Plans Gone Awry!!

As you all are probably aware, I'm not one to enjoy traumatic things happening at my age.  I just want everything to go along smoothly with NO interruptions.  It was going along so well until yesterday, which put an end to all that GOOD stuff so mother nature could throw in a little BAD.

At least I'm not in New Orleans, which is currently being hit with a category 3, possibly 4 hurricane, but we got a very small sample of it.  Crazy rain and extreme winds hit us yesterday afternoon.  In the middle of that the hail came down so hard and loud it sounded like it would break my windows.  It was all going sideways straight into the side of my house.  

I tried to open the patio slider for some pictures, but got soaked through the three inch hole in a matter of seconds.  My patio cover is 15 feet across and the rain was coming inside so much I had to mop the floor after opening the door.

My gutters were overloaded even before the hard rains came down.  The TV went off, then the power went out for a short time about 4:30, but luckily came right back on.  The warnings on my phone went crazy, including a dust storm?  How does that happen in this much rain?

That's when I heard it.  Plop ... plop ... PLOP!!  Instantly I knew what it was.  I've got a leak in my roof!!  I ran to the garage and grabbed a bucket.  The floor was considerably wet before the plop was heard.

You can barely see the crack in the ceiling at the bottom end of the skylight.  Of course I made a panic call to the Chance House.   PATTY .... DAN .... HELP!!!!!  In probably less than 30 minutes, the entire storm was over and the plopping stopped.

I had completely forgotten about how bad the front gets.  When Dan showed up, he waded through three inches of water to unplug my little drainage ditch.  Dan grabbed a shovel and I a rake, to enlarge my ditch and drain the swimming pool.  Most of it is gone in this picture.

Which brought us to this .... the water had been up the sides of the concrete blocks.  Not a good thing at all.  In less than an hour, it had all disappeared.  Now the work begins.  Today I'll be trimming up all these Mexican Bird of Paradise plants so we can get back there with wheelbarrow loads of dirt and rock.  This is a low spot that must be filled in asap.  There's big storms coming all week long, a result of the hurricane weather in New Orleans.  

My heart goes out to those people.  I just got a 30 minute taste of their troubles and I didn't like it one bit.  

So much for my plans of leaving this week.  The roof has to be repaired, although Dan thinks the wind and rain came from the right direction, lifting the comp shingles just enough to let the water in.  As soon as the rain subsided, the plopping stopped completely.  Lucky for me there is a big pile of leftover shingles in the garage.  

Which brings up THIS problem ... I have no food.  I've been completely cleaning out the fridge and freezer so I didn't have to carry much on my way home.  Guess I'll be going to the store today.  I'm hoping to get everything fixed and leave the following week.  We shall see.

As for now, I'll be out front shoving sand and gravel.  Pray for New Orleans.