Flooding ...the after affects of a long storm

Well you know how I said that I love it when it rains but I hate it at the same time. Well the flooding of the basement is what I hate about it. As most of you know we had a huge storm last night and it did not stop until about 10:30 this morning and even then we still had a drizzle. Well as you can see from the pictures we have a pool in the basement, of course by the time I woke up the water had gone down, slowly, very slowy, but you get the idea. We basically haven't really slept, I went to sleep at about 4 a.m, to wake up at about 8:44 a.m to a phone call from daddy and he claimed to have hidden a pump for us but someone found it and sold it. Now I used to work at Home Depot and like in the business world it's all about who you know. If I would have been there and asked one of the associates to give me a pump or save it they would have done it because A)I'd bribed them with a promise of a baked good, B)they liked me and C)because I'm a girl and mostly about 97% of the store were male and they were horn dogs and I was the cashier they couldn't have; so of course I used that to my advantage, I'd flirt, smile and get my way. Actually I still do that at times when I visit and need a favor from someone there. We have a pool down there. A girl's gotta do what she's gotta do.

Now what I find interesting is the fact that water tends to come in slowly and yet somehow it's able to knock things that weigh a good 20-30 pounds over onto its side; or the other thing happens and the water knocks the lids off the totes and everything comes out or stays in the tote because it's full of water. So my plans for today have officially been cancelled because now after calling and calling and calling some more stores asking to see where in the hell I could find a pump or rent, bribe whatever needed to be done to get one in the end to come out with nothing. I spent about 2 1/2 hours calling every Menards, Home Depot, Ace Hardware store trying to find a pump and every place I called were completely out. By the time I called the 20Th store I didn't even use full sentences I went from saying"Hi does your store have any pumps to buy or rent?" to calling and saying "Hi, pumps you got any?" Up until Ace hardware store teased me and had me believing they had one (of course they didn't)I didn't even know what it was called or that apparently there are a couple of different ones. I learn something new everyday.

The first one is the one everyone either owns or wants and that one is called the Utility pump, with this one you just set it onto the floor and turn it on and the water goes through a tube and gets rid of the water. The second one is the one people could use but only if they have a pit, to my understanding and I like to think I got the idea, you put it down in the pit of where the water is coming from and manually pump the water out. Now I just got a call from my sister apparently Home Depot is out of everything one needs to get the water out, hoses, tubes, pumps everything. After living here for 19 years you think we would have bought a pump right? Well we do have one but A)we don't know how to use it and B) we don't have the necessary tools to use it properly. I can hear the water going down, I can hear my sister cracking jokes which as usual we do when we're in crisis mode. We joke because what else is there to do but laugh about a situation in which you have no control over.

And of course I'm kicking myself in the butt quite a bit because after the first flood of the season we got lucky and the water didn't get as high as last night, but that get me to clean out the attic and put my school totes there instead so that I didn't have to worry about re buying some of my school things...nope. So now not only are we going to have clean and wash like there's no tomorrow but we'll also have to check to see what I can still use and what I'll need to re buy. So here's my questions to all of you what are the after affects of a long heavy storm? And what do you do to try to not panic? And what were your plans for today that now because Chicago is almost 90% flooded according to the weather channel have either been altered or cancelled?

New guy...

Like right now I'm actually thinking about someone and here's the best part it's not my friend Darien or my ex that I wrote when it finally hit me that he and I were broken up. I'll admit even though we had broken up I was still a little hopeful that he would come around and want to be with me but it wasn't until my birthday when it really hit me for the last time that he and I will never be together. In fact I'll catch you all up a bit now unfortunately I don't remember exactly what was said because this happened over a few months ago; but after we broke up we still talked to each other and tried (but failed)to be friends and on my birthday after getting many happy birthday texts, Facebook posts and phone calls I even had a few people text me at midnight the night before my birthday and throughout the entire day I noticed he did not acknowledge my birthday (not even a day later like a few people did). So I texted him and told him my birthday wish was to be with him, and unfortunately I do not remember exactly what he said but it was something along the lines of "you say you want to be with me now, but after a while you'll think twice about it. But seriously hope you're doing well" Or something like it, it was actually very confusing I wanted to cry that day I wanted to throw the pinata I had bought that day and just watch it break into pieces. Because that's how I felt, I felt as though he had taken my last ounce of hope and broken it into a million pieces.

So after my birthday I decided to forget him, no more friends no more anything with him in my life. Now here's the person I'm actually thinking about right now, I met him about 7 years ago at Home Depot he and I both used to work there, {ok just as a side note the lights are acting as though they want to go out so hopefully that won't happen, but I thought I'd share that with all of you} We hung out a couple of times and at first I thought he was boring and strange, but at the same time I always thought he was very sweet. We worked together so it was hard to not see each other, we talked every now and then I left to focus on school and we lost touch with one another for quite a while and then last summer I was helping my friend Meg fill out job applications online and I was signed onto AIM and he found me. We talked for a little while, and then decided to get together him, me and another mutual friend of ours, it was the longest 3 hours of my life. I felt as though I was pulling teeth to get either of them to talk, all I kept thinking about was "when is the time to say ok I have to get going?" After that day, I didn't speak to...(we'll call him Hannibal) Hannibal for a while then one night I was in the school library studying when I received an instant message from him on AIM and we decided to get together that weekend and go ice skating. I had fun, suck at ice skating but fun nonetheless. After that we found each other on Facebook, didn't speak very often until one day I get a text from him telling me that the girl he was seeing cheated on him and they broke up. I hate when girls do that, at least have the decency to tell your boyfriend why you cheated.

After not speaking for months and all of a sudden getting this message I felt horrible for him, I wanted to get on a train that night and see him but I couldn't because I had class the next day, so as luck would have it a friend of mine was suppose to host a makeup party but in the end it was canceled but by then I had already bought my ticket so I went home but crashed at her place and saw him. I spent the entire day with him, you would think after talking to him on the phone 28 times and talking on Facebook about 14 times that week I would have gotten sick of talking to him but no I didn't. He looked so sad... To be continued... Ok I started writing this in July it is now October and in the next blog I will tell you what happened after that meeting because it did not end the way I hoped it would.

The rain...

If there's one thing I love more than food, movies and reading, is sitting at home in my room and listening to the rain fall. I have to admit this is one of my favorite things to do when I'm either in my dorm or completely alone in the house. I don't know if it's the sound of the water coming down really fast or the sound of the thunder but it relaxes me. I even love walking in the rain, I feel as though my mind is in another universe and I'm able to put things into perspective, hell I'm able to get the answers to things that I sometimes feel is right in front of me but I don't want to see them because I'm not ready to face the truth.

I may love the rain but I also hate it at the same time. There's a reason why I like to hear it when I'm alone, if my parents are home my dad starts to panic and act as though he had never had to deal with a storm, and get into arguments with my mom. Also if it's a really bad storm our basement tends to get flooded so he starts to panic about that as well. He'll go looking outside the window, he'll go outside for god knows what reason, he'll go downstairs a million times and he'll do this until the rain is over. Here's the thing he doesn't panic about the flood reaching the living room or us drowning nope he worries about our air conditioner breaking down, because if the air conditioner does not work he feels as though he will die. Now don't get me wrong I myself do not like it when the air conditioner isn't working, which is the case at work right now. 3 of our 4 air conditioners are broken and the store is ok but when we're running around trying to get things done it makes it a little harder to not think "my god is it hot in here!" I've said it before and I'll say it again winter is sooooo much better!!

Now don't get me wrong when I'm by myself I check on the basement periodically to make sure everything is on top of something so that they don't get ruined, but I'm not freaking out about, even when our cable loses its signal I either grab a book or pop in a movie because luckily (knock on wood) we've been fortunate enough to not lose light in our house like some of our neighbors. I take that back we've lost the power once in the 19 years we have lived here, so there you go. Our lights will flicker as though we're going to lose it but it doesn't it. Right now I'm trying to imagine myself back in my dorm either reading or watching a movie while the rain is coming down and not having to deal with all of this drama. Truth be spoken this is one of the reasons why I like being away at school and I can not wait to go back. 4 weeks 6 days till I go back. It's not coming here fast enough. So here's my question to all of you what do you love but also hate at the same time because people around you tend to ruin it for you?