I guess it is still officially autumn, but the last few days have made it feel a bit like we are entering our second winter in the northwest. One of the things about our first winter was that our snow shovel didn’t get much exercise. We did get one snowfall and I went right out and shoveled our walk and driveway, though it wasn’t much of a chore. I also noticed that I was the only one to shovel in our neighborhood. People around here pretty much just wait for the snow to melt and, as it turns out, it was pretty much melted by the end of the day. I’ve kept the snow shovel, however, and have it handy in our garage in preparation for this winter. After all, we’ve moved farther north, and one might expect it to snow a bit more here than it did in Mount Vernon, where we lived last winter.

It seems a bit of a shame that the kids don’t get snow days as bonus vacation from school, but we’ll see. It probably doesn’t take much snow to get them to cancel school around here. And, yesterday, we found out that they get something that never happened in South Dakota and never happened when I was a school child in Montana. They got a rain day! Schools were cancelled in our district yesterday due to flooding roads, and there will be no school at the school our grandkids attend today, either. Bruce Road, on the route that they take to go to and from school, is under water too deep to drive through. There also is no school in Bellingham today, which means that the church where we work is officially closed for the day. We can, of course, still get to the church and might go in to do some of our work today, but there are streets closed in Bellingham and we’ll have to see. Our regular staff meeting is held on Zoom, so we can participate in that from home.

The good part of a rain day from school is that we got some bonus time with our grandchildren yesterday. Their mother had a mid-day appointment that she was able to keep and Monday is her usual grocery shopping day, so the kids came to our house while she took care of those chores. She didn’t run into any trouble getting around except that the entrance to the parking lot at the grocery store was flooded, so she had to go around a different way to get to the store and she ended up doing part of her shopping in a less familiar grocery store.

Meanwhile, we had grilled cheese sandwiches and played Uno and the grandkids helped Susan bake chocolate chip cookies which was a pretty good bonus for us. I remember one day, when our son was pre-teen, I was at home when the kids got home from school and put out the usual snack. School lunches are fast - they are over in 20 minutes - and our kids came home from school hungry, so we always had a snack. On this particular day, I set out the jug of milk because our son was old enough to pour a glass for himself. Then I just watched as he drank 5 glasses of milk. I was amazed that he could hold that much! Well, yesterday was a bit of deja vu for me because our 10-year-old grandson sat down at lunch and proceeded to eat two grilled cheese sandwiches and two peanut butter sandwiches. Sandwiches for the three kids and two adults consumed an entire loaf of bread. That was no problem because we have another loaf and because I like the heels and i got a sandwich with two heels. The ten year old lasted an hour after lunch before asking for a snack and not long after that there were freshly-baked cookies and his mother was trying to get him into the car to go home. It is a good thing she got to do her weekly grocery shopping.

While all of this was going on at our house, our son was dealing with the flooding at his work. the library is safe from flooding and dry, protected by Mount Vernon’s flood walls, but the west side of town, across the river, was experiencing evacuations due to flooding. As a city employee, Isaac is a member of their crisis response team, assigned to communications when unusual events occur. Library staff collated evacuation notices and sealed them in plastic bags for the police department to deliver. At one point in the day, he was able to go up to see the action at the flood walls and took some pictures of the riverwalk, where Susan and I walked a couple of times each week when we lived in Mount Vernon, which is on the river side of the flood walls and under water.

After the children left our home, we drove up to Blaine and got our Covid booster shots. We saw a couple of places where there was some standing water on the roadways, but had no trouble at all getting around. We tried to take a walk out to the pier, to look at the waves and rough seas, but the wind and rain drove us back into a more sheltered area to walk.

While we were out and about, we received a text message from our son that he was unable to get back to the farm from work. Multiple mud slides had caused an overnight closure of Interstate 5 south of Bellingham. At least 5 cars had been stranded and one person was seriously injured when a tree fell onto their car on the highway. Isaac made a point of telling us that his motel room is on the third floor of the motel, so he is safe from flood waters. He did have to run to a local store to get a shirt and a few things for the unexpected stay overnight.

It has stopped raining for now here. The water is expected to go down today. Crews should have the Interstate re-opened before noon. The kids get one more flood day off from school. And life will go on. It may not be as exciting as a South Dakota blizzard, but it seems like sufficient drama for this week.