FOOD

Wow.

Albuquerque has been hit by some pretty severe wind and rain storms in the past week. And my own little house has endured some roughing up.

Three days ago, wind gusts picked up our enormous trampoline in the back yard (must weight 500 pounds, that thing) and hurled it over our wall, and across the street. We came home to find it standing upright (though bent and twisted) in the center of an empty lot on the street. Amazing. The gusts were reported at about 60 miles per hour, but I’m thinking they had to be stronger than that.

Then, the following night the rain came. Two nights ago. Good God, but it was intense, with an estimated 2-plus inches falling in my neighborhood in the span of an hour or two. The lightning storm was beautiful, and Alex and Patrick and I were running from window to window downstairs, watching the show. Alex was so excited, he said “This is better than a movie theater!” As he watched the water literally pour out of the drainpipes onto the usually dry xeroscape rocks of the yard, making them shimmer in the dark, my future-writer five-year-old said, “The water pouring across the rocks makes them look like coins shining. They look like a handful of wet pennies.”

He’s a natural, my boy.

Anyway, right about then is when we noticed a gushing sound upstairs, in the master suite. We went in to find water pouring through the light fixtures and the ceiling fan all over everything. The bed was ruined, soaked like a sponge in a full sink. The carpet? Done. The ceiling has to be replaced. My bed and end tables? Cooked.

We get up on the roof yesterday and see that our builder failed to install covers on the drain openings, as required by law. The covers and screws were there; they just weren’t installed. They were in a pile in the corner, like the workers had intentionally left them there. Turns out a whiffle ball that got batted onto the roof had clogged one drain pipe, which flooded the master suite.

A fifty-cent ball causes God knows how many thousands of dollars in damage. Pretty sad.

Good news is, the leaks are fixed, the drains are fixed, the carpet is torn out and the mattress is gone. We’re shopping for a new bed today.

You just never know, people. We’re just happy it was stuff, and not people. Stuff you can replace.

Hope you’re having a good week. If you’re in town, there’s a good Cajun band playing at the Biopark tonight, provided there’s no more…rain.