We got a lot of rain over the weekend.
On Thursday afternoon, it was hot and looked threatening, but I was determined to bike to get my CSA box – afterall it’s all those cars that are making it so hot. Mark was out walking and it was getting darker and darker, but he made it in before the rain, too. We had tacos for dinner, with spicy coleslaw and cucumber salad. I went down to check the basement and the water was coming in enough to be shop-vac-able – that is, too much for towels. I think there was at least two gallons in the vac when I dumped it in the laundry sink. It dried out really fast, and the main damage seemed to be a stain on the front of the overall skirt I was wearing – that’s mostly washed out now. I drank the last beer in the house, and we eschewed the RNC and watched Roadies on demand instead.
On Friday, it was my mom Ruth’s 12th yahrzeit, and I thought I had a good plan, things she’d be willing to leave the air conditioning to come out and do, even though it was what she would’ve called “beastly”, hot & humid outside. There were three women jazz vocalists performing at a downtown bar, starting not too late, 7:30, and I thought we could try out one of the new vegetable focused restaurants on the square.
Instead we went to see a tear jerker rom-com with the mother of dragons, playing a care giver for a quadriplegic (played by the actor who was Finnick Odair in the The Hunger Games). It was surprisingly not terrible, quite enjoyable, really, and we didn’t get anymore rain that night.
Saturday was a different story. It rained hard in the late afternoon, and I made towel dams, and went out by car to the grocery store. By the time I got back, it was shop-vac-able again, but the rain seemed to be stopping, so I got things dried out, and went off to a benefit for Russ Feingold, where I had a few glasses of white wine – probably a few too many, actually. We had quesadillas for dinner – easier than the peanut noodles I’d been planning. Then I had to go shop vac again, and there was even more water. This time I fell and dropped the bottom of the shop vac trying to dump it in laundry sink. I bruised my knee, and landed on my back. In the morning I was really sore, and felt pretty beat up, and Mark thought I’d bruised a kidney – done a kidney bump, he said. It hurt until the middle of the week but seems pretty well healed now, Thursday, and I never had blood in my pee or anything like that – so it must’ve been minor. Knee still looks bad though, and some other bruises have come up on my legs. I guess drunk flood clean up is to be avoided.
Wednesday we met in Milwaukee to see the Baseball Project – Mark took the train from Chicago and I drove from Madison. At Anodyne Coffee Roasters – hard chairs, looked like high school shop class stools with Masonite seats – but still a pretty great place to see a band. No Peter Buck in lineup this time, tho he is on the roster, but still a pretty great show.
Tonight I cooked as much as I could from my CSA box – roasted potatoes, corn, and green beans, that I ate a big bowl of for dinner; zucchini butter, that I had a bit of on wheat things for a side dish; and yellow squash casserole from Shuck beans, stack cakes, and honest fried chicken.
