If you've been watching the news you might have noticed, squeezed between the urgent updates about the outbreak of Swine Flu, that southeast Texas is floating away. It rains a lot down here, but really, what has happened in the last 16 hours is ridiculous.
The forecast for the week was rain, rain, and more rain, but that's nothing new. The year that my family moved to TX, it rained every single day for 27 days. I thought we had accidentally moved to Seattle. Except that there were cows in the pasture across the street from my house. Do they have cow pastures near residential areas in Seattle? My only experience with the area is the knowledge gathered from reading and watching Twilight...and actually, that was Forks, not Seattle. And actually, I am a huge nerd for knowing that. I don't care. I HEART EDWARD.
So rain. All week. I was bummed initially because DAVE! is Friday and we have "lawn seats," which really means we get herded into the amphitheater with the masses and choose a spot of grass to plunk down on. Rain all week = soggy "lawn seats." Boo. No matter though - I can stand for a 3 hour DAVE! concert because that's how much I love him. However, I became bummed about the rain for another reason last night about 6pm when I received a text from my neighbor while on my way home from work:
Road is flooded. You can't get home yet. Chill for a bit.
...
The HELL?! Chill where? I was on the highway, trying desperately to see through the pouring rain, braking like a madwoman because as I have said before, when it rains in Houston everyone loses their F'ing minds and forgets how to drive. Where exactly should I CHILL?
I called him back and asked wtf was up and he reported that our street was flooded. Like, was over the sidewalks, flooded. I certainly wasn't making it around the corner and into my driveway. After a call to SK, a few texts and frantic phone calls with the neighbors, I was on my way to park my car at their daughter's daycare center. I met up with the neighbors, who came to rescue me in a truck. We drove through the high water (really, no exaggeration, my car would have FLOATED through that shit) to our houses and saw this:
Our house is to the left - you can't see it, but that is our yard, flooded right there on the corner. The Savior Neighbors' house is directly across the street from ours, where that IDIOT Scion is hanging out. Homie thought he could make it through the high water, forgot he was driving a tin box on training wheels, and floated up and over the gutter right in front of the neighbors' house.
We rounded the corner and since the Scion was blocking their driveway, we pulled their truck into ours.
Right at that moment, a genius family in a Jeep came careening around the corner and floated right up and over the curb on the other side of the neighbors driveway. I told you. Rain + Houstonians = Instant Brainloss.
The Jeep fixed itself and kept on truckin' down the canal that was formerly known as our street. I kept snapping away with the camera phone.
The Scion wasn't totaled, but knew it was too wimpy to make it down the street, so they pulled into the neighbor's driveway and walked to their house. They came back later and picked up the car. About 5 minutes after I took this picture, a smarty in a super nice BMW cruised through and flooded out her car. She had to climb out through her sunroof. THEN, she locked her keys in her car, so when the tow truck showed up a few hours later, it took FOREVER for them to get her loaded up and towed away.
The water receded almost as quickly as it came up and by 9pm we were able to retrieve our abandoned cars from the daycare parking lot. It was quite the Monday night in Houston. Driving into work this morning, there were alerts of high water all over the city and highway feeder roads and exits were blocked off. Traffic wasn't too bad, as most people stayed in to wait out the morning rain, but everywhere you looked was flooded and there were empty, floating cars all over the place.
It's not raining right now, so I am hoping the weather people were wrong (as they typically are in TX) about the week of wetness. Dry lawn seats...too much to ask for on Friday?
Disclaimer: Please ignore the crappy landscaping around the pool. It's a work in progress.
Still puzzled by the sunken leaf/THING, I stared a little harder, willing it to identify itself.
Yep folks, that would be a real-live crawfish, swimming around in our pool. WTF man? We have no bayous or rivers or creeks running behind our house. None of our neighbors have recently had a boil. The flooding earlier this week didn't wash masses of water INTO our pool. I have no frickin' clue where this little dude came from or how he came to be in our pool, but he seemed quite happy to be there.
