So a couple of weeks ago, I went to my institute class on a warm Wednesday night at 7:00. When I emerged at approximately 9:00 pm, it was a complete downpour. I'm serious, I have never seen anything like it in Utah before. My car was parked across campus so I had a bit of journey to make it back to dry safety.
I started running out the door and within seconds I was completely drenched. I'm telling you, this was torrential rain pour. I ran about twenty steps before I realized I was wasting energy. I slowed to a walk and heard a very loud *squish* *squish* sound. I looked down and couldn't see my feet.
Let me clarify: I was wearing some very comfy pants made out of a stretchy knit. Now completely saturated with rain water, they expanded to the approximate size an obese elephant would wear and at least doubled in length, I swear. So there I was sloshing across campus soaked to the bone, holding up my pants at the waist while they got longer and longer until my feet were totally swallowed up inside them with room to spare.
I got to my car and tossed a jacket on the front seat to avoid turning the driver's seat into a sponge and quickly drove home. I walked around the corner of my house to see that the cement stairwell leading to the door of my basement apartment was filled with at least four inches of water. I knew there was a drain somewhere in there so I swam waded across the mini-pond to find it clogged with leaves.
I grabbed a small plastic broom that I had left out and started swooshing the leaves away from the drain to let the water go down. Finally when I felt I could open my door without letting a tidal wave of water into my living room, I walked in, shut the door and leaned back on it to take a breather and drip a puddle onto the floor. While resting against the door with my eyes closed, I realized that I heard water.
Well, duh...it's raining. But I mean, I heard water pouring. I take my pants off--don't worry, I had my volleyball spandex on underneath--and leave them at the entry to avoid creating a river on my carpet and run down the hallway to my room where I look to the window and see at least 18 inches of water sloshing against the window, as well as a steady stream pouring into the room through some sort of leak in the window sealing or something.
I grabbed a big plastic storage container and ran outside to the backyard where I had to pry off a window-well cover and then proceeded to jump into 18 inches of cold rain water. This is the moment when the reason that my window-well is so full of water becomes clear: by either crappy design or damage, there is a giant gap in the rain gutter on the roof.
How do I figure this out, you ask? I figure it out when I jump into the window-well and suddenly I'm standing under a waterfall. So now I'm soaking water in from both ends. I'm standing in 18 inches of water at bottom of my window well, in my spandex and a t-shirt with a waterfall pouring from the roof and I start shoveling water out with a large rectangular storage bin.
At first I was angry, grudgingly filling the storage bin, lifting it out and tipping out onto the lawn, repeating these actions over and over with rain from the roof pounding on my head as I worked. But then, I started to think about how ridiculous I probably looked and I just started laughing.
So now, not only am I shoveling water out of a window well with a storage bin while torrential rain pours upon me, I am also cackling maniacally at how ridiculous I must look. I'm sure it was quite the sight. After probably fifteen minutes, I finally got the water to below the window level and remembered that I had soaked carpet in my room. So I leave my bin in the window-well to hopefully collect some water while I run inside.
I realize I only have one towel for dirty stuff and I'm not about to use my shower towels to sop up rain water out of my carpet, so thank goodness I have a stash of 2 million t-shirts. I lay out the towel and t-shirts on the floor and walk around on them to soak up water. Then, when they're all full of water, I toss them in the dryer and head back outside where the rain has not slowed down which means my progress in the window-well has been partially undone.
I repeated this specific process several times before the rain lightened up and I was too exhausted to stay up and continue drying and sopping with one towel and some t-shirts. So I collapsed into bed and slept soundly before waking up to a beautiful, clear, sunny day, the weather clearly mocking me with it's bipolar tendencies.
I had morning weights so I got up and went straight there before all the events from my ordeal the night before came rushing back. It felt weird, almost like a dream. When I got home I went to the back yard, just to check my sanity and sure enough...evidence of my struggle:
The poor lawn took a beating where I poured out all the water.
And the plastic bin with just a few inches of water in the bottom.
Being the nerd that I am, I tried really hard to come up with some sort of symbolism or some meaningful comparison to make this story worth telling, but I've gotta be honest and all I can come up with is this:
If you're ever having a bad day, just imagine me standing at night half-dressed in a window-well full of water cackling as I try to shovel it out with a storage bin while more rain pours in from the roof.
....yup, that's pretty much all I've got.
