STuff happens

Well, I have been back from my vacation for a couple of weeks, but with the getting back into the swing of things, the flooding, the road closures, and the severe snow storms, I haven't had the inclination to do much but the essentials.

I very much enjoyed the vacation in Charleston South Carolina area, lots of flowering bushes and trees, warm air and green, so much different then the snow storm that happened 2 days before I left. Coming back home however, was a rude awakening. I will try to remember to tell you more about my vacation in later posts.

You have no doubt heard about the flooding in Fargo ND. we are about an hour southwest from there and had the flooding first.

we had some water in the basement, although not as much as some. No, I didn't take pictures YUCK! Marvin was out in the pouring rain trying to dig a ditch in the frozen ground to drain the water away from the basement. We have occasionally had some seepage in the oldest part of the basement since it is over 85 years old and mostly rock. We have also had a bit of water come in around the windows as they built this house at the beginning of a ravine and the house is lower then the yard and fields (some one must not have taken a really good look when the original house was built back in the early 1920's).

There are 3 parts to our basement, the oldest as I said is 85+ yrs old. the middle part is 60 yrs old and the newest we added on 24 yrs ago. The middle part of the basement walls sprung a leak about 4' from the floor directly onto a couch. That was fun.

Enough about this.

The overland flooding was so bad this year that many roads were washed out or cut by the water. to illustrate the difficulties, last weekend we were invited to the neighbors for supper, they live 2.5 miles directly north of us. in order to get there we went 1m east, 1 m south, 1m east, 1m north, 1 m east, 4 m north, 3 m west, 2.5 m south. Good thing they always have good stuff to eat. we will not be able to get our mail delivered for several more weeks. The main county road north of us still has water running over it and the snow we just got the other day will have to melt and drain away, and then it will have to dryout enough for the road crew to get the road fixed. I am able to go south and around to get to work, and a couple of times a week take the time to drive to a nearby town where our mailman is leaving our mail for us.

This picture is of my husband looking at the level of water under the bridge north of our house. just south of this bridge is where the road is washed out. Normally the river is about 20' wide under this bridge and it is about 10' deep. as you can see here the river is a whole lot bigger than that and this is after a week and has gone down a couple of feet.

This past monday night it started to snow a lot. by the time it was finished on tuesday, we had received 20" of heavy wet snow. we were unable to get out to go to work on tuesday, and it wasn't until noon today that I tried to get to work.

This was the 5th time this winter that I was snowed in at home and unable to get to work.