Flooded

Okay. I realize three blogs in three days is just excessive. But I finally have stuff to say.

Tom was listening to 1776 this morning and feeling kinship with George Washington, who apparently was so discouraged at one point during the Revolutionary War that he wanted to disappear to a wigwam in the wilderness.

Our basement flooded, meaning that late last night Tom and I were wading around in rubber boots ripping up carpet and padding while pondering the injustice of the world.

I went and rented a dehumidifier and blower from Master Rentals this morning. On the way back, I started thinking, perhaps inevitably, about that old incident with Grandpa Campbell. How clearly it comes back to me! The sheer frustration of wet vac-ing the carpet over and over again for hours, drawing out about a teaspoon of water each time, but never being able to stop because I could always get SOMETHING out.

How cathartic it was last night to pull up the carpet and rip out that sopping wet pad. I felt vindicated 24 years later. You really can't dry out a carpet pad with a wet vac. Of course, Grandpa was pretty much right, too. Utah in the summer is so dry and hot that my endless vacuuming plus evaporation got the job done, and nobody had to retack the carpet.

As I thought about that in the car, it came to me suddenly that had he been here, I might have had to put in longer hours on the wet vac, but then he would have been out in my back yard with a backhoe and a large work crew of conscripted teenage relatives, digging out a new drainage system to make sure the carpet STAYED dry.

How much I miss him, his wisdom and his love--how much I miss all my grandparents. I wish I'd done a lot more listening when I could.