Water

We had rains yesterday like I've never seen before. I was reading freshmen placement essays on campus when they began and by 7pm when I was headed for home, the streets of Oakland had rushing water up to the height of the curb. The storm drains had quickly filled or gotten covered in debris and there was just so much water it didn't know what to do. It came from the sky and up from the streets simultaneously and it definitely had a current. Chunks of things swirled around in it and each step I took toward the car was cold and scary. The whole thing drew images of George Castanza shouting, "The sea was angry that day, my friends."

There were cops and firefighters everywhere, closing Ellsworth, parts of Walnut. It was bad.

Worse? We had water in the damn basement. Luckily, Corey has been panicking/freaking out about the baby and has been nesting. His version of nesting involves many shelving systems throughout the house, so luckily most of our things were already off the carpet. We had to scurry down there and grab Baby Love's new stuff and our camping equipment and Corey ran to Home Depot for a shop vac.

We've been taking turns sucking muck from the floor. My big job today is to go out and purchase more Borax and baking soda. Borax will theoretically kill and prevent the spread of mold spores while baking soda will eat up the odor.

The whole ordeal makes me more eager than ever for Bruno to arrive--he is the very Italian man with very hairy ears whom we have hired to take away the old concrete on the driveway that angles toward the foundation of the house, where water pools and, obviously, gets inside. Corey is also going to build a second water barrel to get the water from that downspout. Bruno told us he'd come "the week of the 20th." Gosh, I hope that means Monday...