Rainy Day Fun

Yesterday turned out to be a pretty rainy day. It rained. And rained. And rained. The deluge.

Rain isn’t too bad when you are sitting in an office working. But when there is a torrential downpour while you are trying to get home, that is a different story. And if you have to drive on two-lane rural roads, that is even worse.

There were several flooded spots along the way home. Probably some of them were ones that I shouldn’t have tried to cross, because they were several inches deep. As they say, “Turn around, don’t drown.” I knew I wouldn’t drown, but I didn’t know how it might affect the car engine. So I drove slowly and tried to watch for the deep spots as best I could, even though it was difficult to see them because of the hard rain that was falling.

And then as I was going along slowly and slowing down even more at the flood puddles, someone came up and was driving right behind me. I guess he didn’t care if I might come to a sudden near-stop to cross some deep water. Idiot. After a while, he turned off on another road, fortunately.

I did make it home safely, although it took a bit longer than usual to get there. But when I got home, I ran into another problem. As I pulled up in the driveway, I pushed the button to open the garage door, and nothing happened. I pushed it several times, and still nothing. The power was out.

No power, a closed garage, and pouring rain. How was I going to get inside? Not very dryly, that’s how. I sat in the car for a few moments, formulating my plan.

The only other way to get in was to go through the front door, and I would definitely get wet getting around to the front porch. I had just cut the grass, and if you have ever walked through wet, freshly cut grass, you know how much of a mess that can make. On top of that, I had on my good shoes that I wear to work every day, and I really didn’t want them to be wet and grass-covered.

I finally decided to take off my shoes and socks and roll up my pants legs. I then grabbed the umbrella and made a run for it. As it turns out, I didn’t get entirely soaked, and I didn’t get my good shoes wet. I had brought one of my socks with me to dry my feet and wipe the grass off before going inside the house. How is that for thinking ahead? Once inside, I was able to open the garage door manually and pull the car in, so that I could unload all of my stuff dryly. That worked out pretty well.

And the power came back on about 15 minutes later, which was good because Laura and Jaylin were coming home with a carload of groceries that would need to go in the refrigerator. So that worked out well, too.

The rain continued on through the night, and I did get pretty wet feeding the horses, but I put on old clothes and rubber boots for that. Maybe I should start carrying rubber boots in my car on days that they are forecasting rain?

P.S. If you are wondering, I didn’t take the rainy photo above while I was driving in all that hard rain and deep puddles, because that wouldn’t be very smart. That was actually while I was stopped in the driveway on the way up to the house. Not that you can tell through the rain-covered windshield.