Storm of the season

Something woke me up at about 3:15 Friday morning. I'd been dreaming of being somewhere with my family, and in my dream, my friend Adena had run through pouring rain because she wanted to show me a Sunday school lesson...

 

When I awoke, wind was gushing through the house. My first thought was to close the doors to the toilet room and shower room, since they creak like no man's business, and I was afraid the noise would wake Timothy. I jumped out of bed and wrestled the wind to shut both doors, to no avail. Neither one has a working door handle, so we usually just shut them by wedging them with towels. When the wind is blowing as hard as this was, though, there's nothing we can do to keep them closed. After stumbling several times over the empty bucket we use for flushing--and making a horrendous noise--I gave up and went back to bed. Nothing, I realised, was going to keep Timothy from waking up in this storm except the grace of God.

 

David woke as I got back into bed, and I told him I was too scared to go into the living room. The wind had picked up and if possible, was even stronger as time went on. And the rain had begun in full force. I knew I hadn't closed the louvered windows in our living room, and that the wind was blowing straight in--as usual--from the northeast. I dreaded what I might find.

 

But then the lightning started--mostly just the rumbly kind among the clouds rather than the sharp ground-to-cloud kind--and I knew I had to unplug the computer and anything else we valued. I groaned, flung back the covers, and ventured into the living room.

 

What a sight!

 

The wind was buffeting the curtains, and one rod had already fallen completely off its supports, leaving one of the supports dangling with perhaps half an inch of screw still in the wall. (Remember that our wall is extremely crumbly, so it's hard to make anything stay in it.) I hurried over to the outlet where our electronics are plugged into a voltage stabilizer and surge protector, and I reached out my hand. The coffee table blocking the electrical stuff from Timothy's play area was wet. I cringed, prayed I wouldn't get electrocuted, and yanked the surge protector plug from the voltage stabilizer. The cord was only slightly wet, and I hadn't been shocked. Phew.

 

My next task was shutting the living room windows. Some of them are really rusty and don't shut easily, so that was a huge task in itself. I finally got most of the louvers shut, breaking one pane and cutting my hand on another. By the time I'd finished closing all the panes, the carpet was thoroughly soaked near the windows. As I walked back to bed, I realised the carpet was wet in the whole room, and that meant everything else was wet--furniture, chairs, Timothy's leather shoes (oops!), toys, even a few of our books. Everything in the whole living room was likely to be wet.

 

I just couldn't take it. I refused to think about it and climbed back into my cozy bed to listen to the wind and pounding rain. The storm lasted for another three hours. Timothy woke up scared at 4:15, so I brought him into bed with us, and he went right back to sleep and slept the rest of the night.

 

When we got up in the morning, it was still overcast, and I assessed our living room. The carpet was drenched, The curtains--both hanging and fallen--were soaked. The curtain rod would go back up, but I'm guessing it won't last more than a day or two. The cover of the book that I'm reading was wet but not soaked through. Everything else was merely damp. So all in all, we didn't do too badly. But it was quite a storm--the strongest storm of the season!