Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Big plans

I had big plans for this blog, with things getting done over the weekend. There were several dishes to be prepared, and specially photographed using my new light box. I was very much looking forward to making the dish, recording each step, then playing with photographing the final product in the light box. Then would come editing the pictures, writing a brilliant and witty post (I can dream), and sharing the results with you, internet folks, here. I was going to post a "pick our seder" post, with options for each course, so you could choose what we ate, and subsequently, what I would write about here later.

Instead, we woke up Saturday morning with about a half inch of water in half the house. Now, as far as destruction that requires involvement of the insurance company goes, this flood of ours is relatively minor. We will be getting new floors in three bedrooms and their closets, and some furniture has some water damage, and there have been very loud (and annoying) fans throughout the wet part of the house from Saturday until Tuesday, but all in all there is more to be thankful for than devastated about. As the Husband put it, when he was looking for ways to remove water on the internet, he said he came across methods for removing feet of water, amounts much greater than the half inch we had. We have a functioning kitchen, living room, and office, and (aside from lack of sleep) no harm caused to either of us or the puppy. We actually got to sleep in our bed last night.

However, I am overwhelmed by the damage and the work that needs to be done. Completely overwhelmed. It's amazing that I can get myself to work, cleaned and dressed, every day, because when I wake up or get out of the shower or move through the house, I see my shoe rack in the hall, not in the closet where it belongs, or the concrete under the floor boards in the bedroom with the remaining boards still needing to be removed (with our bed on top of them), or observe the many holes drilled into the wall where the baseboards used to be, and the effect is paralyzing. The effort it takes to pull my eyes away from those holes, or to move my hand off of the shoes, exhausts me. All I want to do is get back in bed and wake up that Saturday morning again, only this time to a normal Saturday that doesn't involve sweeping water out of the house at 5:00 am or starting a list of all of our things that were damaged by the water.

I also don't know how to try and return to some semblance of normal. The laundry we did on Sunday is still folded on the coffee table because I don't know if it would be better to leave it there or put it away in our dressers that will have to move soon so we can replace the floors in the bedroom. The books from the workout room and the contents of the floor of my closet are still occupying most of the floor in the fireplace room, so I see them the entire time I'm in the kitchen. I have to resist the urge to run out and buy small cement bricks to put under every piece of furniture in the house in case it happens again.

This weekend, instead of preparing for Passover and taking pleasure in the cleaning and cooking that comes with the holiday, I will be sorting through clothes and other things to see what I can get rid of, making lists and taking more pictures of what was ruined, and trying to organize the displaced books and other things into some semblance of organization that we can live with while we get the house fixed.

(Pictures to come. There are a ton of them, but I don't know where the camera cord is right now.)