Morning Thanks--the end?

The Schaap's lake house circled.

Don't let me dissemble here. I've not been stuck in an ark with ten thousand critters for forty days and night. It's not even a week, and let me assure you that I'm not been greatly inconvenienced. We have a scum line twenty-feet wide in some parts of the backyard that'll need cleaning up, but I'm dry as a cork. So I'm not going to tell you I know how Noah must have felt when that dove came back with a sprig of green in his beak. I don't. 

But I do know some fraction of his relief at the sight of that bird.

We got bunnies out back, and somewhere in this house a whiny cat; but I don't have seven pairs of giraffes kneeling here beside my desk, nor an equal count of muskrats or possums. 

I can feel something of the old man's thrill, however. The rain's been falling here for days on end, so much so that I lit out of Dodge late afternoon yesterday, drove to Sioux City, took care of some business, ate a buffet dinner at Hardrock Casino--just $9 for supper, and I didn't leave a dime behind in the machines, in case you're wondering. I had to get away, but it rained, hard, the whole time. 

Sunday night clouds out back.

I'm not 600 years old, and I don't have a 300-cubits long ship afloat somewhere handy. 

The truth is, we don't have it half bad, even if watching the water rise again yesterday was more than a little daunting. Common sense insisted it wasn't coming all the way up into the basement, but common sense has little to say about things when river banks across the field give way to torrents spilling down from somewhere north. 

In Rock Valley, people are truly inconvenienced, evacuated, stranded. There's likely no end to the families, there and elsewhere, who are, as we speak, ripping out besotted basement carpets. As some locals say, there are two kinds of people around here--people who got water and liars. 

I slept fairly well last night, in my own bed, not on a church pew or a inflattable mattress in some safe arbor elsewhere. I don't have to look down the steps into a house full of mud. I got it good, really. 

My wife is in Oklahoma being a grandma. Last night, alone, I told myself she couldn't have done better because she says that baby is even cuter than she is when she shows up on the pictures her parents send almost daily because we can't get enough of them. Barbara is well off the ark right now, even if that leaves me alone.

I'll confess--last night I bought a bottle. . .but it's still unopened, so don't worry about me sprawled out in my underwear somewhere in the garden. I'm not Noah, but I think I understand him a little better.

The forecast today is for cloudiness. That's all. No rain. Count me among the doubtful on that one, but anything less than yet another deluge is sheer blessing. Last night, coming back from Sioux City, I swear I saw a sun. Not long, but I did. It's still there.

This morning I'm thankful--greatly hopeful too--that it's over. 

I take that back. Right now--7:17--it's raining. 

But I've got all sorts of reasons for thanks.