I was sitting here, around nine-thirty this evening (well, yesterday evening, now), working on edits of wedding photos from last summer.

One hundred done, ~250 to go...

And I hear what sounds like, well, like someone peeing on plastic.

That's odd, you know.

So I go to check it out. Suspecting that some panicked heeler (it's been raining and thundering since five o'clock or so) has decided to hide in the basement, and was forced to relieve herself here.

But no, no heelers.

But there is a narrow stream of water shooting out of the wall about elbow height. Coming out of a crack in the foundation that we sealed with spray foam almost twenty years ago.

Just like a leaking dike in a cartoon, there is a steady stream shooting out onto some plastic by the dryer.

And, just like in the cartoons, I plug it with my finger.

And yell for the wife. And yell, and yell.

No response.

So finally I give up on plugging our leak, and charge up the stairs, then charge back down with wife following.

Show her our leak, and then I plug it with my finger again.

She checks around. Near as she can tell, that's the only spot where water is getting in. But still, what to do?

Wish I had some chewing gum...

Wife pops a wad out of her mouth and hands it to me.

And the leak is plugged. For now, anyway.

So. The next two hours or so are spent outside, getting soaked literally to the skin, in heavy rain. Propping up the rain gutter that was warped by heavy ice during winter and is now dumping half the roof's shed water onto the back steps.

Creating a lake next to the steps and foundation.

Which is slowly leaking into the basement around a wad of chewing gum.

And then digging, again by flashlight in the rain, about 15 meters of trench down our heavily compacted gravel driveway to drain said lake.

And moving a barrel under the other place where the rain gutter is overflowing.

And digging, by hand, not shovel, a trench through the mud to make sure the water that is finally coming properly down the gutter spout also flows away from the house.

We check the south side of the house, and find another lake in the corner by the lilac. The spot the little maskless heeler dug out to make a bed.

Odd that just this afternoon, before the storms hit, I was looking at her little dirt bowl behind the lilac and thinking we ought to fill that in so water doesn't pool by the foundation.

Would have been a lot easier in daylight.

Especially since I wouldn't have been dependant upon the wife to hold the flashlight. She has absolutely no comprehension of the need to shine the light where the shovel is going, not where it has been.

Would have been a lot easier without pouring rain, and dripping wet lilac branches, too.

But hey, at least the rain was warm.

And eldest son and girlfriend arrived about an hour into this exercise. Gave us another person to dig.

And his girl was not only able to shine a flashlight in the right spot, but she was able to do it with two flashlights guiding two different diggers in two different places.

At the same time!

And for her kindness she got to go home wearing some of the wife's oversized, but dry, clothes.

Sometime after midnight.