Dodging a bullet, aka looking on the bright side ....

.... aka everything happens for a reason, aka *insert your own cliche here*


Remember the mold house? The one I almost bought last May, except I backed out of the deal because the home inspection revealed it to be a disaster?

It flooded Monday. BIG time. They were rescuing people from that neighborhood in a hovercraft, that's how bad it was.




In other flood news, it's really disconcerting to walk around your house knowing that there's three feet of water underneath you. The water in the crawlspace wasn't floodwater; the creek didn't get that close (thank God). It was groundwater that was forced up from the flooding around it. Everybody told me that I didn't need to pump it out; that it would recede all by itself, just the way it came up. And they were right! By Wednesday, the crawlspace was dry again. But it was still odd, to know that water was down in there.

My compost piles got washed away. All those coffee grounds and eggshells have gone to nourish someone else's land.

I have to give huge props to my neighbor, L, who came over Monday as soon as I got home, to make sure I was okay and to reassure me that by that time, the waters were actually receding and would not come any closer. And she took my work number so that if something happens again, she can keep me posted. What a sweetie!


According to L, this is only the fourth time since they moved in, in 1963, that the waters have risen this high. And they've never gotten high enough to flood the inside of my house (she knew the people who lived here before). Which is at least a little reassuring. And I do have flood insurance; I had to buy it to get a mortgage. I just hope I never have to use it. And please don't start going off about the federal flood insurance program; trust me, I HAVE HEARD IT ALL.


Oh yeah, and you'd better believe that on Monday, as I was driving home, knowing that they were evacuating people one street away from my house, and having no idea if my house was full of water, I wanted a cigarette really, really bad. After almost ten months of NoMoBloSmo, I wanted a cig. Did I have one? No friggin' way. Go me.



Remember how I said shit comes in threes? Two days before the flood, phone service to the entire neighborhood went out. It was still out when the water came. And the day after the flood, my garage door broke.

Spring IS coming, right?