Busy, Busy

My office hours changed on Monday.  My new start time is a couple hours earlier, but I've been getting done about the same as I did before.  Overtime pay is always appreciated. =)  So far, Walker and my brother have been picking up my slack at home.  They clean, cook, and go grocery shopping.  Things are working out just fine.

We had rain all night last night.  Rain, here, in March, often leads to flooding.  We still have a lot of snow on the ground, which of course melts off faster with the rain.  The ground is very frozen, so the rain and the snow melt either just sit where they are or run into the streets.  Residents with a storm drain in front of their homes are supposed to keep them clear.  Some people do, but more often it seems, they don't bother.  One problem is the snowplows, which push four to six feet of heavy, compacted snow chunks on top of the drains. You can't even take a snow blower to those piles unless you shovel them down first.  We have a drain in front of our house, and Walker does a great job of keeping it clear all winter.  Two of our neighbors, however, do nothing to keep their drains cleaned out.  Our house sits at the bottom of a small hill - more of a rise, really, so we get all the runoff from above.  With the other two storm drains buried,  our street often floods this time of year.  The funny thing, to me, is that it's the older residents, the ones who you would think would not want to lift and move all that snow, who do their part.  The homes where the drains sit buried have young families in them.  One has a whole pack of teenagers - no reason, in my book, why those kids couldn't grab a shovel and go to work.  With everyone pitching in, it wouldn't take long. Ah, well. Can't change the world.

This weekend, the temps are expected to drop, turning the rain to ice.  I do not like going out in ice.  I will, if I need to, but I think the plan is to hunker down and maybe, finally, cross everything off my to-do list.  My boys have finished all our errands.  We have no pressing need to do anything outside once I get home from work tomorrow morning.

The basement is slowly getting cleaned up.  The plumber did not come this week ~ I don't know why, as he's working with Walker on the scheduling.  We still can't put anything on the shelves (well, we could, but I think it would be a really bad idea until that pipe is fixed) but I'm working on sorting through everything.  One thing I didn't worry too much about during the floods was anything stored in a Rubbermaid tote.  That turned out to be a mistake.  I don't know what happened, but I found a tote full of photos too late to save them.  I thought all my photos were in plastic shoe boxes in a cupboard, out of harm's way.  I don't even know when or how these got put into a tote and left on the floor.  I didn't see any cracks in the tote, either, but somehow, water got in.  Irreplaceable photos, years worth.....gone.  That's what I get, I suppose.  We've lived here about five years and just kind of stuck things in the basement, out of the way, to deal with "later".  Not the best plan, I know.  And I'm sure we're not the only ones who do that.  But you can bet we won't be doing it any more.