Wednesday, August 31, 2016

The day my world changed forever

So, it's taken me a long time to attempt to compose a blog post about the last few weeks. I'm not even sure how much detail I'm capable of giving and I'm in a public place so it's best if I don't cry. LOL!

Long story short - my birthday was Tuesday, August 9. It was fantastic and I thought, "44 is going to be my year, I just know it." That following week I was evacuating my house due to the flooding in/near Baton Rouge. I live in a suburb of Baton Rouge. (Totally possible I have these dates wrong, so forgive me if that happened).

To sum this up as best I can: We only got a foot/foot and a half of water (depending on which room in the house). We had to wait five days before the water receded enough for us to even see the damage to our house. When we walked in and saw it was a foot, we rejoiced.

Then we immediately started going through our stuff. Naturally all furniture and appliances had to be thrown out. We knew right away floors would have to be ripped out and sheetrock replaced.

We started going through our stuff - Emily's toys, my books, Rich's sports memorabilia. There was so much slime, even on things that were at the top of our closets. Turns out, the sewage pond behind our neighborhood flooded into people's homes in the neighborhood (only five streets in our neighborhood).

So there was the combination of swamp water, rain water, sewage and about 500 dead and living earthworms. That same water sat in our house for five days. The humidity apparently rising to the top of the closets.

There are no words to describe the first time seeing your house in this condition. No words.





Because we followed FEMA's directions (although I'll fully take responsibility for this decision being the biggest mistake of my life), we left one car there. Phone service was terrible, people were starting to panic. FEMA says to only take one car so you don't get separated. So we packed as fast as we could, put the cat in her kennel, shoved her in the car with us and left. Try explaining this to a 6-year-old......

Later I'll post about where we've been living, what are our future plans, talk about the lost car (we have since bought a used car from New Orleans) and the pros and cons I've seen from people during this time.

Where does this leave my running journey? That's coming up too. And yes, I do still have goals other than doing everything humanly possible to get my little family back into my little house as soon as possible.

I bid you adieu from the state that gets a lot of shit from northerners about our Cajun ways, but we are strong. We will rebuild. We did not wait for help from the government. We helped each other. We are taking care of business. This is south Louisiana.




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