Soggy, Groggy With Sunshine Before More Rain!

Well, about 10 minutes after I finished posting the last blog entry, the next band of heavy rain swept through Moncton and tipped the balance. Suddenly, I couldn’t keep ahead of the water rising with the bucket and had to switch back to the shop vac. Then, I discovered that I’m not as strong as Nick when it comes to dumping a filled shop vac into the toilet, so I started splashing water all over the basement bathroom floor!

When I went up for more dry towels around 1:30 am, Nick heard me and came down to help stay ahead of the game. Just when it seemed that we would lose the battle and have the water flood into the office, we figured out that it wasn’t the pump that had been giving us trouble, but the end of the hose not letting the water out. Out into the dark and stormy night I stomped in my rain gear with a gleaming serrated kitchen knife to lop off the offending head of the hose. I then dragged the slippery, slithery mass of hose and pump to the doorway where Nick took over and got it down into the office while I stripped off gum boots, rain pants and now totally soaked windbreaker. We got the pump set up in the window well and ran the hose out into the pipe where our washer drains.

That did the trick. We ran the pump until the window well was dry, timed how long it took to fill, ran the pump on and off until around 3 am then stumbled off to bed with a time set to wake us up in 45 minutes to check the situation again. Luckily the rain eased off and it was fine for the rest of the night.

We both survived Monday on very little sleep, though I did break down and have 2 cans of Pepsi during the day to wire me up. I can’t do coffee at all, so Pepsi is a cold form of sugary caffeine. I used to drink about 2 litres a day, but that was a long time and over 40 pounds ago.

Today, the sunshine is brilliant and the lawn no longer squishes or squelches as badly as it did yesterday. Moncton ended up receiving 104 mm or 4 inches of rain during the weekend, flooding many parts of the city. We got off very lucky considering the possibilities. Tonight and tomorrow should bring a further 10 mm or rain, but that’s small potatoes compared to receiving a month’s worth of rain in 2 days!!!