Water, Water Everywhere

Yesterday's weather was wet, wet, wet. Not only was it raining all of Sunday afternoon, but it poured during the night, and there was more rain yesterday. The result was a diminishing of the snow pack - directly into our basement. We often have a little water in the basement, though we can go several years without any and then we have a morning like yesterday. We do have a floor drain, but after having an incident when a rat got into the house via that pipe, we've had our plumber fix the plug and ... it works! Using a wrench and a hammer, I finally loosened it around lunch time, and there was a big sucking sound as the water disappeared down the drain.

Along with opening the drain, I spent some time moving slush around in the driveway to redirect the water streaming out of the backyard away from the foundation near the back door and down the driveway to the street. Although it was raining while I was doing it and I got rather wet, I have to say that this activity brought me back to my childhood. We had a dirt driveway in the house where I grew up and my father and us kids spent lots of time in the spring digging trenches to drain the puddles and dry out the driveway. I loved finding ways to make the water move in the direction I wanted. I'm sure the muddy driveway was a yearly headache for my parents -- not only for driving in and out but also for 5 kids who loved to play in it -- but for us it was fun.

The student event I was planning to attend last night was moved to next week, so I got to come home for the evening. I was particularly happy about that because the temperature dropped around 4:00 yesterday, freezing all of that rain, and I wasn't looking forward to driving back to campus in the evening (my slush dams were ice piles by the time I got home at 5:30!). It also gave me some good knitting time as DH had a school board meeting to attend. Changes to the social studies curriculum were on the table and he wanted to be there to support the proposals. I am above the shaping for the armholes on Sprössling back and got a few rows done on that, but spent more time getting going on one of the sides of the Tibetan Clouds Stole (aka wedding stole). Now that I'm not working all the way around the big center square (almost 400 stitches in a row), it moves pretty quickly (100 stitches a row).