Smugness

I'm feeling particularly smug today. I'm trying to be humble about it, but I'm going to be rather self-congratulatory here on my own blog.

One of my favorite blogs to read is Suburban Turmoil. This time, her blog was all about disaster preparedness. Some of you may know that I'm all about preparedness. I have to watch myself to make sure I don't cross the line into nut-job, which seems to be an ever-moving line. I am forever planning for some nameless disaster. While I think it would be really cool to have a whole bomb shelter with 3 months worth of food at all times, the reality is that we haven't even scraped money together for a generator yet. Somehow a new stove seems like it should be the first priority. Other things that we've thought of purchasing for disaster preparedness might seem to have trampled over the nut-job line, so I'll just keep those to myself. Little by little, however we've collected quite a nice stash of useful items though.

During this current disaster, I spent most of my day off glued to the TV, watching my son try to learn to crawl, and fielding calls from long lost friends to say "yes we're high and dry". We personally didn't have a disaster. But I was extremely confident in saying that we had everything we needed at our house to hole up there for a couple weeks at least.

Going through Suburban Turmoil's list was fun for me:
1. car cell phone charger - check!
2. Flashlights with extra batteries - check! One of the two I keep in my trunk is kept in a gallon plastic bag with the batteries outside of the flashlight. I had way too many batteries go dead because the flashlight got jiggled to ON at some point.
3. First aid kit - check, check, check! We have a first aid kit in each car plus our own medicine kit. Our car first aid kits are stocked with our typical OTC medicines and prescriptions as well.
4. A car power converter - check! Sure it might take us a few minutes to actually locate it in one of our cars, but we've got one!
5. weather radio and/or battery operated AM/FM radio - check! I'm even a big nerd and have one of those gizmos that has AM/FM radio, flash light, battery, solar, or crank powered!
6. water - check! We keep at least part of a case of water in each car (I had 1.5 cases last Monday) and have several gallon jugs in the garage. I did some further water hoarding on Monday as well.
7.Firewood - check! I even have the ability (with only a smidgen of know-how) to cook over an open fire. More likely, though, we'd cook with our gas grill if necessary.
8. appropriate food - CHECK! We keep extra dry goods in the garage.
9. Stay informed - check! I watched so much live local news on Monday that I gave myself heartburn
10. cash - check! We keep extra cash at the house. Do you realize that if the banking system looses power, you will have no proof that you have money? Makes you re-think only getting electronic statements.

Lindsey lamented in her blog that "I was totally unprepared for a disaster. We were out of milk (a calamity in itself, as far as my 3-year-old is concerned) had no working flashlights, and my cell phone was dead. Worst of all, I had just one diaper left.ONE DIAPER."

While we had a half gallon or less of milk on Monday, my child doesn't drink cow's milk yet. And we have a box of powdered milk in the freezer for us adults. I sometimes feel kind of dumb for keeping so many diapers in the house, but it eliminates one brand of stress from my life. I had 2 large boxes, one small package, and another probably 40 diapers stacked around the house. Diapers.com does the math for you to show you the best value in each brand of diaper. And if you spend more than $50, they deliver for free. FREE! DELIVERY! So I can even avoid ill-timed trips to the store AND buy a ton at once AND avoid lugging them back. This seems like a triple-win to me. And when my daycare lets me know that I'm nearly out of diapers, it's only a matter of remembering to put them in the car. Much less stress.

If our power had gone out, I would have been really bored. I would have burned more candles and dug out that old oil lantern I've got. My baby is not mobile quite yet, so candles around him wouldn't have been too dangerous. I would have had plenty to eat that didn't need cooking. I had my cell phone handy. We have a land line phone and at least one phone that isn't cordless and therefore doesn't need electricity. I would have worried a bit about my huge stock of frozen breast milk, but would have gotten over it if I'd lost it. I stockpiled some extra water. We were nearly out of cookies and cheetos, but these are not actually necessary in life, believe it or not.

I even had galoshes for my husband's ginormous size 14 feet!

So my preparedness allowed me to sit back on Monday, while the world flooded around me, and know that if need be, we could hole up in our house for a week or two in that specific situation. And today, I'm feeling rather smug.

Our friends - again

For those of you who know us, you very likely also know our friend who has the same first name as my husband. They have rented an apartment pretty close to us. Actually very close to the hospital where I had my son. They're planning on moving in their meager possessions tomorrow.

Their beds and clothes are alright, and they have a couple of large dressers that were upstairs. They have a lot of stick furniture, like dining room chairs and such. But their entire kitchen was underwater for 36 hours. Pots and pans do wash up, usually, but we're under a water restriction right now, so we're kind of hesitant to just blatantly use tons of water to clean stuff. The water police might come to get us!

The two things they need that he happened to mention to me on the phone today show the severity of what they've lost. I asked what they needed first, or if there was anything I could get them. He said they're going to need silverware and shoes. Their silverware, they deemed was just too gross to try to salvage. And like us on any given day, most of their shoes were downstairs last Saturday night. Their bedrooms and primary bathroom was upstairs. The living rooms, library, kitchen, washroom, and a guest bath were downstairs. They have 2 cats and a dog.

When we were at their house on Wednesday, we took a big box of kitchen pots and pans to keep at our place until they could reclaim them. Today I took them out of my trunk to put in my garage. The cardboard box she had packed them in was so moist that it tore down the side before we could get it to the car. As I was moving the muddy pots and pans, I noticed little trails in the mud in some of the dishes. Exactly what made those little trails?! And suddenly it makes sense why they wanted to throw away their silverware.

If you'd like to donate to their cause (I cannot for the life of me come up with a witty name for their cause!) let me know and we'll work together to get them gift cards or cash, or whatever you'd like them to have.

Our friends

Since we have not been able to contact our friends who lost nearly everything, I decided that I'd just pop in to talk to them in person.

The big reasons we haven't talked to them is that A)their cell phones were flooded B)no one we know has a land line anymore C)nearly all cell service is down in the disaster areas D)our friend who they're staying with lives close enough to the disaster area to have cell service affected. Good reasons all. But I wanted to hold them and reassure myself that they were alive and not just sitting around crying. I wanted to make sure that they had gotten all their carpet and fluffy furniture out before the mold takes over the whole world.

Despite the fact that my house and all my significant places in life have received absolutely zero damage, this disaster has really upset me. So much so, that I've grown a zit this week. For those of you who know me, that hardly ever happens. My sister who is not so lucky in genetic skin quality usually says we need to take pictures of my zits just to remind her that they DO happen to me.

So we go out there during a long lunch (baby is at daycare because what do you do with a baby at a disaster area). Folks were in a remarkably good mood for having lost half or more of all their possessions. Because they have no TVs, internet, or cell service (not really anyway) there is a lot of mixed information out there. Do we need to separate our trash into 3 piles or not? Yes, or the they won't pick it up. No, we've got a private contractor slated to collect for us. It's confusing to me and I'm not even dealing with trauma.

River funk is pervasive. Even on things that look clean. Their upstairs bedrooms were not affected by the flood, but might be affected by the moist funky air if they don't get things out. Take your average comforter. Do you really want it adjacent to river funk? After a while it will start to feel sticky just from the humidity. So they're trying to move things out from upstairs and store it.....somewhere.... as soon as they can.

4th Flood Post

Here's some videos of the neighborhood near our friend's house. Our friend with the same name as my husband.

Click Here.

Click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ86N_sFYzA.

Here These jokers make fun of folks walking through the water while they drive through it.

Here

Here

This one's really dramatic

3rd Flood post

So here are some pictures of the flood.

To me, the most telling photo includes the sign for 4th Avenue. Many people have asked me and yes, I think there's a 99% chance that our pub had water inside.


The red piece of artwork that was on the opposite shore from Braodaway? Yeah, it was taken out by a shed yesterday. It is no more. The Music City Star - the commuter train from Lebanon had a significant portion of their tracks which are now bent. Floods took out the dirt, cross ties, and support system for the tracks.

Here's some pictures and video of Opryland Hotel.

2nd flood post - tap water

The county to our south mentioned last night or this morning that folks needed to boil their drinking water. Hubby called from his business trip and recommended I hoard some drinking water. Something simple. Like run a really full bathtub. So I've taken some probably overly severe steps to ensure that we will have both drinking water and bathing/washing water. I'm not going to list what I've done because I don't want to look stupid. :-)

But for my county, at 8am, they were recommending that we conserve water use. As in, please don't water your lawn (HA!) or wash your car. At noon, it was "if you're not feeling the impact of the flood, please cut your regular water use in half." Now at nearly 4pm, they've suggested skipping a shower and using water only for cooking. This could get bad...

On my side of the county, we are very blessed. Me and my neighbors are only impacted so far in that schools and daycare are closed. We've got everything we need. My neurotic tendencies to prepare for some nameless emergency means that after my water collection, we could hole up here for a week or two and have everything we need. We would eventually drive each other crazy and the cheetos and Dr Pepper might run out, but we will be fine.

High and dry

In case you're watching the flooding unfold on the weather channel, please know that we are high and dry and perfectly alright. Our house had no flooding. We have unflooded roads to get to Kroger, which still had half its' supply of bottled water as of Sunday evening. We have electricity. Our tap water is still Ok, though one of our two treatment plants is out of commission. We have plenty of groceries, diapers, and I'm working on the water.

There are still some highways closed coming in and out of the city, but there are enough highways available that I'm not yet concerned about grocery stores being restocked.

We have one friend who is without electricity. We have another friend - our friend with the same name as my husband - who's house was completely flooded. They were evacuated by a fire truck and are staying at the friend's house who went to Britian with us. They have no flood insurance. They do not live in a flood plain. We have no idea if their insurance will pay anything or not.

My baby's daycare was closed today, he's trying to learn to crawl, and he seems to be quite needy today. If I'm not within his sight, he's crying. So please pray for my sanity today!

More importantly, pray for our friend who lost everything.

More later