OK. Back to real life. Real summer. Flooded basements.

The deadline for people to submit damage reports to the village is coming up this Monday. Already the village has collected more than 200 of the damage questionnaires. The information being compiled will be forwarded to the county and then up the government chain to the state and federal levels.

The goal is to receive funding for both short-term repairs and, perhaps, longer-term fixes.

Again, as we have done in recent weeks, we offer our thanks and encouragement to the village government, which has done solid work in the aftermath of this summer’s nature-spawned disasters. A local government can’t stop the rain. But it can be – and ours has been – attentive in the aftermath.

All of it is a long, hard slog for swamped homeowners and for government staffers who, we’re sure, had other things on their to-do lists for this summer. Nature rules. Always a good lesson. In the meantime, let’s head to the pool.