To my son Tommy,
Today was spent prepping for the impending doom of the upcoming storm and preparing food for the Halloween party at Jack and Gil's house tonight.
One thing is for certain, home improvement stores make a killing when storms are coming. If they could control weather they would probably schedule a nice major storm once per financial quarter. Generators are flying out the door and have waiting lists for the next shipment. If there is one thing in your life that you should buy in nice weather well before you need it, a generator is a must. That is a lesson we learned a couple times before it sunk in. Technically the generator we have in the garage is a loaner from a friend who had a whole house generator installed but it serves the purpose for this storm. Thus I was just picking up supplies in attempt to lessen the amount of water that floods in our basement. This allowed me to skip past the long line of irate customers demanding to know when the next shipment of generators would arrive and asking "Well what am I supposed to do?!" incredulously. I went and grabbed some plastic and duct tape and landscape fabric stakes. It is my attempt (not sure if it is pathetic or ingenious yet, will let you know after the results) to jury rig a system to skirt extra water away from the foundation. Of course in this neighborhood the groundwater rises from below quickly with any substantial rain, finds any little crack in your foundation, and keeps water coming in. As long as the electric is up, the sump pump usually takes care of this, but it does work double or triple time. It reminds of me of a pirate with a child's sand bucket in a dinghy with a large hole bailing away. When the electric goes down it is all up to the battery back up on the sump pump or the generator. I have resigned myself to a wet floor in the basement, but like I said I am just trying to make it a little better.
Your mother and Aunt Na spent most of the day cooking and creating foods for the Halloween party tonight. They had graveyard cakes and cookies and some type of jello worm things that are quite realistic looking but ,as far as I recall, much more tasty than real worms. We are going as Scooby-Doo (you) Velma (mommy) and Shaggy (yours truly) in our first "group" themed halloween costume. Not sure if this is going to become a tradition of costume coordination beginning for the Downey family but it sure has tickled your mother. She was quite creative and hit bargain outlets and goodwill to find some of the costume parts for each of us. I shudder to think what costumes we would have been in if everything was left to your dad's judgement. TGFM! (Thank God For Mommy!) Your Aunt Na is going as Moaning Myrtle, a character from the Harry Potter books and movies. I will bend my rule of editing later and add some pictures to this blog post when we get some good ones from the party.
Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo
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