Two ways to relieve stress when things are out of your control...

#1. Call DELL (insert trademark symbol here!). Complain about the order you placed but never received. Hang up, call again, hoping to speak to someone sitting over American soil who understands you. Hang up, call again, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Internet." Hang up, tell them in no uncertain terms to listen to you... Get the picture? For what it's worth, I did receive my $50 worth of gift card redemption.

#2 I can't remember what it was but I did something else totally un-called for that week and it wasn't any prettier than #1. I'm sure we can all live without repeating my shame. I'm confident it did not involve tagging anyone.

It's Monday. Normally, I go into the office and work the day a way at my computer (which we did take with us out of the house). Today, I get up and my parents are preparing pancakes for the evacuees. Did I tell you how great my parents are? About that time I decide it's high time I check in with our insurance man (knowing full well that our homeowners does nothing for the flooding). What a gracious man he was. He took the time to listen to my story and encourage me that our house has stood for the past 40 years on the existing foundation and weathered many floods, it's history is on our side. An hour is past and it's time to get back to the kids at G & Ps.

Not knowing what really should be done, we pack up with L and head to the river, just to see where it is. Along the way we call our neighbors to check on their accomodations. They are in a friends house and have a roof and a bed and they are all alive. When we arrived on our road we were met with the officers in charge of keeping people off our road. This is what it looked like:

L is standing in the road. Just in front of him you might make out the yellow lines on the middle of the road.

MM and L walking up the road. This is 1 mile from our house. Water covers the road right here. The white spot in the way background is road that isn't wet, yet.

I had never seen the water this high. Knowing that this is a very exciting time for L we asked if we could take a tour of the dam.

Here is a picture of the top side of the lake. On the far left you can see the flood gates are all wide open.

You can see the effect of so much water flowing. What you can't see is that the gates are wide open, but the water in the lake doesn't even touch the bottom of the gates.

On the way back to G & Ps we stopped in to see our displaced neighbors. We were all in shock. None of us was able to focus on much of anything let alone work. So we gathered around the kitchen bar and ate a few chips.

Until you've lived through something like this, you can't fathom the feelings that flow through you. Tomorrow: A child's view of the world.