valiant attempt

A valiant attempt at caring

I was doubled over, my hands numb from the cold. A chill wind blew in from the open window. Scratch, splatter, scratch splatter went the dustbin. I was using the bin to plow the water out of the basement, which was flooding. Melting snow and a nightlong rain had conspired to saturate the wintry earth. The water bellowed out of the drainpipe in the basement of the home. Scratch, splatter, scratch, splatter I went, for more than an hour.

Jerry had called out to me while I watched cartoons. The adventures of the Wild Thornberrys would have to wait. I went into my FIMA mode of flood management thinking. All I really needed was a clipboard and a suit and I would've been too fabulous for words.

Around me, the 50 or so boxes full of junk slowly saturated with the incoming water. "What am I saving?" I wondered. After about an hour, it grew increasingly difficult for me to keep up with the effort. I mean, I wasn't really making much of a difference -- not any noticeable difference. I mean, the water didn't seem to be gushing out of the drain as it had before. The water stayed about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch deep. No more, no less. Even after the hour of soughing it out, there didn't seem to be a difference. So I decided that I'd done all I could do.

And that was my valiant attempt at caring for this sad, bedraggled house.