Make it stop.

(Apologies to those of you I know from the Mommy boards. This is a direct copy/paste because I'm tired and I'm lazy.)

The rain, I mean. It's crazy in this area. I don't care so much about the rain in and of itself. The girls have been complete troopers and all I have to say is thank god for couch cushions thrown on the floor, because they can provide an entire day of entertainment for two stir-crazy, housebound children.

But there are so many flooded areas. My poor dad has been up for about two days straight. They always get water in the downstairs of the house when it rains. My mom and dad have been taking turns doing "towel watch", putting towels down on the floor of the downstairs of their house, spinning them in the washer, and throwing them in the dryer, only to put them back down again. They're both exhausted.

My poor sister called my mom in tears this morning because their entire chain link fence around their yard collapsed. There's a (normally) small stream that runs behind their house that they and all of their neighbors have to cross (via small, 3 foot long bridges) to get to where most of them park their cars. The neighbor's bridge was completely swept away and is now in my sister's backyard. With her fence down, she couldn't let her dogs outside without being on leashes, and they have to fix it ASAP whenever this godd*mn rain decides to stop.

This is my sister's backyard. She was standing on her back porch when she took this picture and where you see water is normally her backyard. You know... with, like, grass and stuff. That white building is their garage.

You can see how fast the water is running in this picture. You can also see what was once her fence...

It did stop for a few hours this afternoon (when I let Grace run around and jump in mud puddles since she's been trapped inside for about a week now), but we're supposed to keep getting more rain for another day or two. It's just nuts.

There have been road closings, evacuations, and a few drownings in and around the area. Steve and I are lucky in that the way our property is, we never have water issues here. Our stream did flood the one side of Steve's garage down back, but other than a little bit of mud on his backhoe, and a bunch of big tree limbs and branches scattered around, it didn't cause any damage.

But seriously... it's time to stop now.