Have You Ever Seen the Rain?

FDR Drive in New York City (Photo: Robyn Shepherd via Storyful)

 It was getting close to 11 pm and I was wrapping up last night's post.

Something told me to throw a post together and call it a night.

The Renegades wound up with the night off thanks to the weather and, after "The Clubhouse" ended, the power began to flash.

So, I wrote, finished up, and decided to look downstairs.

The rain had been intense. The wind had whipped up a bit. Thunder was sounding out. Mother Nature was giving us quite a show.

My stomach dropped as I opened the door. There, at the bottom of the stairs, was a small amount of water.

I jumped to action, grabbed a picture of The Beatles for the post, finished it up, threw my boots on, and went downstairs. 

What had started as a small puddle was quickly expanding. I quickly grabbed things and started moving things out of the way.

Sean came down and joined the fun.

I hoped we'd be armed with two shop vacs, but one wasn't taking the water, so Sean worked with the functioning one for a stretch while I worked to keep things out of the water.

Eventually, we swapped, with me taking over the vacuum. But I sensed Sean felt useless and it was a feeling I recognized.

See, I'm not handy. At least that's basically what I've been told my entire life. As a kid, I didn't know the difference between...well...any tools. I drove my father nuts in those moments and, with no disrespect to him or his memory, I wasn't going to let the same thing happen to Sean.

As an adult, I realized that my handiness was actually that I'm resourceful. Thus I've earned my reputation as MacGyver. I try to fit the square pegs in the round holes and make it work.

But I remember that feeling. Heck, I still feel it sometimes. It's a feeling of complete uselessness.

Sean told me he felt that way and, while I was appreciative of him keeping me company, I told him to go upstairs. I knew he had my back and he'd join me again if needed.

In the end, I vacuumed until 1 am. By that point, the stress of moving things around, coupled with bending and moving to suck up the water had taken its toll on my back. I felt like I had the water under control and could go back upstairs.

Besides, I knew there would be more.

I kept looking at the rain. It appeared endless. Relentless. It was supposed to die down as the night went on but the flood warnings kept buzzing on my phone, from midnight to 2:30 to 5:00 am.

It was disheartening.

Back upstairs, Sean and I talked things over and we both went to bed. I knew that it would take a while for me to fall asleep.

For whatever reason, I didn't set an alarm and woke up naturally. Rascal was hungry, of course, so I fed him before I walked downstairs.

Shockingly, the additional water was minimal.

Being quite familiar with the routine here I can say we've dealt with worse. The flooding, in the end, wasn't that bad.

I was grateful for Sean and how it could have been so much worse.

A dehumidifier is humming right now as the basement begins to dry out.

We move on, knowing that there are so many others who dealt with so much worse.

We survived.

TD Bank Ballpark -- home of the Somerset Patriots -- is shown under floodwaters
(Photo: Thomas P. Costello and Tariq Zehawi, USA TODAY Network)