How a Rain Storm Got the Boys New Bedrooms, Part 1

So.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, I remember now…

We were watching hurricane Ike come sweeping up onto the Texas coast, watching it rain outside of ours. I guess God wanted us to experience a little of what our friends in Texas were going through. Granted, it wasn’t close, I mean the winds were minimal, and it was just a little rain.

A little rain that would NOT stop!

A little rain that would not stop and canceled the soccer games for Saturday. Not bad, and actually it played out well for my scheduling, so that I could go to my Ministry Formation class and not have to miss a soccer game. (I hate not seeing Benjy play – yeah, I’m a soccer dad, worse, a soccer dad that is also a soccer coach!)

Anyway, I head up to class in Crystal Lake, about forty-five minutes without traffic and rain. Approximately and hour and a half with said traffic and said rain. Knowing this, I gave myself plenty of time, and arrived in time for class to begin. The class was on the Liturgy and all that good Catholic stuff that all good Catholics should know, but… I digress.

Jenni, the girls and Danny were in Minneapolis visiting her brother and his family. So, I debated about just leaving my cell phone in the car, instead I went for the vibrate format – just in case.

An hour and a half through the morning session, I get this message:

“Dad, the basement has water in it.”

Crap.

“Can you clean it up?”

“Um sure, but there is a lot.”

“Do what you can, and let me know.”

(Mostly paraphrased, as I’m pretty sure my son didn’t text the word, “um”)

At that point I was already planning on leaving the class and was just waiting for our break, to make a break for it. So when said break time came around, I went up to Father and told him that I need to leave and attend to my basement.

I called home to let the boys know that I was on my way, and they were surprised, which made me start to wonder how bad the water really was. I figured that the kids in the neighborhood looking for toads removed our window well covers, and the water was just coming in through the windows. It’s happened before. However, Andy said that they were in place. I then asked him if they (the window wells) were full of water, and he said that they were. I told him to start baling and that I would be home as soon as I could, after stopping to pick up some cat litter.

Cat litter is very absorbent don’t you know.

I finally get home, approximately three hours after the first text – people seem to forget how to drive when the roads get a little wet around here, I don’t understand that at all. I find that one of the wells is full of water, while the other is dry, for the most part. So I bale out the one well and build up the ground around the well, to keep any more water from flowing into the well. I continue to monitor the well, and it stays dry, so no worries there.

I came in from my baling expedition to find the boys playing a video game, and ask if they cleaned up the water.

They say that they did.

BAD PARENTING MISTAKE NUMBER ONE

I believed them.


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