Christina walked home from school today and within 20 minutes of getting home, this happened. A huge tree fell in our neighbor’s yard, just a few feet from his house. The weather here lately has been crazy. Two very strong storms in the span of a week, near-record high temperatures every day for weeks… when I run in the mornings at 7am, it’s already over 80 degrees outside and the heat index is over 90. This is not normal. The world is definitely changing.
Tag: rain
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August 12
The carline saga continues. It took me two hours to get everyone home today. I took a different route home after picking Robin up. It’s about three times as far, but it took the same amount of time. There is also another carline to get through in that direction, plus two train tracks to cross. What I am learning is that there is no good way to get Robin home from school. And also if it’s raining when I pick her up, I might as well just pick Christina up at the same time. Today there were some really nasty storms at dismissal – they were so bad, they actually held up dismissal by almost 30 minutes because it was too dangerous to be outside. This is a true test of my patience, and also a real hassle because I actually DO have a job with actual responsibilities that are not getting done because I’m sitting in traffic for two hours every day. I sincerely hope this gets easier. Realistically, I think it probably won’t. Moms do not get enough points for this shit. And there’s nothing to redeem them for anyway. I am counting the days to Robin’s junior year when she can drive her own self to and from school. In the meantime, I am having to work a lot of extra hours to make up the time I’m missing during the day. This is love, people.
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July 29
Christina had friends from dance performing as mascots in tonight’s Jumbo Shrimp game, so we got some tickets to go watch. Unfortunately, this was the weather situation. After about an hour, they called the game. We still got our stadium food, at least. You’d think I’d be annoyed about wasting a night sitting at a baseball game in the rain with no baseball, but I kind of had fun. I love being at the ballfield, game or no game. It makes me happy. It helps that we were dry.
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September 21
Here I am in Sunrise, where I was greeted by a double rainbow in the parking lot of my hotel. There was a woman with a dog in her lap at the restaurant, and my new car averaged just over 41 miles per gallon on the way here. I couldn’t pick up my prescription before I left, and since it is a controlled substance, they couldn’t transfer it to a pharmacy here, so we’ll see how these next few days go without it. For now, I am going to bed. I’m exhausted. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.
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June 13
Robin’s beach volleyball camp is over. I forced her to do a tumbling evaluation at a new gym even though she said she didn’t want to. Christina had acro tonight and is THIS CLOSE to a back walkover. We learned that frozen broccoli doesn’t do well in a blender. We suspect Pinot may have eaten a bag of sour patch candies, but we can’t find the evidence. And so goes Friday.
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September 11
Our yard can no longer absorb all the rain we’ve been getting this last week. There is no end in sight.
The girls learned about 9/11 today and we talked about it together. It’s a hard thing to want to remember, but I’m glad they’re learning about it. After seeing a video, Robin was surprised at how scary it was. Of course we remember all the people who perished that day, but it’s important also to remember the survivors. The fortitude it took to live through that experience is unimaginable. Rain and flooding in my backyard is meaningless. Love to those who survived.
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August 2
Taught the last session of the latest NAMI Family to Family class tonight. It wasn’t the best series this go around. It was online and there wasn’t great participation overall, but I always appreciate when someone gets something out of it, and I think we accomplished that. I love doing it, but I’m always relieved when it’s done. Friday nights are mine again!
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July 25
I had a tough day at work. A LOT of anger, some tears. And then it thundered when I had planned to go to the pool and I took the kids out to eat and forgot to bring my wallet. I’m continuing to watch the Ken Burns Civil War documentary and started to read a book of speeches by Martin Luther King. Although one involved the killing of almost a million Americans and one involved nonviolent demonstrations, there is a lot in common between the Civil War and the civil rights movement. At least I think so. Still developing that thought.
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September 11
Having two kids doing two completely different things in two completely different places at the exact same time is pretty stressful. Add some thunderstorms and it becomes a bit of a cluster. Somehow everyone got where they were going and back again and I even got a little sky porn at the end of the day.
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June 15
Drove into this storm to spend over $600 getting the dogs their annual shots and tags. I brought the kids to “help,” which was pretty dumb. The lights went out just as Jackson was getting his second shot, and no one freaked out. Also, this was the first time he did not need to be muzzled for his visit. He must be getting old.
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April 27
Yesterday afternoon was a complete clusterfuck. First I completely forgot about Christina’s dance class. It wasn’t until I left to pick them up that I realized my mistake. The class had already started by then and I still hadn’t picked them up, so I knew we wouldn’t make it. Then there was a Tremendous Storm. Crazy amounts of lightning and thunder, but no rain. So I took the girls to Publix to buy some drinks for a church gathering that night and a little treat for Christina to make up for abandoning her at school, and the power was out there. And by the time we left, there was this. We waited for a few minutes until it let up a little bit and ran through three inches of rain to the car. And then for some reason I decided to order a pizza? It was what we’d promised the kids the day before, so I figured why not. The pizza place is three miles from Publix, but it took us 45 minutes to get there. It was raining so hard, I couldn’t see past the front of my car. And then traffic lights were out, roads were flooded, tree branches were down, and then it took 20 minutes just to turn at one light (even though it was actually working) because traffic on the Buckman Bridge had come to a complete standstill and no one could turn. And then when we got to the pizza place, THEIR power was out. But I guess their oven runs on gas, so yay, we still got pizza. Coming home from there, an entire tree had fallen into the street, blocking an entire lane of traffic. And then I was supposed to have this church thing at 6:30 (on the other side of the Buckman Bridge) that I then had to cancel at the last minute, frantically trying to find everyone’s phone numbers. And then the girls’ cheer practice was cancelled because the gym had flooded (and they really needed that practice). All this happened in the space of about 2 1/2 hours. And then after all that, I got an email from the dance studio telling parents not to skip any more classes, which was just, like, yay, thanks. It’s not like I chose not to go. But whatever. Now on to another day.
