This was my Sunday…

It actually all started on Saturday afternoon. Our normally hot August was unseasonably cool - it was 85 instead of 105 - and it was sprinkling. It sprinkled all day, as a matter of fact.

Sometime after midnight, a message buzzed across the Food Network screen: “There is an emergency in your area. Tune to channel 7 for life details.” I tuned to channel 7 and, surprise, the sprinkles had been coming from just the outer edge of a tightly revolving, very slow moving tropical storm. That’s right, weather buffs; it was the remnants of Erin. But, really, remnants isn’t a good word, because for the first time in my lifetime, a tropical storm made it all the way up to Oklahoma City.

I watched the weather for the next couple of hours. There was a tornado warning in Union City, where my step son lives. (It never touched the ground; thank God.) I finally drifted off to sleep. And, oh, what an awesome sleep it was - probably one of the best I’ve had in months. (At least there’s that.) When I woke up at 7:30, the eye was over us.

So, think about this. When I went to sleep around 2:30am, the storm was just hitting us. Five hours later, we were in the eye. That’s a slow moving storm.

We got almost six inches of rain during that five hours. I went back to sleep and didn’t get up until 11am. (It was an awesome sleep.)

It wasn’t until I woke up this second time that I realized that my house was probably flooded. The storm was still overhead, though luckily it was doing what it should have done before it got here - it was losing intensity and becoming disorganized.

The garage had about 5 inches of standing water in it, the front yard was a lake and my laundry room was soaked - all the clothes in the hamper, waiting to be washed were soaked, the carpet and padding were soaked. So, I had to do twice as much laundry as I’d intended. Plus a load of towels. This was not fun for three reasons.

1. The carpet was squishy wet, and I was barefooted. It was cold and gross.

2. The carpet was squishy wet, and I was barefooted. With the electrical appliances (washer/dryer) running, I was afraid I’d be electrocuted.

3. The carpet was squishy wet, and the dryer made the room hot. The humidity the wet carpet created made the room unbearable to be in.

(See what I mean? Not fun.)

After all that work was done, I sat down to prepare dinner. We were having shish kabob and home fries. Delish! I started the potatoes and onions and was in the livingroom cutting up the steak and onions when I heard a huge crash in the kitchen, followed by the breaking of glass.

As I ran into the kitchen, I heard a number of things being knocked over inside my cabinet, and as I rounded the corner, I saw one of the cats jump out of the cabinet where the olive oil had been stored.

The olive oil was all over the floor. A new bottle. Lots of shards of glass. Oil EVERYWHERE. And I’ve got potatoes and onions frying on the stove.

So I have to stop what I’m doing and go mop up the kitchen floor, (Holy cow.) pick up the glass, turn the potatoes, don’t get killed falling on the oil and the glass, mop some more, pick up more glass, mop some more and some more and some more. Then I put the shish kabob on. We ate the potatoes long before it was done.

The whole day sucked.

First tropical storm Erin. Then, hurricane Pelix.

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