Well this turned out to be an interesting Memorial Day weekend.
I mean if you consider a flood to be interesting.
The great irony is that as recently as Friday morning the local police knocked on our front door to inform us that we were watering our yard at the wrong time due to new water restrictions. Here’s what some of you may not know, San Antonio loves some watering restrictions. If you live here you have to constantly hear about the aquifer and preserving the aquifer and how some blind salamander is going to die if we don’t watch the water levels of the aquifer. I start to feel like Jan Brady because everything is all “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” except it’s “Aquifer, Aquifer, Aquifer!”.
And, listen, I get that we’ve been in a drought. But history has shown that at some point it’s going to rain again. It just is. So my eyes rolled out of my head while we watched the news Thursday night and the anchorpeople were all talking about how we were just days away from entering Stage 3 water restrictions. Stage 3 basically means that you might as well move to the desert because that’s how your yard is going to look before the summer is over.
Then on Friday afternoon it rained. Actually it was a deluge. We got about an inch and a half of rain in about an hour. I was super excited because I was meeting a friend for lunch and I actually got to wear my rain boots that I never get to wear because, well, drought.
The rest of Friday we just kind of laid low. The weathermen said we might get a little more rain, I wasn’t feeling great and still recovering from my late night with Taylor Swift, and so we ordered pizza and just hung out. Then we all went to bed at 10:30 because we are out of control.
Around 3:00 a.m. I woke up to the sound of distant thunder which I thought was odd since rain wasn’t forecasted. Then at 5:15 a.m. a clap of thunder shook our entire house. I know it was 5:15 because it caused me to sit straight up in bed since the end was apparently near based on the noise. But I fell back asleep to the sound of the pouring rain, relieved that it was a Saturday morning and we could all just sleep in.
And that’s what Caroline and I did. We slept in until 10:00 a.m. and woke to discover that it had rained over nine inches while we slept and that roads were flooded and her haircut appointment had been cancelled and that our planned day at the pool wasn’t going to happen because, well, the pool was flooded.
It was the most rain San Antonio has seen in one day since the flood of ’98 which was billed as a 500 year flood. Except apparently not.
So we spent most of Saturday watching weather reports and road updates until P and Caroline finally decided to get on their bikes and ride down the street to see the flood waters for themselves.
Those are the Little League fields right down the street. The good news is that there are no longer homes down that way because they weren’t allowed to rebuild there after the ’98 flood.
On Saturday night we went over to Gulley’s for dinner and that was pretty much our big Memorial Day celebration. I’d envisioned that we’d spend Sunday and Monday at the pool but the pool is flooded. Well, the pump room at the pool is flooded and it appears that the roof of the women’s restroom caved in, so the pool is closed for the indefinite future. I’d complain about it more but it seems wrong to complain about how I couldn’t swim and eat a burger at the pool grill on a holiday that is all about remembering soldiers who died to protect our freedom.
P ended up taking Caroline, Will and Jackson to the ranch for the day on Sunday.
They ended up killing yet another rattlesnake. Clearly Caroline was terrified.
And then when they got home later that evening, I drove the kids back down to see all the flooding because the boys hadn’t seen it yet. Caroline and Will spent some time arguing over who was the “most devastated” by all the flood waters. Last I checked, Caroline won for “most devastated” because it’s closer to our house although they both win for MOST DRAMATIC.
This is the spillway to the Olmos Dam by our house. It’s normally almost totally empty.
Naturally we had to throw some sticks and rocks in the water because why wouldn’t we? I had to threaten them within an inch of their life to STAY OUT OF THE WATER UNLESS YOU ALL WANT TO END UP IN THE HOSPITAL WITH STAPH because I don’t even want to know what all is in that water.
And I could weep thinking about the generations of mosquitoes that will be hatched over the next few weeks. Of course maybe that blind salamander will eat them all. It’s really the least he could do after we’ve saved him all these years by protecting the aquifer.
Speaking of bugs and such, I took the kids to see Epic on Monday since I may have mentioned that the pool was closed. And that’s when I realized that I have a complete phobia/aversion to any movies that involve humans becoming the size of insects. It’s why I disliked Honey, I Shrunk the Kids all those years ago and it’s why I didn’t care for Epic yesterday.
I don’t need to see a world where people wear acorns as helmets or ride hummingbirds or get attacked by a mouse. I’m all for suspending reality but it’s just more than I can handle.
Much like worrying about the aquifer.