Victoria’s car, what a storm

I tried to go to bed early last night but after I had been in bed for less than an hour Mama woke me to tell me she was going to rescue Victoria. She was on her way home from Bowie and her car was having trouble. As I understood it, she was safely off the road but the car was not running properly so Mama was headed out to get her. How do you go back to sleep after that?

I got up but Mama was already gone. It only took a few minutes for them to get back to the house – with both cars. Victoria’s car has a failsafe mode that allows the engine to run at very low rpms when it senses a major problem. That has happened several times over the past few months but we have always been able to clear the alarm and get the car running again.

So was the case last night. After Victoria let the car set for several minutes she was able to start it and it ran properly the rest of the way home. I told her the last time this happened (It needed over a quart of oil) that we needed to get the car properly serviced but that has not happened yet. With her tight budget that is something pretty far out of her reach. Grandpa will be back in a couple weeks so will probably eek by until then – or until something happens that we cannot easily remedy. Once they were home I went back to bed.

It was starting to storm in our area about the time Mama went after Victoria and it must have rained very hard through the night. The patio was no more flooded than usual but I did see some boards I have out there moved in the direction of the runoff. It was raining as I left so I did not check the rain gauge.

When I got out onto the road (our little county road) I saw more evidence that it has indeed rained very hard; gravel washed into piles on the road, large pieces of wood washed onto the road and lots of standing water – more than I have seen before.

When I got the intersection of 1655 and 1810 there were firetrucks with lights flashing blocking access to 1818 into Chico. I could only assume that the road was flooded. Fortunately, I go the other way. I was very cautious as I drove to Decatur this morning but I did not see anything dangerous on the road. I am anxious for Mama to tell me how much rain we had overnight.

Last night I had to take the screens out of the waterlines to the washer and clean them. Mama had called me early in the afternoon yesterday to tell me the washer was not working. It displayed an error and would not progress any further than where it was in the cycle. Getting water to the machine seemed to be all that was wrong so she was off and running pretty quickly. Today she will have to cancel the service call she had set up.

Before the storm hit I was able to spend about an hour weed eating the fence that abuts our driveway. I was not thrilled about the amount of poison ivy and poison oak I had to cut down. On one tree the vines had gotten pretty well established and were up about ten feet on the trunk. Those same vines swept out from the tree for at least fifteen feet in all directions. I did the best I could to permanently harm them but I did not want to get infected with that toxin. I do not do well with that.

Mama was pleased with how the trimmed area looked. She inspected it while I took a shower.