Marking Another Event Today

You know what today is?  The second anniversary of the Great Flood of 2016.

My life has changed so much, my house has changed so much.






The house as we evacuated.   The water rose about 6 more inches and then went down pretty quickly compared to most other flood events.  By day three we were able to walk through the house.  Our problem on day two was getting there with the residual flooding in the streets.

We tried to keep the dogs out of the water, since we thought the water would not continue to rise.  We are not in a flood zone after all.

The weekend started with Frank and I deciding to head to Orange Beach AL for our anniversary celebration.   He wanted to ride Skidoos in the Gulf.  You can see the storm coming in as we looked out from our hotel balcony.














The storm gets worse as time goes on.  We are looking west, toward Louisiana.

We decided to come home since it would not stop raining.  And over the next 24 hours, the water rose


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During the night as we looked out over the back yard, it was obvious the water continued to rise.

It was terrifying, just terrifying.











One of my favorite inside photos is of Chloe refusing to get out of her bed as the water rose around us.  We thought the water would stop here.

But it kept rising.

When we evacuated and were picked up by the Cajun Navy, the boat glided down Jones Creek which is usually just a trickle of water down a deep sided canal base.

Here is Chloe trying to figure out where the heck we were going!

We all were thinking that.  

I don't need words to describe this emotion.  The next hours were unbelievable as we searched for a vehicle, a place to stay, even how family members were doing.  Thank goodness Greg and Dee were able to find us.  They graciously offered us and the dogs shelter in the RV in their back yard.  We stayed with them for almost a week.  I will be forever grateful to them.

This is the day we were able to get back to the house.  The darkened bricks are where the water line was.  That is chest high on Frank and he is just under 6 feet.

And this was our home for the next 8 months.

I am so glad the physical part of all this is over.  I will carry the emotional part with me till the day I die.  I still have flashbacks and panic attacks on some nights.  I still have images in my head during moments when the rain is heavy.  And in the midnight times, walking down the darkened hallway brings the feelings of water swirling around my ankles.

From just about any part of my house, you can see where the area from which the water rose.  I find myself casting my eye in that direction often.  So far it has kept its distance.  

I am not sure it will never happen again.  I don't think we can run from it, we didn't expect to flood here in the first place.  I thought we were safe.  

But I can truthfully say, I would not do this again.  Ever.  Under no circumstances, would I put myself through this again.  

We Call Her Just In Time Julie

My Bird Quilt has spent the last few weeks living with Julie of Me and My Quilts at Liberated Bird Camp.  She was teaching a class from Lynne Tyler's Liberated Birds in MO.  

Check out her class peoples here

They also participated in her Trunk Show.  So it got some fine ogling in the country's midsection.  

My Birds arrived home just in time for me to call Sharon and beg her to let me enter them a bit late into the Kaleidoscope of Quilts Show.  Of course, she was persuadable and The Daily Bird is going to hang alongside the fabulous quilts of the Sassi Stripper Guild.

And here is a piece of history.  Do you know what we were doing two years ago?  August 14, 2016 was the FEMA Flood Event.  It is hard for me to believe it has been two years.  I want to say "only two years" but then I also want to say "two years already".  

Not necessarily my favorite photo from that month, but here are a few of the ones that stick out in my mind.

Here is my sweet Chloe riding in one of the boats as we  evacuated down Jones Creek coming from the roads in our subdivision.  We were stunned at this point, having spent the night in the house with the water rising.  

Our worst nightmares.  We never thought our house would flood.  Our families have been in New Orleans for 3 generations, none of them have ever evacuated during any storm ever.  We are were the first.  

And when we left, we left with three bassets and two back packs.  One filled with Frank's important papers and the other filled with dog food and a bowl.  

That is all we took.  Oh, and toothbrushes.  I remembered to bring toothbrushes, no toothpaste however.  Just toothbrushes. 

Here is what my house looked like as we left.  That is my neighbors mailbox.  I am standing on my neighbor's front porch looking at my house.  

I remember feeling nothing.  Just nothing.  And I felt nothing for a long, long tim

The pile of what is left of my house sat out in the front yard until the claw machine came along to take it to the landfill along with all the other houses on the street.  What was left was drained, dehumidified, disinfected and sprayed.

 This was the state of my sewing room when the waters receded.  

Two years ago this month.  What an auspicious August that was.

I am sure glad that is over.  

But I know it is raining somewhere else this month.  And my heart aches for those people.

Looking at the Layers

Here is the post showing the whole piece.

I really should have shown you the layers of the Color Block piece.

You know, I really didn't know how difficult it was to show depth on a black piece that absorbed all light.  Ya know.  

I am going to link up with Off the Wall Friday and Nina Marie!  Who  is also doing color on black.  Great minds!




 This does a little bit better.    Carrie sent me a YouTube of a building painted with black light absorbing paint and set with lights to look like the universe.  AMAZING

I really need a great name for it.  This will be a piece that will go into the next show, so it needs a really great name.

Each of the color blocks are individual little quilts.

They each are hand sewn on to the back piece which is quilted and bound.  Well, sewn and turned.


Frank and I went downtown to the Mississippi River Levee this morning and took some pictures of the high water.  It was a glorious day.

They are opening the Bonnet Carre Spillway again.  We hope to go down there Thursday and get some photos of the waters gong through the structure.  And I will have to dig up some of my  photos if I still have them from the last opening.  Not sure what year that was.  It was before our flood, so I am guessing 2011 maybe.

I need to pull together some off my low water photos and do comparison photos and show you how amazing that part of Baton Rouge is.  On the way we stopped at Coffee Call for beignets (click there to get a recipe) and chicory laden coffee with evaporated milk.  You can't get any better than that, or any more New Orleans than that.

Of course I shot a picture to Carol right off to ask if her beignets turned out anything like that. 

A Note of Gratitude....And Then It Is Over

We can never repay the generosity of our friends.  

Dee and Greg, Charlene and Xavier, Paula and Glen.  Daughter Carrie moved heaven and earth to find us doors, contractors, wood, furniture; whatever we needed to build up this house again.  Frank's coworkers from the Katrina ravaged areas around New Orleans, who knew what these feelings were like because they lived them.

Jason who brought us the Camper From Hell we lived in for 9 months.  No heat and no refrigerator and tiny as anything, but it was not a shelter and our 3 bassets were with us.  And that was worth more than any money. 

My Quilting friends who kept reading as I wrote day to day journals.  The writing of it helped keep me sane.  There were daily tears, heck, daily sobs.  

Charlene and Paula spent countless hours washing my quilts and my fabric.  I can't begin to even say what that means to me.

Many sent me quilting fabric and implements.  Or just a fat quarter  or a pattern even.   I received a huge box of stuff from Mari.  A quilt I will always treasure arrived one day from the Barn Builders.  I still sleep under their love each night.





The spices made my food taste like something again.

Patty, whose specialty is amazing t-shirt quilts,  made one for me to make it feel like personal home again.

 We could not have survived without the combined effort of our friends.  

It is a year later now and everything in our house is new except the sink and the gas stove top.  I still have flashbacks to walking in the hallway with the water swirling around my ankles.  Writing this recollection was cathartic, as Penny suggested.  But when I saw the photo of Frank in the back of the truck, I broke down in tears. 

 There have been some amusing moments through the year too.

Randomly finding a neighbor who had a fork lift and how he moved Frank's car out to the street.

Watching Frank count out the cash to pay for his new truck was priceless.

Sleeping in sleeping bags because the Camper From Hell had no heater and we have 27 degree nights in winter. 

Buying all new clothes because I had two shirts, three capri pants and one bra to my name.  Somehow Frank had over 50 t-shirts, 20 pairs of jeans and all his socks and underwear.  How did THAT happen?

I am glad it is over.  Yes, physically over. Mentally, it will always be with me till I take my last breath on this earth.

The need to mark this event as it has marked me is strong.  I want a visual reminder of the rising water, the tears and the gut pain.  I  have chosen the tattoo that I will wear for as long as that part of me remains.  And beyond.

Forever.

One Year Ago Today.....August 15, 2016

Something most people don't think about during a flood of this magnitude is that not only are homes and businesses lost, but so are city halls, police stations, fire departments, EMS centers.  Living in these communities, many of these people not only lost their work places they also lost their homes too.  Most had no idea what was happening to their families as they evacuated strangers.

Also  know that while about 160,000 homes were under water, the majority of Baton Rouge did not flood.  In the days after the it became two separate worlds:  the flooded and the non-flood people.  Even though they watched us try to patch our lives and property back together, they really couldn't conceive what it felt like to lose everything.  My own friends couldn't understand why it was taking so long to find doors, or air ducts, or workers.  There were no workers to be found for any price. 

I was not prepared for what I saw the day we returned to the house.

The water line was halfway up the damned wall!  

 These are my cookbooks from the kitchen.  We had so many books, most of them were wet and unusable. 

Things floated out of closets.  I remember a friend who had been through Katrina within blocks of the levee break.  He said everything in their house was piled up against the front wall.  Nothing was left in any room.  They had water over the roof and when it drained out quickly everything floated with the receding water.  I guess it could have been worse, but not by much.

I was the keeper of the family antiques.  At some point I told my brother, I should have let you take some of these pieces.  He assured me that he would have just lost it all in the flood when Isaac hit his home 3 years before.

He was right, there was no safe places it seems.






There is a feeling you have, when you are exhausted from the physical work, you are exhausted from the inability to close your eyes to sleep and exhausted from the never ending pain in your gut.  And you pause to look around you, you would rather work past that exhaustion than see the reality of your "stuff" gutted from your house and sitting on the street.




I will never forget standing on the porch watching the claw of the black truck thoughtlessly grab my stuff and unceremoniously bring it to the truck bed. 









Then they ripped out the cabinets, pulled up the carpet, tore out the sheetrock.   And piled it in front of the house too. 

 And you know most of the rest.  If you have followed my blog, if not, go back and see my day to day posts if you like.  We did have flood insurance; we did have a good contractor; we did have money of our own to fund the start of reconstruction until the insurance came through.  We did not have a mortgage, which caused grief for many people because the mortgaage company takes the insurance money and doles it out as you sent them invoices.

And there are at least 4 neighbors on my block alone who have not even started yet, a year later.  None had insurance.   Only 15% of the flooded homes were covered by flood insurance.  Those who did not have flood insurance were helped by FEMA and private interests.  They were awarded about $70,000 in tax payer money separately from the approx. $20,000 given out in the  early days after the flood.  My question is, why have flood insurance?

I Have the Best, Most Amazing Blog Friends

Amazing box arrived today.  Julie Sefton of the Build A Barn fame, (see my sidebar for the book) is amazing beyond belief.  I made a casual statement about missing my Zentangles and the zen calmness it brought.  So she dug through her stuff, stuffed it into a box and shipped it south!

thank you so much! I am so excited about every single thing in the box.  It is so overwhelming.


 I plan on running my fingers over each and every thing tonight after I crawl into bed in Camper Hell.

It must have cost $6000 to ship it, the box was so heavy full of goodies!




  Here are some of the things she sent winging across America:




















There were some big steps in the house today.





Paint arrived!











Popcorn is being removed.  Carrie hates popcorn on ceilings.  I was going to leave it, but Derrick talked me into it when he told me he could no longer match the texture.......since it was so OUTDATED.  I have to admit, it does look better.  And way more fresh and modern.









Plumbing is brought up to code.  So now two handles in the tub is not good.  One can scald oneself by only turning on the hot faucet.  I guess there is no provision for someone turning on the single handle all the way to the HOT position.......geez.









Old light box in the kitchen is sealed over and the electricity is re-routed.  I will have light cans in there.  And under cabinet lighting so I will never again be in my shadow.






My construction guys are the best, too!