Not Made for the Rain

It seems like every time I get sick of house hunting, something comes along to remind me how nice it will be to get our of our current apartment. I don't mean to be a complainer, but I do want to remember all of the adventures this apartment has given us.

We had an idea that our complex would give us a few problems when we moved in. Our place is set on the bottom of a hill, creating a 45 degree angled drive out of the parking lot. I remember thinking- lots of people live on the side of mountains. I'm sure there's just some secret I don't know about. For those of your who've never lived on the side of a mountain- I was wrong!

We got a clue of how ill designed our parkinglot/driveway was when it started raining last fall. Here's a picture taken in about December of last year. You'll see that I'm standing in the middle of our parking lot with water up well past my ankles. And if you think it goes away as soon as the rain stops, think again! We were stuck parking up on the street for days after any rain.


Then the snow came. I made the mistake of leaving my car in the parking lot during one snowfall. There was no way my car was getting up the icy incline that was our driveway and I was stuck taking the bus until it thawed. After that I never made the mistake of parking anywhere but the street when there was any sign of snow. It wasn't too bad, though I did often think it'd be safer to just keep a sled up on the top of our driveway and ride down every time rather than try to walk through the ice.

The snow went away and we've spent a few months without any surprises- until yesterday.

Here's a picture of our current apartment complex- our apartment is on the bottom left. You'll notice we have to go down some stairs to get to our semi-basement apartment. Well yesterday I found out that with some heavy rain those stairs become a pretty amazing waterfall- gushing water onto our porch. Unfortunately I didn't have time to enjoy this new bit of landscaping provided to us by Nature. As soon as I saw the waterfall, I noticed that our porch was rapidly filling with water. It was so deep and came so fast that I was certain in only a few minutes it would be high enough to start seeping into our apartment.

Being the only one home in the complex, I ran around in the pouring rain trying to find something to block the water from pouring down our stairs. I must have looked pretty funny to our neighbors! I was eventually able to use two big garbage cans and a plastic bag full of potting soil to stop the flooding. Not quite sandbags, but it was all I could find close by on short notice!

As they say-third time's a charm- and after this adventure I'm official really excited to move.