Well, the rain came down in buckets all day, flooding streets and homes alike. I was, rather stunned I might say, to come home and find the basement only squishy from my battle last night.

On the drive home, battling my way through torrents of rain plummeting down on the highway, I plaintively asked my writing student's father to bring over some short hoses I remembered spotting as I helped clean out their garage a week ago. The new shopvac I bought last year --after I caught the other one on fire whilst trying to stem the then flood of water--has a pump feature. I figured that he could ferret out how to make it work, which would make my impending fight ever so much easier. This way, I would not have to keep emptying the 16-gallon bucket every 20 minutes.

Being a rather clever fellow (actually he is nothing short of brilliant), he had the pump feature set up in short order. I tried sucking up some of the squishy water beneath the floating laminate floor using the swollen cracks, but the shopvac has to have four inches of water before the pump feature does its magic.

Happy that I might get some rest, I walked my writing student and her father to the car, fantasizing just how long I could sleep before I would need to wake up and check on the basement. Oh, my dreams crashed around me in nothing flat.

I walked back inside and thought I would take a look see before I changed out of my work clothes. Hmm...my work clothes are drenched. I have confirmed that not only does the pump feature work beautifully, but also that MUCH water can enter a basement long after it stops raining.

I have to go and pump some more now that my Orange Gatorade break is over. While sucking up that water, I shall remember what truly excellent work my writing student did today. I tasked her with finding out how to do PDF forms. She has never created a form or used either Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Designer. Not only did she create functional forms, she also documented the procedure so that other staff can learn how to do so as well. Now...could you have done that at 17...in less than a day's time?

Simply put, she inspires me.