roll in, there was tons of lightning and thunder. Really heavy storm.
I was in my office and looked out into the atrium and noticed that the rain did not appear to be falling onto the rubber mats that are normally out there but it looked like rain falling directly onto standing water; and that means that the atrium was flooding. Thankfully Rachel and Shawn had warned us about this and we knew that this could happen.
I grabbed a broom and stood by the atrium door monitoring the situation. The rain was coming down so heavily that the water in the atrium was rising at about one inch every minute. It was incredible.
I gave it two minutes but I could see that the water was just about to make it to the top of the foundation and would soon be flowing into the kitchen through the open door and we know that it went into the bedrooms through the windows previously when it flooded a year ago. So once there was no sign of it stopping, I had to just jump in. I was bare foot because what do you wear when going into nasty black atrium water.
I jumped in and the water was up to my calf and very cold. The rain was coming down so hard, I was drenched in a second. There were fire ants and muck and everything in the black water, it was kind of awful. Luciana stood at the door watching me as I waded deep to the back of the atrium and worked on clearly the drain.
I used the broom and a dust pan to try to bail water from around the drain. All of the muck and leaves was filling the drain so that the water would not stop flowing. I was out there for a long time trying to get things clear. Finally got the water flowing, but it took forever. The tarpaulin that was out there from the grill and that was blocking the water flowing and made the water back up even more.
In the end I managed to keep the place from flooding, but it was a near thing. What a pain. We have to get that figured out in the atrium, the drainage is a real problem.
I made myself a tuna salad sandwich for lunch today.
This evening we finally got the queen bed that we have for the girls set up in their bedroom (Luciana’s back bedroom) so that they don’t have to sleep on the floor any more. They like sleeping on the floor and don’t really care, but it looks a lot more normal to have a bed in there. And sometimes they ask me to sleep with them (okay, all of the time) and I just can’t take how hard the floor is back there any longer. So this is more for me than for them. Plus is will make it possible to walk around their room now.
Rachel made mac and cheese for dinner tonight.