08/13/2016
Closures. Curfews. Catastrophe.
Our first natural disaster.
The first article I read this morning after several tenuous hours of sleep, "Mamou police without phone service." Anomalous? Let's hope so.
Went outside for a morning smoke. This situation escalated as quickly as the littered tall boy that drifted along the current into my back yard inches off our steps.
Electricity flickered and moaned resetting the electric range that was boiling water for coffee and the oven browning a recreational pound of bacon. I wrapped the coffee grinder in a beach towel to protect the quietude and a few more comforting hours of sleep for my wife. These smells, comforting.
I spent the first few hours hoping for local news breaks to interrupt the NuWave infomercial and searching google images for identification of the water bugs that thoroughly creeped me out with their impressive size and serpentine locomotion. This critter remains a mystery, finally the urgency to raid our truck for one last time before water levels deemed it impossible left no room for my Northern squeamishness.
Watching my neighbors decision to leave, gut wrenching. I guess we won't be borrowing a cup of flour, perhaps a temporary loan of a rowboat in her back yard isn't an unreasonable option worth noting. Should we leave? Can we leave? The light duty barriers didn't deter the 4x4 that escorted her to... Where do we go? Roads are closed, curfews are posted, emergency bag is packed, cat carriers are at hand.
The flood level seem steady at our second step. Odd metric. But I'm comfortable with the second step. I put my treasured Magic cards on an upper shelf, but third step is when we start putting up boxes anyplace that will stay dry.
My wife's honest lamentation at the unshaven nature of her legs as we pack our theoretical rescue bag, melts my heart and my inflexibly high tweak factor to a tolerable level.
The survivalist web forum on makeshift sandbags oddly assuage some of my fears. We're safe, we're together, our cats are dry, our stress levels are high. But our lives are not in danger. Worst case, our house floods and we figure it out from there - it's just stuff. The army transport vehicle that has just traversed our flooded road hastens my decision on which farming book to grab if we are boated or armored vehicled to a shelter.
No one said this was going to be easy.
