This is a story about water

Two days ago was the six month anniversary of the flood that forced Mr. H and I out of our home for two weeks. Yesterday is the five month anniversary of Harper's birth. If you do the math, you'll see that meant I was huge and waddling by the time we were flooded.

The morning of May 14th, we were at Mr. H's ancestral abode, Casa de la Carpeted Kitchen, for a Mother's Day brunch. I ate about six croissants. Did I mention I was huge? Everyone was annoying me (fat people are not always jolly), and I started tuning out and flipping through the Sunday paper, where I found this image of the 1936 flood.

The paper reprinted this image: Water covering the Aiken Street bridge

So I knew we were in for it. It had been raining for days, and the river was already high. We were supposed be getting the house ready for baby arrival logistics that day, but instead we milled around whining and deciding what we'd take and how we'd raise the things we couldn't take. We live on the first floor, although our floor is elevated four-five feet off the ground. The worst case scenario from the 1936 flood meant that we'd be totally swamped.

One of my recurring nightmares is "the house is on fire, what do you take? WHAT DO YOU DO, JACK BAUER? WHAT DO YOU DO?" It turns out that you take the cat in a box, important or irritating to replace documents in another box, clothes, toiletries, computer equipment, all the beer in the fridge, photo albums, and important gadgets like your ipod. Everything else is negligible. We put the new living room furniture on top of the new dining room furniture. Other things got stacked on the bed, and still more got crammed in the top closet shelves. I pictured various articles of my clothing floating in waist-deep water. Oh well, I never liked those shoes anyway.

What it looked like when we decided to leave:
Water up to the edge of the river walk behind the building

The next afternoon: We own a private island

After touring my private island, I did the only sensible thing a big fat pregnant lady could do: I cried a lot. For days. I read our insurance policy and realized there was no included flood coverage on personal property, only on the structure. I may have said "I am an asshole!" over and over again while bonking my head against a wall.

We stayed at my in-laws with the cat, sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, but that got uncomfortable very quickly. Like the first night. But we stuck it out for a week before moving to an extended stay hotel. In the meantime, people expected life to go on as usual. I had clients say "Oh hey, I saw your house on the news. Now about those edits..." It took all I could do to not murder several people. I started having contractions and wondering if I would be bringing a newborn back to a Residence Inn. I wasn't eating or sleeping well, to say the least.

By sheer dumb luck, our loft actually wasn't damaged on the inside, although the building sustained over a million dollars worth of damage to the utilities. We were let back in to tour our place and remove more things. Other residents contacted the city, and we were finally allowed free access to the property, although we didn't move back in until hot water and the sprinkler system were restored. This brings us to two weeks before Harper was born.

We spent the next two weeks frantically cleaning up the house. I moved all our worldly goods around a few times, between stop 1 at the in-laws, stop 2 at the hotel, and stop 3 at home again. We went to IKEA and got a changing table. Yeah, like that'll help! The cat went on strike and grew amazing dreadlocks. I think Mr. H and I fought constantly, but I honestly can barely remember.

Next: the big freakout finish.

For the record: I am nothing if not a minimalist when actually going through inconvenience and trauma

Posted 2:17 PM by Licketysplit