Ox in the Mire

Imagine.

It's Sunday evening.  Our day of rest.  I'm sitting at my kitchen table working on a birthday present for my sister.  A late evening dusk is falling, slowly and peacefully as it only does in the summer.  My babies are upstairs, all nestled snug in their beds, if you don't mind me borrowing that phrase.  A light rain is falling outside, as it has been for the past day and night.  My parents are visiting, my mom upstairs enjoying her Sabbath rest after a hard week of working in my and my sister's yard and playing with her grandbabies.  My father is watching me work on my sister's present and offering helpful advice.  My husband is itching to be making something in the kitchen.  We discuss some ideas, and settle on chocolate covered peanuts, and chocolate covered walnuts.  He gets out the ingredients.

I need to let the paint dry on my project, so I get up to help.  Now I'm standing next to the stove, spatula in hand, stirring the chocolate while Devin makes little piles of nuts.  This is your cue to think about what a domestic little scene I'm painting for you.

Suddenly, Devin starts to think about how our basement flooded a few weeks ago.  He looks out the window to see how the situation looks this time.  Yes, we're flooding.  My dad, who is now reading on the couch, jumps to attention.  My husband runs outside to begin bailing out our pit before it seeps into the basement like last time.  I am dripping chocolate all over the nuts. They look so yummy.

He comes back in, soaking wet, but victorious over the water.  I tell him to go upstairs and change before he gets sick.  He comes back down in dry clothes, and I work some more on my project, the chocolate covered treats are done.  We go down to the basement to look at the windows.  Oh dear, now that one is flooding.  My dad grabs a bucket and runs up the stairs, dashing out the door to bail us out of that one.

My husband and I wander casually into the other room to check the status on the first window.  It will be flooding in minutes. My husband runs upstairs to put his wet clothes on again to go back out.  I stand there for a minute longer, staring at the window, mesmerized by the sheer amount of water pouring in to the pit.  I am snapped out of my reverie by the steady trickle of water into the room.  The flooding has begun, again.

I run up the stairs, change my clothes, and we all meet outside in the pit.  Dad gets down in the deepest, I'm on the steps, and Devin is in the yard.  We set up a working assembly line, filling buckets, passing them up, tossing them in to the rain drenched yard.  Again and again. Fill and empty. Repeat.  Water is coming at us from all sides.  I am saying approximately two prayers a minute. Please, let us know how to save our house.  I have two ideas that are acknowledged by all to be "great ideas".  We work hard.  We save our house.  The rain slowly lets up.

The next hour is filled with hot chocolate and mopping up the basement.  We set up the dehumidifier that we bought last time this happened to help dry out the basement.  Hanna fusses, I get her up, calm her down, she goes back to bed.

I see lightning flashing.  The thunder rumbles, I feel the house shake a little.  The rain starts coming down again.  We might be up all night.  I'd say we have an ox in our mire.