The flood, travel, difficult situations, it’s a boy – maybe

I have been on the road since Tuesday morning and a lot has happened over those days. I have often said that Mama gets to lead a far more interesting life than most people would imagine. Though you would think she would have predictable and uneventful days living quietly on the farm in Chico – that is not often the case. What happened while I was traveling to the panhandle was a case in point.

Wednesday afternoon I got a frantic call from Mama who had been out shopping for plants and grass seed with Grandma and Grandpa. They had come home to a flood. There was water collecting in the living room – which is about five inched lower that the rest of the house. We were making a swimming pool out of the area. She knew at that time that the toilet had been left running but not much else.

 It was only later that I found out that the toilet in our master bath had been stopped and the flush handle had gotten stuck in the open position. That made far more sense. Fortunately, the stoppage on the toilet was far enough into the sewer line that no offal was present in the floodwaters.

Grandpa was able to take the filter and bag out of the shop vac and use if to suck out the water ten gallon at a time. Mama said he was sore from getting the full vacuum to the front porch to empty it. I think she told me he filled it ten or eleven times. The floor seems to have survived the submersion in water so the damage was very minimal.

I wish I could have accomplished more when I was in meetings with my staff in west Texas and Oklahoma but I think all I did manage to do was stir up the controversy I was trying to settle. Time will tell but the ladies there are in a difficult situation because of duplicitous leadership and there is little I can do to insulate them from the Human Recourses storm I see coming to that area.

It was overcast most of the time I was in the panhandle but I did not think anything about it –severe weather wise. I got a good reminder of the fickle nature of the weather on those high plains on the way back to the hotel from Guymon, OK. I had left Dumas that morning under cloudy skies with the weather report saying that there could be some sprinkles. On the way back through Stafford, TX there as a pretty substantial accumulation of snow on the ground.

The roads were okay, just a little wet but the grassy areas were fully covered with snow and it had all happened in the six hours I was in Guymon. The next morning there was heavy ice on the truck windows and the temperature was 21®F. Fortunately, the forty mile per hour wind had blown itself out.

On the way home from Elk City, OK I had to pull over and put out a grass fire. I had passed three small fires already but there were people tending to them  - beating the fires with towels and jackets - but the forth one I came to was unattended and it was near  little rustic furniture shop. Since I had a fire extinguisher in the truck, I got it out and used it on the fire until I ran out of dry chemicals. By that time there were other people with me. We got that fire put out completely. The next four I passed were already large enough that they would require a lot of water and a long reach to contain.

Maggie texted last night that the nurse doing the ultra sound told her the baby is a boy. Time will tell. I would think it difficult to discover the definitive parts on one that small but those who do the sonograms for a living are better at the details than I am. However, they have a 50% chance of getting it wrong.

We will know more as the pregnancy progresses.