What did I ever do to you, Mother Nature?

Ok, so I mentioned that Mother Nature got a little het up about something a while back and decided to smite my house with lightning. But, I picked up the pieces, replaced the electronics, and I thought she was over it. I thought we had all healed from the horrible lightning incident and I planned to resume with the blog now that my computer had recovered and I was back from vacation. Then that bitch Fay showed up and derailed the plan a bit.

If you don't reside in Florida or parts of Alabama, you might not be aware of the absolute madness that has been occurring due to Tropical Storm Fay and her copious amounts of rain. Basically, it started seriously raining in Tallahassee at about lunchtime on Friday, and it didn't stop at all until Saturday night. It rained really hard for well over 24 hours...and it just didn't stop. The storm was huge and it was only moving like 3 miles an hour, so it basically sat on top of us dumping endless amounts of rain. In Tallahassee, it rained something like 20 inches over the weekend. Oh, God, the rain. And, it's still coming. It poured Sunday morning, and afternoon. It let up slightly, then alternated between light to no rain to random heavy downpours. Big thunderstorm on Monday afternoon and evening, and another one this evening.

So, the point of that story this: the reason I haven't updated the blog is that there was approximately 3 and 1/2 feet of water under my house. First off, the backyard looks like a lake. Here's basically what the yard looked like last Friday:

And by Saturday afternoon we had something more like this:

So, with the ground that saturated and the rain still pouring down, the water had nowhere to go but up under my house. The house is up off the ground a few feet and there is an access panel in my hallway that you can lift off to get to the air conditioning ducts and what not that are under there. Here is a photo of my father sitting in the hole:

The part under the access panel is the lowest ground under the house, and so that is where all the water accumulated. That is standing water under his feet. As you can see from the photo, the water level is about a foot under his feet. To let you know how deep the water was, when I stand in that hole, only my head is above floor level. It's about a four and 1/2 foot deep hole there. Lot's of water

Anyway, over the weekend there was scrambling about and trying to locate a sump pump, running hoses through the living room and kitchen, having no air-conditioning for 2 days in FL in August (it was not damaged by the water, thankfully, and worked fine once we made sure it was dried out) and generally being both freaked out and deeply annoyed.

Anyway, all is well now. It rained again today, and water is still running under the house, but my newly purchased sump pump is moving it right back out. (By the way, a sump pump is not something I ever envisioned needing to own in my life. Mine looks kind of like this.) And the lake in the backyard has mostly receded. I hope that Mother Nature and I have achieved Détente. The only problem is a fellow named Gustav...