Week 29 - What’s My Normal?

What’s My Normal?

Another hot summer week dawned and I was hoping for a normal week of water aerobics, knitting and getting stuff done. Other than Pie bringing a juvenile starling into the house, which required moving the wall unit to find it, all was looking good until Wednesday.

I was happily knitting with the water aerobics gang at Village Inn when the sky started getting dark. The windows we were facing were looking south, which meant I didn’t leave as early as I would have if I’d been looking north, where the sky was black and packed with clouds. I was just north of i-80 when the skies opened up, making for an interesting ride home. I drove like the wind through pounding rain, just happy that I had no hail to contend with. When I got to Wahoo, I had to dodge branches in the streets to get home where I found the electricity off. I didn’t realize that until I got out of the car thinking my garage door opener’s battery was dead, getting soaked in the process. So I got out the candles and waited ~20 minutes for the electricity to come back on. When it did, I looked down the stairs to see water everywhere!

We’d gotten 3.5 inches in an hour, which was more than my basement could handle. So I got out my squeegee and got busy in the laundry room and at the bottom of the stairs. With the magic of the dehumidifier and evaporation (plus I suspect some of it seeped out the way it came in), it was much better the next morning but I knew I still had a lot more to do.

This isn’t the first water I’ve had in the basement so most everything was in totes and baskets so shouldn’t be wet. But all it takes is an apron tie to be touching the floor to wick the water into a basket of linens (really, this is the fall I get back to selling on ebay!) plus every tote and basket would trap water underneath it. I had hoped to take Friday off to start slogging through everything but it was Nora’s last day before a week off so that didn’t work. I had to content myself with doing what I could until the weekend. Nancy stopped by on Friday night and it was good to catch up before her big trip to Japan.

I gathered wet linens, mopped and moved the dehumidifier every morning and night until Saturday morning, when I finally had time to devote to it. I spent all morning at it and got both the craft and ebay rooms sorted out. I left for a yarn run to Omaha with Andrea that afternoon feeling good about my progress. We were headed to Personal Threads to pick up some variegated orange yarn for some felted boxes I’ll be making to coralle some stuff on my shelves. We also hit Penzey’s, of course, and the supermarket. We got home at 5:30 and I promptly casted on a felted bowl with the other yarn I bought – only 1 skein so it could have been worse.
I finished the basement clean up on Sunday, organizing my ridiculous stash of yarn in the process, and spent most of the rest of the day untangling and winding a basket of yarn while talking on the phone and doing load after load of laundry. I finished the day using all the produce I’d bought last Monday after knitting – red sauce for lasagna and turkey dinner casserole used the mushrooms and I prepped cukes for potato salad. No money for the RNC this week but it was close.

This week has definitely made me wonder what “normal” is? Even with no plans on my agenda, it seems like every week there’s something going on that keeps me from achieving “normal.” Is it this summer? Is it my life in general? I’m beginning to wonder. But there’s nothing I can do but hope for normal and deal with whatever life brings me. And no matter what I’m faced with, life is still good! There are more storms forecast for this afternoon so I’ll just hope for a dry basement.