Thursday, July 13, 2006

A scary day

It started off fine. It was raining and everyone had slept in. I talked to my sil D because we'd planned on getting together for the day. We decided to still follow the gameplan even though we'd be stuck inside. As I was getting read to leave the phone rings...it's Tom calling from his parents' house. Seems they'd just took his dad away in an ambulance. He was discharged from the hospital yesterday after getting a round of chemo. He fell to the ground this morning and was having a seizure. Tom was going up to the hospital with his mom and 2 brothers. I called D and asked if she wanted me to babysit so she could run up there. We decided to wait for a call to find out exactly what was wrong. I got to D's about 12:30. I'd planned on getting there earlier but I had to run Michelle and Val someplace first. It continued to rain.

We had a great time just sitting around talking while the kids played. I got to hold baby C who is now 2mos. She's ADORABLE! We oohh'ed and aah'ed over how the rain was still falling. Tom called about 3:30 to let us know that his dad was being treated and discharged. The though is that he was dehydrated. So they hooked him up to an IV and he was home by 6pm. Then noticed that D's above ground pool was overflowing! It continued to rain. I left about 5'ish and headed for J's house to pick up Michelle, Val and C.

OH MY GOD! I lived through the scariest car ride of my life..and I was the one behind the wheel!!!! I was almost in tears by the time I got to J's house. The roads were flooding and had "rivers" flowing across it. While going through an extra large patch I thought...Oh great! I'm going to end up on the news with my van stalled in the middle of a flooded street and ALL these kids on the roof waiting for a rescue. Then I'll be the person everyone yells through their tv...YOU IDIOT! What were you thinking, trying to cross that raging river!?!?! But I made it ok. :o)

When we got to J's house in the village I discovered my brakes weren't really working. Ontop of that Tom called and told me that they're saying no one should be on the roads in our area. Oh yeah, and almost all the roads are closed. I asked him what I was suppose to do with all these kids in the van and on the road? I HAVE to get home (which is entirely on the other side of the worse flooding) Finally I talked to someone and they suggested a roundabout way that might not be so flooded. Whatever you do though don't go down BB road...it's REALLY bad (was closed off in the village). I told him.....I KNOW!!! I just came down it and was scared senseless! BTW...you might consider having someone close off the other end of the road too!

I talked to Tom and D quite a few times while I was driving. I know...that's illegal but there was NO shoulder to pull off onto even if I tried to follow the law. So I drove SLOWLY and talked on my cell. There were a few spots where the roads were flooded but nothing like BB road. It was SO nice to pull into the driveway!!!

I walked the property and went into the basement. Ditch which had mud in it yesterday (no water) now had a raging creek through it. Carrie, Jake, Eileen, Olivia, Danielle and I walked it to see how flooded the ponds would be, we never got far enough back to do that. The kids were getting freaked out by the waters velocity.

I then checked the basement, we have some flooding but I'm sure others are worse. I don't think anything too important was damaged (we don't store anything like that down there). We'll have to do some work on getting things out of there though. I called Tom updated him a few times. When I told him about the basement he let me know that I was on my own. He had to stay at work. As of 12:45am he was still working with no sense of ending...so wouldn't be home tonight. Poor guy is going to be exhausted!

We switched on the news and saw that the main road that's closed has a huge hunk missing out of it. I've hard it's also damaged some houses, one of which looks to be our friend's house. (I mentioned their dd P last month when posting about Liz's birthday celebration) Still trying to confirm this though.

I talked to Tom at 12:50am. He was still swamped with no hope of it to let up. He was driving down a road in 2ft of water, trying to figure out how to get to someone's front door to leave a note that they'd assessed his sewers. Pat pulled into the driveway at 1:30am. He told me he drove down BB road about an hour after I did and there was NO water on it at all. YEAH OK! At 1:45am I found out that summer school is canceled for J. So now I can stop trying to figure out which route I'd take to get her to the high school. It also means I can sleep in now! :o)

In the afternoon Carrie has a check up for the TODAY study. It's the first one since she's started the last run of the study. It shouldn't take too long, it's just a pain to drive into the city for it.

YIKES! I just got the daylights scared out of me! I sit next to the front door which opened on it's own. Not really, it was Tom coming home. He said he decided since the water wasn't rising and it's not suppose to rain, things were ok until 7am start time. So he came home. He's exhausted and already gone to bed. Guess I'll go join him

No comments: