Okay, sure I’ll admit it. I can be a bit of a drama Queen, but then if you’ve followed me for very long…you know that about me!    But I couldn’t come up with a better way of explaining how I experienced this morning.  My feelings felt like how my tongue experiences the taste of Vietnamese soup.  Sweet and sour.

The morning began with me cuddled up in bed attempting to sleep away another dark and rainy day.  I heard what I thought was the normal morning sounds of David drying his hair.  But the sound kept going on and on and as I was in that state of being half awake and half asleep, rather than waking up, my writer mind began making up stories.  Stories about how much I loved my husband for always getting cleaned up in the morning even if he planned to work all day from home.  Stories about how much I loved his great head of hair.  Stories about how funny it was that he was going on and on with drying it, especially since there really wasn’t that much to dry.  And then my consciousness woke up a little bit more and realized that what I was hearing wasn’t the hair dryer, but rather the wet vac.  That could only mean that because of the heavy rain last night, water had found other ways to seep in through our floorboards.

Our home had flooded again.

I popped up to go investigate forgetting to put my glasses on, hair rumpled, and mouth guard in (being nice also added extra points to my concern for him resolutely vacuuming up the mess, not that there were points to be had but in a good long-term relationship, it’s the little things that count….).   David asked me to rally the cats from the garage into the kitchen so that he could wet vac up the water in there.  And I set about calming the cats and fixing the dogs’ breakfasts.  We both remained amazingly calm even though we knew this latest flooding meant we’d have to replace the Pergo in the dining room at some point soon. Adding to that long line of “things we need to replace soon.”

After breakfast and reading Michael Barnes’ latest Out & About column in the American-Statesman, the back porch beckoned me to sit outside for some quiet time.  Our backyard backs up to the Williamson Creek and the frogs were singing all about the fresh water barreling through so how could I resist them?  All the trees bordering the boundaries of our acre and a half were glistening in the breaking morning sun and the Blue Jays vacillated between angry squawks and happy chirps that sounded like wooden wind chimes blowing in the breeze.  As you can imagine, the hypnotic glory of the morning influenced my heart to open to what was beautiful and to be grateful!

And I continued to feel grateful even when we realized all that rain meant that my convertible had probably flooded again.

I’d forgotten to fix/mend/Gerry-rig where there is a gap between the top of my car and the windshield and so my car had flooded again.  And somehow I was able to keep feeling grateful for having a car, having a car that runs, having a wet vac that works great and having a really clean car.  That and the sun is breaking through the clouds so I can take the top down to let it evaporate out all the humidity.  Plus it looks like the Crepe Myrtles are so ecstatic that new buds are bursting to say hello to the world.

Oh I still have my response to mold allergies which means that even with the sprays and shots the ever present congestion remains. And somewhere between pruning the front yard and loving on the cats I’ve acquired a poison ivy rash that runs from the side of my ear down and around the back of my neck and up the other side.  So I’ll make an appointment with my allergist to get a script and on my way I’ll stop and get a large Americano while listening to The Takeaway on KUT.Org. Why not make the most of it?

I’m grateful that in the midst of the sweet and sour morning that unfolded today, I’m able to keep enjoying the bright spots along the way.  This isn’t always true for me, sometimes I can dip into a melancholy that borders on feeling like a psychotic depression, but I believe what helps inflate the life rafts of serenity that can seemingly come out of nowhere at the most unexpected times, is to be in continuous prayer to all that is good and to ask for the serenity and peace of acceptance.  Even during those times when we don’t think we need it.  There just has to be some kind of cache in the other dimensions outside of our reality that stores up our prayers and thoughts for those times we need to be buoyed through life.

A raft ship of Grace.

May peace be with you and us all!  And not too much water.  No flood water…