Too Much Rain

Showing you how beautiful rain can be, before I show how disastrous it can be also. (this is a refection from a thin layer of water on my porch in Colorado)

Now let me explain that I am a huge fan of rain.  I crave it.  Most people say that overcast days make them feel sad and gloomy.  Nope, not me.  They make me feel so happy and giddy.  Not sure if that is a weird thing and if there is something wrong with me, but I find it a blessing because I get happiness from the sun AND the rain...meaning I am never unhappy. Right? Well Saturday's rainstorm was a little bit of a different story.  Background: over the summer we had a similar storm and my whole condominium complex flooded! The parking garage, the basements.  It was dirty, and smelly, and damaged, and I had to deal with it all alone.  Without parents, without my fiance at the time, and without sisters.  Not to mention I am the on-sight manager of the complex and was in complete charge.  It was a mess, but it was diverted and said to be a "one-time thing".  HA! Little did we know.  Saturday David and I were keeping a pretty close eye on the drain in the lot, just in case.  When all of a sudden, while watching it flow very smoothly we saw....BUBBLE BUBBLE...OVERFLOW....and that was the beginning of the longest and coldest Saturday ever! To make a long story (that I could draw out even longer with all my commentary) short...the day consisted of:

*Standing in the poring rain for 3 hours

*Attempting to block off the water flow from the street

*Yelling at dumb cars that would speed by and purposefully splash through the water, creating tidal waves into the parking lot

*Knocking on every apartment trying to warn the residents of the situation

*Chasing down a big city truck with a water pump

*Strangely observing people in tank tops and shorts jump and roll around in dirty puddles

*Calling more people to help

*Moving everything out of our basement (ok that was mostly David and brother in law)

*Affectionately looking at David's cold, wet, adorable puppy dog face

*And finally sitting by the fire forever attempting to bring feeling back into my fingers

Keep in mind there was a lot more background events going on, but for the sake of time, and your convenience of not having to read more, I will keep the details to a minimum.  It was an adventure to say the least.  So memorable that I just HAD to write it in our "2012 Memory Jar". David laughs at this jar, but come the eve of 2013 he will be so glad we wrote all this down. Let me just say that I am completely grateful that my husband was here this time to help me and we were able to divert the disaster fairly quickly, thanks to my dad, the people of the city, the landscape crew, and flood restoration company!  I just feel bad for the apartments that had girls living in the basement! So sad.  But everything is almost fixed and we laugh back at it now thinking how pathetic we looked drenched outside for hours.  Even the mailman came by and said "I saw you here a couple hours ago working away.  Are you crazy?!" Thank you Mr. Mailman for those encouraging words.  Oh the memories!!! 

the parking garage--the deepest it got in the middle was probably a foot of water

The culprit of the flood! The drain was not working on the street, resulting in the water flowing down into the lot