When It Rains, It Pours--Literally

Have you ever wondered what you would grab if you had five minutes to get out of your house and run for the hills? Well, I don't have to wonder anymore.

We live several hundred yards (insert metric conversion here) away from a river. It's not a very big river, mind you--most of the time, it's a lot more sandbar and a lot less river--but it is a river, nevertheless. We knew about this river before we bought the house. We even knew it had overflowed its banks during a historic hundred-year flood almost six years ago, so named because this sort of flood generally only happens once every hundred years.

Someone should have told the river it still had ninety-four years left on its hundred-year contract.

We woke up yesterday to the delightful strains of heavy machinery. A couple of city crews were digging trenches, throwing up levees, pumping storm drains. We assumed they were just being proactive. Several hours later, someone called my husband and asked him to help sandbag a few blocks over. He came back an hour later, smelling like a sandbag and soaked to the skin (despite his heavy winter coat), and said, "You might want to start packing."

So I started packing, methodically, deliberately. We were planning to leave for the parents' house the next day, anyway, so I was just getting a leg up on vacation prep. That was what I told myself. An hour later, I had all the laundry put away and the essentials in a duffel. And a good thing, too, because when I went into the kitchen to grab something, I saw the river. In our street.

My hands began to tremble. I told myself, out loud, "Think. Clearly." I grabbed Honey Bear's laptop and scriptures (he teaches religion classes to high school students, and those are just about the only things he needs to do his job), the kids' diapers and some wipes, and a few basic toiletries and threw them in the bag. Then I ran back to the kitchen and grabbed my flash drive. I thought about saving the latest version of Bob on it, took one look out the window, and realized I had no time. A minute later, Honey Bear, who had just finished building the last of the sandbag barriers in front of our house, stuck his head in the front door and yelled, "We gotta go!" We grabbed the bags, grabbed the kids (with no socks or shoes, regrettably), and ran.

We were shin-deep in river water while we loaded our kids into the car (which was parked in the driveway, thankfully, and not the garage). Honey Bear was mildly concerned our car wouldn't be able to make it up the street, but we made it. Barely. As we drove away, I burst into tears.

A kindly neighbor--who lives on top of a nearby mesa, I might add--took us in, and that is where I'm sitting as I type this, in our kindly neighbor's family room. We've been back to our house a few times to check on it, and the waters appear to be receding. So far, the inside of our house has stayed dry. The rain is back this morning, though, and several dams above us might not hold. So today will be a nail-biter, but at least we're all dry and safe--which is more than I can say for yesterday.

You know, I got a full rejection yesterday morning, and I was feeling kind of bummed about it. Now I'm just happy that my family and my house aren't underwater (for the moment). Nothing like a friendly neighborhood flood to put things back in perspective.