June recap. part 1. a fish is not aware of water.

I don't blog as often as I should... especially for someone who's registered so many blog names.  I wish I would have documented this summer better, but I didn't, whaddyagonnado?  I'll do my best to do it now.  It will be boring.

I think this summer probably started out the same as any others... I finished my spring classes (easy except for macro economics, which gave me a scare), signed up for my summer classes, bullshitted, whatever.


I can't remember the date (8th or 9th of June) but whenever it was, the evening of the flood, I slept great.  I opened the window and listened to the storm and drifted off into perfect sleep.  I woke up around 7AM, took a piss, and decided to go back to sleep because it was so. fucking. wonderful.  When I woke up again, the water sounded a little too close.  From the bed, I looked out into the kitchen and saw water pouring in through the air conditioner.  Minutes later, the bed was floating.  This was about 9AM.  By about 920, the water was up to our waists and the electricity was still on.  I had to stay up on the second floor landing with Oli (my nearly 3 year old) so I couldn't really save much of anything.  Not that it would have been safe to try, with the electricity on.  Eventually the water receded, and we started throwing shit out.

kitchen after water receded

only pic taken as water was rising

The next week, Oli stayed with the grandmas and we stayed at shady motels.  You know, the kind that let you stay 4 hours.. except we stayed there over night.  They're cheap.  For our relationship, staying at motels and having a vacation from parenting was pretty awesome.  Kept us strong mentally for the next two weeks of throwing out things we loved.

Eventually the money started to run dry- our renter's insurance did not cover floods, though our car and motorcycle insurance did, thank god.  We ended up staying for about a month in the basement of our landlord's son's family.  It wasn't bad but Oli acted up really late at night and we were paranoid about them waking up from him screaming.  He also refused to poop there and ended up being VERY constipated (we went to the ER once).

At the end of July we moved back in.  They had to rip out and replace half the walls and all of the flooring.  They also replaced our oven.  Our landlords gave us a mattress, so luckily we didn't have to replace that, but all other furniture had to be bought again, save for two tables, a folding chair, and a kitchen chair.  So far we've been able to do that pretty inexpensively.  We raised a fairly decent amount of money (about $1000) on facebook.  A really nice woman named Marina, who I have never met and only knows my mom from message boards, shipped me four boxes of clothes and supplies and donated money.  Strangers can be kind.

The flood was the definition of disaster but was not the worst part of June, unbelievably... but that's all I can stand to write, right now.  My house is still a mess and not unpacked, nor has everything been replaced or cleaned but for the most part, the flood and its damages are off my mind.