I spent some quality time with Miss Mary Mack yesterday.
When the skies opened up on Oklahoma City in the early hours of the day, the French drain at the back of the house quickly became insufficient for the downpour.
When the water started pouring across the threshold of the sliding doors in the sunroom, I quickly became insufficient for the job of keeping it out of the house.
I woke Mary from a dead sleep, and roused Techie from his lair.
Miss Mary Mack and I spent the next four hours using the wet vac, laying down towels and wringing them out in the wringer-mop bucket, emptying the vac and the bucket, and starting over again.
We began to feel this machine was one of our appendages:
And this just seemed laughable:
We slipped (and nearly fell) about as many times as we trekked across the floor to empty the buckets.
(Which, I think, was about ten gazillion times.)
I finally abandoned my footwear, there was no time to change.
Techie risked life and limb driving to four different hardware stores in the area trying to get enough sand bags to keep the water out of the house.
This stuff is heavy.
The two of us worked in the pouring rain to set up a barrier, and it took less than two minutes for everything about us to be completely soaked.
There were a few moments of levity along the way.
Mary Mack emptied the shop vac and then accidentally attached the hose to the blower portion and turned it on.
Yikes.
And I, after my drenching, was dripping more than all the towels I was wringing out, but stopped working just long enough to yell over the sound of the shop vac, "Does my hair look okay?"
She laughed.
I laughed.
We had to.
Every time we heard more thunder we felt like crying.
Miss Mary Mac finally had the wits to remember that the Cable Guy was off work, and she called in reinforcements.
He arrived with a friend about the time the rain let up, and the two of them stood calf deep in mud shoveling out around the French drain, extending the end of the intake pipe, and re-arranging the sand bags.
While they worked, I changed into dry clothes, made a quick trip to the store, and came home to make some home-made pizza for them.
I was exhausted and still had a wet head, but I wanted to show them how grateful I was for their help.
Alas, I didn't know they were leaving for a big fishing trip and had to hit the road as soon as they were finished.
At 2:00, Miss Mary Mack, Techie and I finally sat down to our lunch and caught our breath.
That's when we turned on the news and found out how much worse other people were faring.
That's also when we had time to realize (again) that fighting a common enemy has a way of forming a particularly strong bond between people.
It had been a rough day, but we hadn't been alone in it.
And that is happiness.