Kiss me Granny, I'd love to get me some of the gray beaver!

(That title was for Jamie, who knows why)

My weekend! My weekend!

...Can easily be summed up in a few words: Water. Kids. Beer. Mother's Day. Um...what else? Oh yeah, BEAVIS GOT BUSTED SHOPLIFTING AT WALMART.On Mother's Day.

Fucker.

Yeah, there's nothing like chillin' out on Mother's Day, actually having the husband home for a change (no choice, it's really tough landscaping with mud), cracking open your third beer, getting ready to fire up some green, thanking my lucky stars we don't have water in the basement (or worse)...and then getting a call from Rhonda, Shawn's mom, to say she just got a call from WalMart saying the boys just got picked up for shoplifting.

Of course, my initial reaction was, "Shut the fuck up, RHONDA, that's not funny". Oh, except she wasn't being funny, she was all serious and shit.

Ugh. So, I went and retrieved my phone, and got my own call from Tony, one of the managers down there. Sign that I spend way too much fucking time down there: I knew exactly who Tony was when he called. The cute chubby manager. Nice way to finally fucking make his acquaintance, no?

Of course they called the cops. Wally World don't fuck around. And also? I would have insisted on it if they didn't. Little fucker, throw the book at him AND beat him with your billy club. Tazer his ass.

So, yeah, I had to haul ass down there and pick him up. Robert and Rhonda were up in Lebanon, visiting Robert's mom at Dartmouth (the one who they pulled the plug on? And she made this miraculous recovery. I'm fucking serious! Please don't tell Dubya), so I had the good fortune of picking his little shit ass up, too.

Only funny part of the story: what he stole. Most of you know, some don't. Well, here's the part where I leave the room and laugh (you know, like when a 2 year old says "fuck". It's funny as hell, but if you laugh, it just encourages them): condoms and an airhorn. Supposedly, the condoms were to "be funny", like make animal balloons with them or something. The airhorn? Who knows. Usually they get an airhorn (legally, I might add) and take it to the golf course and blow it right as golfers are ready to swing. Now, THAT'S funny. Except, seeing as the golf course is on the flood plain next to the Merrimack River, which has been chillin' out at 8 feet above flood level, there probably weren't too many golfers out. I'm guessing.

Fucker. I wanted to rip him a new asshole but figured the silent approach would work for a bit. Of course, Beavis has a good conscience and knows right from wrong, so he knew that #1 he fucked up and #2 he was in for some shit.

Yeah, it goes like this, a two tiered approach: I took his PS2, PSP, cell phone for one week. Also, there is no friends, no phone, no computer for one month. The PSP for one week is a huge kick in the nuts. I let him keep his TV, but that's purely for my benefit: without that, he will drive me insane. I also told him that the next time Ned is in jail, he's going to visit to see all the glamour that is known as jail. I nicknamed him Beavis "Five Finger Discount" LastName. When we got home, Hilda and COurtney next door were here and I made sure to let them know what he stole. Every time I said "condoms" they were giggling up a storm.

But, he does have a good sense of right vs. wrong. I don't think he'll ever do it again. He's a teenager, though, and he will fuck up. He knows he did, too. He says it wasn't even a "mistake", he prefers to think of it as Stupidity. Hey, if it works for you.

Anyway, so then, the rain and the flooding. A basic rundown of the area, so you can get the gist of it. Nashua and Hudson are separated by the Merrimack River. There are two bridges to cross to go between the two, one that's close to downtown, and one that runs right off the highway, which is closer to me. WalMart just happens to be near the one by the highway.

So, when we left WalMart, I headed right to Nashua via the highway bridge to bring Shawn home to his big brother Chris. No problem there. We came back into Hudson via the downtown bridge. Whoa! The water was so close to touching the bridge, holy fuck. Then, we got into Hudson and took a main road, Lowell Road, to head home. Except, Lowell Road was flooded the fuck out by Second Brook, which normally runs under it, but Sunday decided "fuck that shit" and the road, two plazas, and several neighborhoods were under a few feet of water.If it were summer, I guarantee people would be swimming in that shit.

Well, it's Hudson and there's an unwritten law here that says all residents must be familiar with back roads and such cuz we will go miles and miles out of our way to avoid traffic. I mastered the back roads in high school while driving around with friends, so I'm an expert. I knew once we hit Lowell Rd and saw traffic backed up that Second Brook flooded it (it just happened two years ago), so I took a left and decided to back road it home.

Ha. When I approached another back road, where I could either take a left or a right to get home, the right being the shorter way, the road was closed to the right. Another brook goes under that road and washed the road out. No biggie, I took the left.

Only to get to the end of the road to find that the intersection there is now a lake. Pictures of that are on my flickr. I hopped out of the van and a firefighter was there, I just said, "I have to get pictures of this". It was incredible. Incredible.

Anyway, that basically exhausted our options for getting home. At that point, our house was pretty much on an island. I had to go back into Nashua via the downtown bridge and head down to the highway bridge just to get home. On the way, Beavis and I stopped at Field's Grove, my favorite park in town, which is part of Salmon Brook. In the pouring rain, we ran around the park and checked out the flooding there. We looked like drowned rats but it was fun, too.

I know. I just picked up my kid from his little incident, and then I'm running around the park in the rain with him. Go figure. He's still my little boy, even if he's more than six feet tall now.

Govenor Lynch declared a state of emergency on Sunday. School was cancelled for most of the eastern/southeastern part of the state for Monday. Some neighborhoods along the Merrimack River had to be evacuated. The Merrimack got to it's highest level since floods back in 1936. The coast got slammed. One town up north, Milton, has 48 houses under water. And in all the mess? So far, no fatalities. That is fucking amazing.

We're of the more fortunate. We had a teeny bit of leakage in the basement, but Hub was able to divert that with his amazing powers of landscaping. He used the magic trick of moving a few cobblestones from our walkway and directing the water around the yard instead of toward the bulkhead. Voila. Beavis and I took a good hile out back on the trails yesterday afternoon and what was normally a little stream is now a raging river. It's crazy. Oh! And we had the cutest little waterfall out back. I took so many pictures, when I can I'm going to post them on flickr.

Anyway, so, yeah, I consider myself extremely fortunate as far as the flooding goes. It's been so bad for some people, I can't find it in myself to complain about being wet.

I have about fifteen or so minutes until it's time to take Mickey to school, and then I have a precious two and half hours sans children as Colin and Makayla are not coming today. What to do, what to do!

Adios.

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