I am not a fan of Charles Dickens. He reads like a man who got paid by the word, and I think he may actually have been. Most people have heard the opening line to A Tale of Two Cities- "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." They don't know that the opening line lasts for a paragraph's worth of space or that it compares about 20 things to each other. Nonetheless, that whole "best of times, worst of times" thing is about how I felt last night.

We've had a bit of rain here in Oklahoma. OK, we've had a LOT of rain. Yesterday cars were getting stuck, fire trucks were flooded, and interstates were damaged...all by rain. Last night Mom called at about 8:00. She was crying, which is something that she just doesn't do. She had come home to her house, opened the front door, and stepped into standing water. Since Dad died, it's just her and Sam out at the house, and all of us live about 45 minutes away. It looks like the people that we hired to build the addition on to the house when Dad got sick didn't do it properly, which we already knew. When we got so much rain, it came in over the wall that they built along the outside of the addition. There was at least an inch of water covering all the floors on the entire downstairs level. The carpet that she had installed just two months ago was completely saturated. There was red mud in the den. The bottom inch or two of the sheetrock is ruined on all the walls. I called the insurance company to get a claim started- they don't have anyone who works on the weekend, so they'll call on Monday. Nice.

That's the worst of times bit. Her house is trashed. The sheetrock will need to be replaced, which also means it will need to be re-textured and painted. The wainscotting in the front hall is done for, and at least the pad of the carpet is done as well. There was one good thing, though- and that's the people that came to help.

We got off the phone with Mom, grabbed our cell phones, and started calling people. Keep in mind that it is 8:00 on a Friday night, and time is a precious, precious commodity today. Kyle called his brother Bruce and explained what was going on. Bruce simply said, "Where do you need me?" He loaded up a wet-vac and his teenage son Jake and went to the house of a lady that he'd met just once. I called James and Debra to mooch a wet-vac off of them, and James said that he was going, too. Kyle called Danny, one of our elders, and all he said was "Let me change my clothes." and then he came too. Those guys vaccuumed several hundred gallons of water out of the house, moved all the furniture, ripped up the carpet, and hauled out the carpet pad. We just would not have been able to take care of things without them. I told Bruce thank you, and what he said made me extremely glad (AGAIN!) to have married into such a fantastic family. He just said "That's what we do." I love my family, both the legal one and the church one. I don't think that there are many places where you could call people and have them be there within the hour, but Lakeview is one of them.

So it's awful that Mom's house is so messed up. She has been trying to get things fixed up so that she can sell it and get something that's a little smaller and easier to maintain, and this is a pretty substantial setback. Right now we are hoping that the insurance folks will move quickly and be fair, and get her the money that she needs to fix things. We'll have to see what happens.

But what a blessing it was to have friends and family that were able to come and help and make her feel a little bit less alone.