the day the big flood came...

Hubby came home from work today, only minutes after a mighty thunderstorm had put an end to the tropical summer days I had enjoyed so much. His first way led him upstairs to retrieve his casual clothes, because inside the house it´s still uncomfortably hot, and a new pair of socks. Freshly washed socks lay sorted on my beautiful art nouveau desk which is situated beneath the roof-top window. The socks were wet, all of them. "Wife, you forgot to close the window when it was pouring!" At that moment daughter mine, who had been watching the verbal exchange with great interest, fled the scene, convulsed with laughter. Hubby was confused, but since there was soccer on TV he let the matter rest. That had been close, because the socks weren´t wet because it had rained in but because it had been me who had caused the flooding. Let me put it this way: the day before the teenies had been outraged because their PCs did not work properly for the third day in a row because of the heat. There was no thunderstorm in sight that day. Thunderstorms usually come with rain, and rain cools down the roofing tiles. I was not able to conjure forth cool air but I surely could provide water. Connect the hose with the sillcock, turn on the water, and here we go, of course only after husband mine had left for work. Husband is such a spoilsport when it comes to the wasting of water which was exactly what I had planned for. The cleanest part of our house is always the rooftop, because it gets rained on nearly each day, and I had to keep up tradition. So I let it rain, trusting that the upper rooms would cool down a bit. Well, they did, indeed. But once you stand next to our house you won´t see the upper part of the rooftop because you are jammed in the narrow space between garden wall and porch. Now the roof-top window comes into play: usually closed, it had been wide open that evening, to facilitate air circulation. Now we had a mini cascade of water merrily flowing down from the window to the desk to the wooden floor, emerging downstairs in a drizzle (our house is made of wood mostly, no beton involved). Huzzah! Daughter mine was the first to discover the accident. A good deal of the evening was spent with mopping up the excess of water. Oh my, what a beautiful sparkling desk I have now! Daughter did the washing of the towels in case hubby intended to take a shower (there weren´t any dry towels left), and together we prayed for the drizzle downstairs to end soonest. It finally did, mostly because hubby came home late (took a bath in the lake where they had performed, lucky me!), so the water had time enough to fight its way through. The only thing we forgot about were the socks which had been laid out in a box on said desk. I swear I´ll never ever do that stunt again, no matter how hot it´s inside the house! There are better ways to spend a hot evening than mopping up the floor!