stupid water | Tragic Comedy

I guess I'm just not cut out for dealing with anything the slightest bit stressful. Well, I already knew that. So we had our all-time record flood and it has dropped almost 6 feet since then but now they are saying there is going to be a second crest of the river even higher than the first sometime in April. So we can't calm down or move our stuff back into the basement anytime soon. At least I kind of panicked myself out. When it was really bad I was just sitting up 24 hours a day watching the 24 hour news coverage trying to be ready for the evacuation order. Well it never came. I guess our area is fairly safe. But who knows what will happen when it goes even higher. I don't even understand where all this water is coming from. How is there enough for 2 record floods in one spring? :P The mayor said if we're going down we're going down swingin'... haha... that is not my style... we actually left town for a couple days since traffic was so nuts and we were afraid we couldn't make it out if the evacuation order actually came. I wish I was strong enough to really be a help in fighting the flood but apparently I have less arm strength than the average 8 year old boy or tiny woman half my size :P... I was on the line passing sandbags for just about 15 minutes when I found myself literally unable to lift my arms, let alone lift anything in my arms... They had to ask me to sit out... and yes there were plenty of tiny people who didn't seem to have a problem with tossing 60 pound sand bags down the line... I guess I should have been working out all winter if I wanted to be able to help save the city. I dunno. It's really freaking annoying. Everything was crazy here for like 2 weeks, they shut down my work a bunch of times, and now it is just a waiting game until it gets crazy again I guess. I just hope we are able to put in permanent flood protection *this year* because I won't be surprised if we are having 100-year floods every year from now on. I guess I'll never look at snow the same way again... I didn't know it was so deadly :P. I wasn't here for the 1997 flood so this is all very new and scary :P

Four Replies to stupid water

Scott Hardie | April 4, 2009
I guess natural disasters can happen anywhere, but I would think that blizzards notwithstanding, Fargo is probably one of the safest places you can go if you want to avoid earthquakes and hurricanes and volcanoes and other disasters. And yet here you mention several floods that put the whole city on edge. There really isn't anywhere safe. :-|

Hang in there, Denise. This is stressful, but it will pass.

Steve West | April 4, 2009
Here in DC we get a brush with the occasional hurricane and get slapped with the edge of a blizzard. Nothing overly severe but just enough to make me want to move into a Qantas airplane. Apparently they're the safest place to be according to Raymond.

And from one non-Arnold to another, your muscle strength may not have been up to the task but you were there. Your character strength came through.

Amy Austin | April 4, 2009
I think Qantas is, in fact, the only airline that hasn't had any flight disasters...

Hm... sorry to hear it -- that sucks. Can't add much to the nice words from Scott and Steve, but I think I have to agree with Jackie that it would be pretty great to somehow be able to divert all that water to places in drought (like here and California). The ironic thing about living in drought conditions, though, is that serious problems can arise when the rains do suddenly return! In California, it's rock/mudslides... here, it's sinkholes! Yes, the water table here in Florida has gotten so low that when the surrounding limestone (a relatively fragile rock due to its solubility in water) lacks the support of the diminishing groundwater, things start caving in.

Meh... it's true -- nowhere safe!

Denise Sawicki | April 6, 2009
Thanks much. I guess we'll just wait and see what happens.

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