These are the adventures and crises of a world traveler who hardly ever gets to leave the Nashville area. I'm a mother, wife, waitress, teacher, former dental assistant, and a superhero. And my son thinks I'm funny, so I've got that going for me.
The water heater floating at the top... This is after some of the water was pumped out. Our trash. This is taken from our driveway. Across the street to the left is a bunch of our junk. We gathered three of our neighbor's trash cans and lined them up (full, of course) across the street (to the right), and then we piled a bunch right in front of our yard (closest in the picture).A view from across the street. The black Xterra along with the trail of trash behind it, is in front of our house.
After we finished eating, we headed home. It took longer than usual, but we didn't run into any unusual obstacles-other than seeing a lot of flooded yards, including our local park.
In an effort to relax, I decided to take a bath. I couldn't get the water to heat up! It was luke warm at best. Not knowing anything about the pipes or workings of the house, it didn't make sense to me when Josh ran frantically to the basement door.
I figured it out pretty quickly--our hot water heater was in the basement, which was flooded up to the fourth stair from the top, about 6 feet or so. Not only was the hot water heater under water, but it was FLOATING in the basement, along with a lot of other things that I don't even want to think about right now.
We rent our home, so Josh called the landlord and left a message. It went something like this, "Um, the water in the basement is almost to the top. I'm not sure what to do. I've never had a flooded basement before." Well, the landlord didn't call back until the next afternoon, so he wasn't much help. We called the fire department to see if they could come pump the basement before it came into the rest of the house. They said that they could not-we could call them back if we needed rescued or evacuated.
Josh went to Home Depot to see if they had any sump pumps left. They were turning people away at the door. So, my brilliant husband bought one of those decorative pumps that go in fountains. They pump water too! He got the pump up (down?) and running around 8:00pm Saturday. It rained until around 6:30pm Sunday. The pump ran the whole time, other than maybe about 4 hours that Josh took to sleep.
On the news, we saw video of a mobile trailer on the INTERSTATE; it had floated about 3/4 of a mile in the flood to the road, where it crashed into cars and semis.
What we went through was nothing compared to so many of the people who live in the area. Most of our damage was Saturday night; We spent all day Sunday wondering if we were going to have to leave our house because of the nearby river, but we were fine. Josh's quick thinking Saturday night saved us from the disaster that it could have been.
Monday, everything everywhere was closed. In fact, the schools in Metro Nashville STILL aren't back in session. It took us most of Monday and Tuesday morning to get the basement completely cleaned out. Pretty much everything was ruined. Josh did manage to save some of our wedding pictures, but pictures from high school (Australia!) and college are gone. Baby pictures of Keira are gone too, but I think we have some of those on the computer. Cleaning up was hard to do because it reminded me of what was down in the basement. It would've been better for my soul if someone else could've cleaned our house and we could've cleaned theirs!
We are almost back to normal now, though. We do have a huge (okay, three huge piles) pile of junk on the curb waiting to be picked up. And, our air conditioning is still out because the ducts that were in the basement were soaked through. The only other problem is the SMELL. Our house stinks like mildew-it is raising out of the basement and part of the carpet in the den where we carried our soiled goods.
I'm going to go light some candles and spray some Lysol. Not in that order-because then we might have another disaster on our hands.
Saturday morning, we woke up "early" to go to a fundraiser Pancake Breakfast at my school, which is in East Nashville. We live in Franklin, which is about 15 minutes south of Nashville, making the trip to the school about half an hour.
It was POURING down rain. I love rain, so I was happy. I really love the rain when I'm sleeping in, but being out and about in the rain is usually okay too. When we left the breakfast around 11:00, we decided to drive around East Nashville for awhile. I'm over there all the time, but I don't really take time to explore. We like to drive around a look at "stuff." We also went shopping.
When we were leaving what was presumably our last shop, the radio announced that there was a tornado warning in Franklin for the next half hour. We decided to stick around Nashville for a little while longer. It was still raining--Josh went into a video store and found a few deals while the kids and I hung out in the car--they were playing on their DSs, and I was reading on my Iphone. (I'm not sure what we'd do without electronics...)
When Josh returned, we decided to meander home. We got to about 5 miles from our exit off the interstate and traffic was stopped. Now, people in Nashville seem to think driving while it is raining is...reason to crash into each other. There seems to be a lot more accidents during rain storms. So, we figured there was an accident.
It is unusual to be stuck on the interstate on a Saturday afternoon. We decided to get off at the exit and take the back way home. We were in the furthest lane from the exit, of course, so it took a little maneuvering. It seemed that everyone else had the same idea as well--even the semi-trucks! Weird.
Once in the exit lane, we drove close to the interstate so we could see the action. By this time, we realized that all of the traffic had been routed off the interstate. Must be a bad accident! Then, we saw that the direction we were headed--toward the mall was FLOODED. The road that leads to the mall had a huge pond of water with a few cars stuck in the middle. Then, we noticed that the INTERSTATE was also flooded, which is why we were routed off of it!
Well, by this time, we were hungry again, so we stopped to eat. It was pouring down rain the entire time. At the school across from the restaurant, a group of teenagers were playing in the pool that was once a field. At the time, it seemed fun and cute. Looking back, it was the start of a very long weekend.
A view from across the street. The black Xterra along with the trail of trash behind it, is in front of our house.
