Swimming, and Thankful NOT to be swimming

I have been trying to get some video of Alastair during his swim lessons to share with the blogging public, but it has been trickier than I would have thought. First, Alastair had a teacher in training helping Miss Tracy who was doing more hovering than I would have liked in the frame. That made it hard to see the boy at work and made it seem as if he were in imminent danger of going under. Not the case! I really wish I had video of this week's lesson because Alastair was the only child that made it to class and thus got a private lesson, which was my main motivation for making every effort to get to class. Miss Tracy had him float for easily five minutes as he is preparing for his float test. This is a little difficult to see with the water marks all over our viewing window. But you get the idea!

This has been an odd week so far with threats of a global pandemic (I really like saying that; it just feels like there should be sound effects and graphics to go with it) and a freak rainstorm that left much of Houston underwater. Thankfully, the flooding in our neighborhood was limited to the streets and bayous and stayed out of our house. Tuesday morning around 3:30 we awoke to a terrible storm going on with consecutive flashes of lighting I likened to the paparazzi at a red carpet event. Huge booming thunder claps sounded and then, horror of all horrors, HAIL. We have resumed work on the kayak in earnest lately, intent on floating it by our May 30th camping trip. As a consequence, Kim left his new black car in the driveway. Needless to say, when the hail started, Kim and I were about sick, but what could we really do at that point? Thankfully, it sounded a lot bigger than it actually was and the car gods let Kim get by with a good scare. Something ought to go right for us car-wise, don't you think? Alastair slept through the whole thing.

We figured after as much rain as we had, there was going to be some flooding. Kim got ready for work at the usual time but decided to take my Expedition in because it has more ground clearance. However, he met with an unpleasant surprise because our street was flooded severely enough that getting water over the door seals was a concern. In the four years we have lived here, we have never seen any accumulation in the streets at all, so this was very surprising. Kim assured me that he had taken pictures for the blog. Next time I will think to ask if he took pictures when it was still dark, something that would not have occurred to me to ask before today. Squint and behold the river running up the street and how high the water was in the driveway.