Flash Floods

We went to dinner with some good friends tonight to celebrate two birthdays.   We went to a restaurant downtown and had a long, leisurely meal in which we shared food family style.  Conversations were had, laughing was frequent and inevitably the main meal was over and it was time for birthday cake.

While we were digging into our slices of cake a storm started.   We had already gotten flash flood warnings on our phone—an interesting thing in a restaurant because your phone, along with the phones around you are all making that squawking sound at the same time.   We didn’t pay much attention at the time but some time later after the bill had been paid, we realized we were in downpour trouble.

Radar apps have colors with things like red and orange being bigger, stronger and badder versions of the weather situation.    In our case, we were right in the middle of a big orange/red zone that might take an hour to pass.   We waited it out for a while, looking for a break in which we could send people to bring the cars up to the door of the restaurant to pick us up.

When we did get into the car the first thing we experienced was a flash flood warning again, this time from four individual cell phones as well as over-the car’s speakers.    It’s a good thing we live on a rise.  

Getting to our house was the trick though; we were re-routed two times due to that flash flooding warning we’d all been silencing for the past three hours.   It’s not common to have flash floods to the extent traffic is detoured and emergency personnel involved, but this was indeed some heavy rain coming down tonight.

The Big Boy Update:   Two times today I pulled my son over, in private and talked quietly to him about something he did that was rude or not wanted behavior.   In this quiet setting with no one else around, he can reflect and does know the appropriate behavior.   He’s still got a lot of challenges on how to get to those better behaviors though.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   Our sitter told me when we got home tonight that my daughter wanted me to come up to her bed and give her the secret handshake when I got home.   Don’t tell her I told you, but the secret handshake is: shake, fist bump, shooting fingers, pinky shake