When it’s midnight and you’re in your jammies, curling up with the NYTimes mag’s story on “The Greening of Geopolitics,” you really hate to hear your husband shout “The basement is flooding!” But so he did. These are soggy times. New York City got hammered with eight inches of rain yesterday. And while it’s hard to find the blessing in this, blessing there must be. Small disasters are not our enemies.

So there was Mr. Chattering, looking like a gangsta in his hoodie, bailing out a drainage space near the back stairs while I–in kimono bathrobe and snow boots–swept waves of water out of our basement office with a broom, rescuing mementos like Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” CD
from the soggy detritus.

Do you try to find the grace in everything? One thing I noticed: I loved my husband in this moment. And our dog was quick to delight in the new form of fun we were having. He got so soggy with mud and rain–running out to the garden and back–that I was obliged to give him a full bubble bath (since he sleeps with us) at 1:30 in the morning. Rejoice. Rejoice.

I left our basement doors open all night in hopes that the air would prevent mold from growing. Mold scares me, but little else. The papers and office supplies lost were needing to be thrown out anyhow.

At 6:30 this morning, the basement floors were dry and actually brighter thanks to all the sweeping. And I feel like I’m seeing the whole basement space anew. I want to make some tangible changes down there this spring.

When I spied the radiant 50-mm crystal that I’ve hung over a particularly cluttered basement hotspot, I wanted to ask my little Feng Shui helper: “Well, where were you last night? Sleeping on the job?”

But maybe it was working the whole time.

Does your home or the weather (or your home’s response to the weather) ever send you helpful messages? What do you make of that?