Flooded

What a day! It started with an announcement on my clock radio that there was a storm and flooding going on in my part of town, "right now!" Tuffy, who gets nervous during storms, kept trying to hide between my legs, or climb into my lap as I got ready for work - and she's most definitely not a lap dog. I dug up my jacket because it has a hood, and because the last time I got soaked at lunchtime, I was chilly in the air conditioning at work all afternoon. This turned out to be a good call, in light of the temperature my car thermometer gave when I set off this morning. This is August in Tucson? Well, yes. On this particular day, it was.



I then spent twenty-five minutes making my six minute drive to the place where I park for work. There only seemed to be one disabled vehicle, but it was stop and go all the way. In this shot I was facing the mountains, but they were completely invisible. The right lane was about five inches deep in water, and the parallel access road was even more flooded. Impatient drivers sent wedges of water into the sky as they hurried past the buildings to my right.



By the time I reached the Crosswalk of Death, the rain had eased off, but not the flooding. What you're seeing here is water slishing up over the six inch curb. I was going to have to walk through that in my sneakers, and make it snappy, too.

Okay, so I had damp feet all day. So had many of my co-workers, because the crosswalk they used was no better than mine. I did see one woman who have the sense to wear fancy lace-up dress boots. Another co-worker sat in his car for 45 minutes until the rain eased off.


When I went back to my car at lunch, the puddles were mostly gone, and it was getting rather hot and muggy. The indentations in the sandy soil above are my footprints, as photographed early this afternoon. In the morning, when I made them, the flooding had given the ground between the crosswalk and my car the consistency of quicksand.

This is sunset from the previous night, kind of a pink searchlight effect.

I just want to say in passing that I was also emotionally flooded today. Someone attacked me several times in a public venue, and I foolishly defended myself. Funny how after all these years, false accusations, my childhood bugaboo, can still drive me nuts. Several friends have given me good advice, though. I eventually managed a more mature response, and the crisis is probably over for now. I even got some editing in on Mages tonight. I had moved on to Chapter Three, but a fact a character shouldn't have known sent my back to Chapter Two to fix the problem. Progress!

Karen
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