September 17th 2026

Well that’s my fault.

I skipped around a bit.

Sometimes I do that.

Who was it that said that time isn’t linear? That’s a physics thing right? Einstein?

You know what?

Doesn’t fucking matter.

Just looked it up.

It was Einstein.

Space time-continuum shit.

And I do that sometimes. I jumble dates or events… or I’ll think that something felt like it happened ages ago and it’s only been eight days… or that something just happened maybe two months ago and turns out it’s been five.

Classic Vanessa shit right there.

So it should come as no surprise then that we didn’t remember to mention September second.

Now here’s the thing… I don’t want you to think that I forgot and therefore am minimizing the ferocity of said event, because I didn’t… I just in my brain, swapped last week with the week before.

Again… classic Vanessa.

Now it’s worth circling back to for several reasons… one being that it was cool as fuck and two being that it solved a few problems and a few mysteries for us as well.

We had a flooding issue on September second.

Which I kind of have to laugh about.

Here I never lived more than ten feet above sea level for just about 20 years and I move about 1500’ above sea level and have water actively enter my home for the first time ever.

The jokes write themselves.

Ha.

Ha.

David blames me partially. And that’s fine.

I think it’s bullshit.

But I don’t think it’s about the water.

It’s the hand rail I tore out.

“Look at what your impulsion did!”

Pretty sure it didn’t create a supercell and one of Western New York’s craziest weather events in quite some time… but I’m not a scientist.

I guess in this case meteorologist.

I will give it to him with the impulsiveness. THAT.

That part is fully accurate.

I will OWN that.

100%.

I was weeding.

And now I really wanted to clean up this portico area because it looks… well looked… like total shit.

Peeling paint; broken trim; rotted soffit; rusty mismatch colored doors, one badly bent, the other missing a working doorknob; the dilapidated and badly rusted handrail; and lots of weeds.

I chose the weeding.

The stuff around the handrail came up pretty easily. Surprisingly easy if we were being honest. All except for this one stupid stick that I just could not manage to pull out of the garden. To make its extraction that much more difficult, it was growing in between two of the handrail’s rungs.

I did what anyone would have rationally done and I kicked it.

The handrail was so rusted that I ended up Chuck Norrising the complete shit out of the guardrail.

One thing leads to another and next thing you know I have pushed, pulled, bent, and wrangled that iron rail in every which way until it snapped right off.

Totally impulsive.

I thought it looked crappy to begin with. Looked even worse after the kick that I tried to loosen the branch with… and then far worse with the jagged remnants of the iron rail, the loose dirt and weeds scattered everywhere and the spillway that then helped to open up into the basement’s entranceway.

It looked awful.

David was upset.

And when he later told me that he was upset because the handrail “made him happy,” I did feel bad.

So bad in fact that I later bought mums and planted them all alongside the railing a few days later… then because it looked so good and so much better, I bought mulch, and then because that looked so much more better I used old logs to trim it out… and because that looked good I used the sawzall to clean up the jagged handrail remnants, and then because that looked so good I started priming the whole area… which turned into a project.

All on impulse.

But that’s not the story. Well kind of.

Part of it started there… me creating the spillway…

Though again… I’m not totally buying that theory.

That’s just handrail mad talking.

I’ll say I probably helped make the spillway a little more spilly… but I think it was still spillway-esque before that.

Doesn’t matter… because like I said before… back to meteorology.

I had no control over that.

Zip.

David knows that.

(Handrail).

What wound up happening was that our area got absolutely rocked with a thunderstorm that even impressed me… a former twenty year Florida resident.

It had felt like we were on the verge of rain or some sort of storm most of the day.

By the afternoon when I went to peek outside again at the desecrated basement entrance to see just how bad I had made everything the sky was starting to turn into something far more ominous looking than rain alone.

There was a sickly green gray haze that illuminated the sky just below the inkwell dark clouds forming a thick, angry cover that gobbled up the afternoon sun. Wow.

No sooner did you step back inside and you were greeted by the emergency broadcast system blaring over your phone and at least two out of the three David has.

TORNADO WARNING. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY STATEMENT. THERE IS A CONFIRMED TORNADO IN STEUBEN COUNTY (rambles off our very nearby area). TAKE SHELTER IN A BASEMENT OR INTERIOR ROOM WITH NO WINDOWS. THIS IS AN EMERGENCY STATEMENT…

That checked.

Also… you were already in the basement.

So silver lining… that was good.

One step ahead of the game.

Of course I looked out the windows.

If a tornado was coming, I at least wanted to see it… and let’s be honest if it came in from the other way, I was pretty sure the windows would blow out anyhow.

Actually I wasn’t certain of that at all. I was far more certain that I wasn’t going to see an actual tornado AND that if we were to get hit while sitting here in the church, either the sheer mass of it would keep us safe or crush us all immediately and instantly before we even knew what hit us. Win, win… either way.

While none of that did happen we did wind up getting what felt like Zeus dowsing our town in angry god sized buckets of wrath.

Our gutters overflowed; the sidewalk that we spent all last summer pushing heavily debris laden wheel barrels up, now teemed in a frothy runoff from both the church’s roof and the street; the spillway spilled.

It wasn’t long before water began cascading down not only the sidewalk but some running down the stairs that led down to the basement entrance.

The water swirled on the cracked concrete pad and began to rise up towards the basement’s entrance and the rusted exterior closet’s door. Thunder crashed and the sky lit up. Over and over and over again.

Soon the water made its way into the outdoor and indoor closets along with under the foyer’s door frame. The kids brought towels and we continued to dry and sop the water for hours.

The storm was unrelenting.

It thundered for hours.

The rain rained.

It went from ‘ungodly amounts,’ to ‘wow it’s really raining out there,’ and back to ‘ungodly’ for what seemed like most of the night.

Bolt after bolt after bolt of lightening rained down on our small town. Some of the thunder was loud enough to vibrate the floors of the church.

At one point I went into the sanctuary… all the lights off. The lightening illuminated the cathedral windows and sanctuary in fleeting moments that came both quickly and frequently. It was spectacular.

(Especially the part where the ceiling still didn’t leak anymore).

Rain was just beginning to let up when we got up for school the next morning.

It would take almost a week, even with the little dehumidifier we had brought with us from Florida, to dry out the little indoor closet and foyer.

I didn’t even mention to David that the handrail I pulled out, the one he swore was the reason for the flooding (it wasn’t) had been listed on Facebook Marketplace.

You’re not really sure why, but that kind of chapped your ass too.

That’s neither here, nor there.

What mattered was the whole “water in the church thing,” because spillway or not… the spilleth was runeth-ing over.

Now the sidewalk was a factor and part of that was the street was just slightly above the sidewalk and so some of the street’s water wound up on the sidewalk which then wound up in cases of ‘shit tons of rain’ down your stairs and then under your portico and into the church.

The other contributing factor outside of the sidewalk was an old defunct drain. That had been occupied by an ugly parking cone since day one. The old grate that covered the little drain basin, a roughly 16” x 8” x 12” concrete basin with an old clay pipe about 4” above the bottom had broken in half. We tossed the cone in there to mitigate legal obligations by lessoning the risk of a rolled ankle or worse. Did it keep anyone from falling in? Who knows. Was it ugly af? Yes. That we definitely knew.

And based on our prior observations along with the crazy thunderstorm experience, we knew that the clay pipe that ran off of the catch basin and out somewhere that we weren’t quite sure of was either a) long since collapsed or b) clogged.

The first summer we were here we had a plumber try to scope it. I’m not buying that he really gave it his all… but he said that he couldn’t tell if it was collapsed or clogged. His guess, based on the crack in the sidewalk that seemd to run directly parallel over the bit of clay pipe that protruded into the basin was that it had collapsed. So that was that.

Except that after the storm and the issues we had with water running down the stairs and freezing into a mini “surprise ice rink” which is even worse than an introvert’s surprise party, we knew that we couldn’t just let it go.

We were convinced that if we could fix that old pipe and get the water running correctly out of the basin again that we wouldn’t get the water coming down the stairs like it had the night before.

Considering that our property line ended pretty much where the basin sat, we weren’t really sure how to proceed. I couldn’t see the city being cool with us renting a jackhammer and tearing up the sidewalk and maybe some of the road to put in a pipe.

I wasn’t even sure what the procedure would look like for that.

“Uh yeah… hi city such and such department… I’m going to destroy your sidewalk. That’s cool right?”

Maybe I could lead in with, “Would it be ok if I tore up your sidewalk…?”

Honestly you weren’t really sure how to go about that.

So you emailed the mayor.

Who is also your neighbor and a friend.

And you don’t just make a habit of emailing him for every little thing.

This was the first time.

Because the last thing you wanted to be was a pest or even worse, that weirdo who tries to use their friendship to get special favors…

But you needed a favor… You did.

“Dear Mayor,

Water problem. Pipe. This fucking sidewalk… what can we do about it?

Sincerely,

Your Friend that is repairing one of your most favorite buildings in the city that you always hoped would be prepared and restored at some point…. Vanessa,”

And send.

Didn’t hear anything back.

That wasn’t at least until the very next morning when there was a ring of the doorbell and the Mayor himself was standing there with the head of the water works department (an older guy who looked close to retirement… Dan maybe?) who had just parked his car along ‘this fucking sidewalk’ in question.

You explained the situation to the two of them and after careful consideration, and before you busted up the sidewalk, they agreed to use one of the city drainage trucks to attempt to flush out the old drain basin’s pipe. Worst case scenario there would be no pipe left to flush and you’d have to figure something else out.

Best case scenario no one was busting up the fucking sidewalk (or fixing it after).

After Dan? was done inspecting the pipe he handed you back the parking cone… “Might wanna put this back so no one rolls an ankle…”

“Absolutely,” you had said as you placed the cone over the basin, doing your best to cover as much of it as you could… “Hey let me ask you… if you got a minute before you go…”

Dan said he did…

“Where exactly would one go… if they were to need say a basin cover grate… ours broke and I just don’t even know where to begin…”

“I’ll tell you what,” Dan? said… and this time he leaned in away from the Mayor as if making it so that the Mayor couldn’t hear him, “I have some extra at the shop and if you don’t tell the Mayor here… I can probably just bring you one.”

I cupped my hand around my mouth, playing into it, “Don’t worry, I won’t say a word.”

The three of us laughed and that was that.

The next day as David and I were walking back from Ottoman’s morning outing there were no less than three city trucks pulling up to the property and about a half a dozen guys who proceeded to jam a giant pressurized hose from a huge water tanker truck into the basin’s clay pipe.

One of the guys yelled over the deafening engine of the truck that he was afraid that if the pipe was truly collapsed that the water would immediately back out and spill down the stairs and flood out the basement again.

You yelled something about not giving a shit, that everything was still wet at this point (because at that point it was) and you were willing to risk it for a potential solution’s sake…

With not much more than a nod and a shrug he yelled for his coworker to turn on the pump.

And pump… that shit did…

Immediately there was a little burst of water from the center of the sidewalk that sprayed out and up in a miniature geyser and a bubbling of muck and mud that backwashed into the basin before a massive explosion on the edge of where the sidewalk and roadway met about ten feet from the basin. From here a torrent of muddy water sprayed the side of the huge tanker truck in a sudden release of long clogged pipes before subsiding to a less concentrated but still incredibly strong stream until it ran only white with clean froth devoid of anything remaining in the formerly filled pipes.

Once the water ran clear the men turned off the hose, quickly reeled it in and were gone just as soon as you could thank them.

You never saw Dan? with the grate but you didn’t have to fuck up a sidewalk, or pay a plumber, and you weren’t about to call in another favor and possibly get Dan? in trouble for forgetting so… a win was a win and you would take it.

Everyone had been pretty surprised by where the drain opened up onto the street. It had been so overgrown with grass and weeds that no one even knew it had existed. Now you had a working drain and you felt a bit more confident about avoiding the worst of the next crazy dumping of rain you might get. You had a drain! Fuck yeah.

In addition to the drain David was mostly over the handrail fiasco. The mums had won him over and despite the weeding and the handrail removal and the mums and the little garden that then turned into a mad dash to revitalize the portico right before winter got her foot in the door… which also added more work to his plate too… both of you had been pretty happy with the burgeoning improvements made to the once formerly looking derelict entrance.

Even better just a few days ago out of nowhere another red truck from the city drove up while you were priming the portico parking parallel the sidewalk and Dan? popped out with another city employee.

“Bet you thought I forgot about you?” He said.

“Figured you were just busy…” you totally thought he forgot.

Except he hadn’t and he and his coworker proceeded to pull a very thick heavy, rusty iron grate from the back of the truck that the two of them carefully put onto the old basin after you removed the parking cone that had sat there faithfully since July 31st 2025.

“It’s a little big… but…”

“It’s perfect!” You said. Sure it was big but it wasn’t something that a few well placed river rocks couldn’t hide and it sure as fuck beat the hell out of an old parking cone.

Now you had a new garden, a portico mid revitalized and repaired, a working drain, a grate, a husband that was no longer pissed about the handrail incident who had also stopped blaming the church’s foyer flooding on your “impulses,” and a Facebook marketplace listing that would hopefully go away at some point soon because it still kind of pissed you off whenever it popped up (and you still weren’t sure why it bothered you that the people who told you they were going to scrap it were instead trying to sell it).

You’d let that go at some point.

Probably when they sold it and the ad stopped popping up.

Regardless… you got a working drain and a grate and a garden AND a portico out of the deal…

Impulsiveness I have decided, is clearly underrated.

THAT is a great looking grate… and would you get a load of those mums…