One wet and not wild summer

It was one of those days when we decided to grocery shop.

In the rain.

And it came on fast and furious.

After we rescued the groceries from the car, getting wet by doing it, we looked out the window to realize the downpours were never going to stop. We live on a main road, so in the winter, it's always plowed, but in the summer, well, you can't plow rain.

Unless you attached an enormous squeegee to the front of a truck.

Our house sits lowest around the houses on our street, so we've got two storm drains -- one in the driveway and one in the yard. We watched from the windows as the rain continued, and after looking at different radars, it wasn't going to stop. Not for over an hour.

And more was on the way after this current round.

This isn't normally a problem, but all the storm drains on the street, and the ones in our front yard, weren't working.

The water wasn't going anywhere.

We opened the garage door, armed with umbrellas, and watched as the water crept closer and closer to our house. I began to fear the water. It was too close to the garage.

We moved our cars, and I pulled up my Taurus station wagon, since it sits lower, so the bottom of it wouldn't get wet.

Small bouts of thunder and lightning still pounded and flickered in the sky. We had to do something. I changed into clothes that I did not care out (I should've just changed into a bathing suit), I waded out into the driveway in my trusty Crocs, and found that debris covered both of the grates. At this point, standing water was in the front yard and in our neighbor's front yard.

I didn't even bother with an umbrella, and as rain tapped me like a million poking fingers, it soaked me through. I knelt in the water and scooped up all the grass and whirlygigs (from our Silver Maples) and threw them out in the street. I stuck my hand across the grate, but I still felt no suction. After a while, I manned the grate in the yard, while Steph took care of the grate in the driveway, and although we kept scooping and throwing all the wet crud out into the street, there was only a small amount of suction.

It wasn't just the debris causing the flooding, there was just too much water.

At this point, the water was half-way up my calves. When I knelt down in it, to check out the grates, my rear end was fully immersed.

Meanwhile, our neighbors came out of their house to watch.

Wading through the water, me soaked, and Steph with her vivid umbrella, they got their own Cirque Du Soleil performance.

Then, the Lady Neighbor started taking pictures.

I don't think they were of us, but I've got a feeling, if she wanted to get a shot of the entire scene, without trying, we were definitely in the shots.

And the rain continued to fall.

I felt very Bill Paxton to Steph's Helen Hunt.

We took a break to see how bad it was in the backyard. There was standing water in the "back forty" where Nigra goes Number Two, creating our very own cesspool. And if that wasn't bad enough, the cesspool took it's yucky fingers and moved mulch from one side of the yard to the other.

We returned to the front yard, and thankfully, the rain did start to slow down. All the drains finally caught up, and when we placed our hands over the grates, we felt the pull of the water going down. With all my being, I pushed my soul up to the sky and willed the clouds to continue the slow drizzle, or even, to stop.

At this point, we each manned a grate, gathering yard sludge, throwing it out to the street.

After an hour outside, doing what we could to combat the flooding, the height of the water started to fall. The drains pulled the water toward them, the rain finally stopped, and we were able to go back inside and throw a pizza in the oven.

The water never made it to the garage, but the weatherman was still on the news -- flash flooding was imminent, he said, and lucky for us, more rain and storms were on the way.

With no rest for the weary, I went out a couple more times throughout the night, making sure the grates were clear. Although there was standing water throughout the evening, the grates and drains were able to keep up with the second and third wave, and I continued to throw brown gunk from the grates into the street.