No, no, don't let the rain come down

Summer is not yet over right? I mean, the kids go back to school next Wednesday, Seminary starts on Thursday, but we should have a few more days of nice sunny weather right?

I hope so, as the deck is partially sanded and prepped for painting, but our plan was to complete this on Labor day weekend. Well, here we are on Labor Day Weekend, and so far it is raining torrentially. The deck is soaked. It would take three days of dry sunshine to make the wood paintable again.

In fact, it rained so hard today that we discovered the rain gutters are plogged. You may not be familiar with the word plogged, so I'll define it here: plugged AND clogged, such as what happens to a rain gutter in the PNW when it gets a large damming chunk of pine needles, moss, and leaves stuck over the drain. This is such a great word -- http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=plogged. The plogs are by the master bedroom and again at the other end above the garage door. We had such a deluge today that in these two spots, it literally looked like someone was standing on the roof with a large bucket and dumping it over the roof. This would all be OK normally, and run off away from the house, except for the dumb bad luck of the plog (plug/clog/) occuring directly over the window well to Traci And AnnElise's room.

Did a light bulb just go on for you?

Well if you already know the story of the flood we faced in this room on our return from our summer vacation to Bear Lake, then it probably would have. We had thought prior to our discovery today, that the flood was due to over watering, as our neighbors had complained about our summer help watering the lawns too long while we were gone. Turns out, we had a couple of major rainstorms while we were out of town, and are now pretty sure we know where the flood water came from. Previously, there was a "perfect storm" set of circumstances of having both the rain gutter clogged AND the down spout drain in the window well clogged. While cleaning up from the flood on our return however, I had put a lot of time into cleaning debree out of that drain and making it functional again. In fact, the main plogging object was a hard croquet ball, which fit so tightly into the drain that I had to drill a hole into it and pull it out with the drill.

Thankfully, this maintenance paid off today, when the deludge hit again. The drain was able to keep up with the water being dumped off the roof, and water did not again rise over the level of the window, come down the inside walls, and cover the floor. We were REALLY glad it didn't too, for we had just completed the re-flooring of that bedroom with a nice hardwood laminate floor, and are still in the process of putting up the trim.

I really hope the rains go away for long enough to dry out and paint the deck. The weather here in Vancouver rarely cooperates with the best laid plans of mice and men however. Wish us luck!