TheBanyanTree: Welcome Rain

[Kitty Park]

The forecast was that we'd get rain today.  That's good.  Grass is brown and 
gasping.  I could see heavy skies approaching both with my eyes and on TV's 
weather channel.   On the other hand, I had volunteered to go get 
grandchildren Sophia and Brandon this morning.  Could I get there and back 
before the impending storm hit?

I was up at the regular time which is good.  It gave me plenty of time to 
eat and have the normal dosage of coffee.  Unfortunately when I walked out 
the door at the scheduled time to get the kids, I realized I'd taken the car 
seats out last night and now needed to put them back.  There's a lot of 
anchoring to be done, and some uncomfortable physical positioning of the 
human body is required to accomplish the task.  Once the seats were locked 
in place, I was sweaty, irritated ...... and late.

Fortunately it had finally begun to rain.  Unfortunately a lightning strike 
nearby chose this precise moment cut our power.  And I have an electric 
garage door opener.

Fortunately I know how to open the door manually ... theoretically, anyway. 
Just pull the red cord.  Yes, I opened the door!  And backed the car out of 
the garage into the rain the lightning foretold.  Unfortunately I had to get 
out of the car to close the door (or mop the floor when I returned).

Fortunately I had an umbrella in the car.  Unfortunately I had to open it, 
and as I sat in the car with the floppy umbrella raised above the open car 
door, rain water ran down my arms and onto my face while I wrestled the 
umbrella into usefulness.

Finally out of the car and back in the garage, I puzzled over how to close 
the garage door manually.  I'm 5 feet tall; the door was another foot above 
my reach.  Fortunately I have a 2-step stool.  Unfortunately the door 
wouldn't budge when I pushed on it to close it.

Fortunately after I moved my step stool farther into the garage and got my 
hands on the top of the door, I could rock it.  Eventually it moved down to 
a point that, once off the stool, I could grasp the bottom of the door and 
pull it down.  Unfortunately this made getting wet again inevitable.  But 
finally I was off to pick up Sophia and Brandon.

Fortunately Dawn had pulled her car out of her garage so I could pull mine 
in to load the kids.  On the drive home, I gave Brandon and Sophia 
instructions on how we'd get into the garage without getting wet:  They'd 
stay in the car until I opened my umbrella, got out of the car, manually 
raised the door, returned to the car, collapsed the umbrella and finally 
pulled in.

The first half of the procedure was completed easily, but unfortunately the 
door was caught -- I couldn't lift it.  Crap.  Crap crap.  The walk around 
to the front door (twice, once for each child) was going to have all three 
of us in need of a change to dry clothes.

Why I did it, I don't know.  I walked to the keypad outside the garage door, 
punched in its 5-digit code, and the door lifted!  Hallelujah!

Safely in the garage, as I unhooked the kids' seatbelts, Brandon said, 
"Grandma!  The rain's stopping!"


Kitty
kpark at sssnet.com
http://home.neo.rr.com/bythelake/