Wet and Soggy

What an incredibly fun evening!!

It's been raining all day, the kind that you sit inside and go, "Wow, that's a heckuva lot of rain," but out the window of our house it wasn't flooding the street or anything. Lanse had a game scheduled to play at Green Dragon, and for whatever crazy reason I was feeling housebound
(even though I spent all morning out at church), so I decided I really wanted to go with him. I don't know what compelled me... I didn't think painting would be that interesting, but for whatever reason something inside me thought I had to go. So I did.

As we drove into the parking lot in front of the store, we realized that the water was nearly up to the bumpers on some of the cars. That's not good. So we parked a few rows up where there was *slightly* higher ground, and went in to play. I got my paint set up, Lanse got his game going. More people would arrive and say, "Hey, y'all might want to check where you parked your car..."
And then the water came up over the walkway in front of the store... and then started seeping in through the front door... (this is actually a pic of the back of the front section of store, the water came in from both sides to meet here... the plastic bag in the background was floating aimlessly around.)


and then the back door...


at which point the gamers got involved, since there was a D&D game right inside the back door. Then it was coming in the door by the videos. And suddenly, all games stopped and everyone started grabbing stuff off the floors in all the rooms, crawling under shelves, desperately trying to mop and push the water... until there was no where else to push it.


These kids were there with their dad, and were well prepared with their rain boots. The smaller girl was our resident mopper.


In order to keep the water out, all the doors were locked and poor-man sandbagged (towels and cinder blocks), though they did have to keep opening one door for people to go through, they eventually stopped and made everyone wait. It was finally decided around 8:30 that it was time to close up, the waters won the day. Everyone in the store gathered at the front door, Beowulf (a store owner) unlocked it, and there was a rather fast mass exodus, door slammed behind us.

Our car was enough higher ground that in the exact place we parked, we were only in an inch or so, but backing out put us at about a foot. The water was up to my knees between the store and the car. This was the view looking back towards the store, which is the dark green writing between the Imperial Store Cabinetry and the Sleep King. (Pointy roof bit on the right.) And somewhere under that water are periodical large concrete barriers dividing the parking aisles. I'm so glad the one by higher ground had shrubbery!


After dropping Tabitha off at her house, we came home and got out of our wet clothes, and got into the tub. I was more concerned about warming up and soaping off any kind of crap that was in the parking lot water, but Lanse stayed in the hot tub and let the bubbles go. He looks happily ruffled now.

Now, snuggled under an afghan and two cats and looking back on the evening, I'm really glad I went!