2008-06-25 - 9:00 p.m.
Heh...retro...
So my ear is pierced, which may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people but it is something I never imagined myself doing, namely because I always felt (rightfully so) that i would look spectacularly stupid with any type of earring/stud/spacer/barbell/safety pin dangling from my earlobe. And I would, which is why my ear was penetrated up high in the cartilage at the top of the ear, and it doesn't look too bad up there.
Yes, I'm aware that this makes me sound even less straight than usual, but it was for a good reason, probably the only kind of reason that could get me to do something like this in the first place.
We buried Grandma's ashes on Mother's Day, and by we I mean most of my family except me, because I was stuck here in town for an important audition (that proved to be massively fruitless anyway for circumstances that, while beyond my control, still made it feel like I made the wrong choice. Next time I'm just going to go with the family thing, but I know what Grandma would have told me to do.) As usual, I digress. My Uncle Ted had a wonderful idea to procure a pair of earrings for each of the kids and grandkids who would be there (and one for me, at my request, triggering an avalanche of Ken is gay jokes about getting earrings for me to go with my makeup and massive collection of haircare products)
Anyway, one earring from each pair was placed in the urn with the ashes and buried, and the other earring was taken home. So when Emily got home, she had a delivery of a small ruby stud on a gold stem for me. I didn't know what i was going to do with it until she told me about going with the cousins to get their ears pierced together (good call, em!), and then I knew what I had to do. In about 3 more weeks I can take the starter stud out and put in the ruby. I'm sure it'll look pretty good on me, and if it doesn't I won't mind.
"Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'."
IN other news, we've had a ton of excitement up here. I got to be in my first "oh my god, get to the basement now cuase a tornado is coming to kill us all" a couple fridays ago at work! About fifteen minutes before I was all set to knock off for the weekend i was told i had to go to the basement because a tornado was touching down near downtown and heading straight for us. Nothing happened, luckily, and the twister passed by, but I was kicking myself on the way home for not owning a camera, because it turned out my bus stop was almost directly underneath the dividing line between storm and sun....the sun was shining on the right (west) half of my body, while rain was still falling to the east on my left arm, and the sky looking to lake michigan was dark and scary looking. I would have had a beautiful picture if i had jsut pointed a camera straight over my head and snapped. sad day, but i resolved to learn from the experience, and i went and bought a digital camera that very night. And it was a good idea, because i had some fantastic uses for it the next day.
Brook and I were waiting for the Belmont Stakes to start, and I was eagerly awaiting the chance to see a triple crown winner in my lifetime (and that race turned out about as well as the rest of saturday did) when the news broke in about the horrid horrid worst storm ever coming through and our particular little corner of the town was to evacuate to basements because it was getting dnagerous. Hoping it would all blow over before the race started (after one tornado warning i was already jaded to it), put Minion in the bathtub where she'd be safe, and headed down to the basement. It was just brook and i because paul and cyndi were out of town, so we were staving off boredom as best we could watching weather reports on my laptop and talking about comics when brook noticed that water was creeping in a pool toward me from a corner of the basement.
"hmm...that's odd..." Turns out that corner was leaking water from the heavy rainfall. Ok, no biggie, we throw some water absorbent clothes down on it like a spill and resolve to clean it up the next day when this all blows over. Oh, how foolishly optimistic we were.
A little bit later we notice that the stream of water is not stopped by the hoodie and is in fact getting stronger, and seems to be coming from multiple places. Turns out that the northwest AND southwest corners of the basement were leaking, the former in the walled off anteroom of the basement, where it is trickling along both walls toward the crack right by where i had been sitting. At this point we're not too panicked, but we do take the precaution of getting everything elecronic up off the floor just in case.
The water continues to pour in at what becomes an alarming rate sometime over the course of the next ten minutes, and we realize we have to do something. Brook has a stroke of genius-
"Didn't Rico leave a wet/dry vac down here when he moved out?"
"Great idea. Grab the mop."
Brook begins mopping the water out of the corners and pushing it towards the low point of the basement, which is sadly A) right by our water heater and ac, and B) NOT WHERE THEY INSTALLED THE DRAIN IN THE FLOOR! A true marvel of modern engineering, some genius forgot that all water flows one direction (down) and put the drain at a point that is higher than the lowest point in the basement and thus not where the water will tend to pool to dispose of itself.
So the Battle of the Basement begins, with brook pushing water as fast as he can toward the pool that is already forming and spreading, and me hitting siad pool with R2D2 the wet dry machine, sucking up water till the damn thing fills up, hauling it upstairs, dumping it out, and coming back down again for another round. I also notice the sink in the basement is backed up again despite the best efforts of liquid plumber to clear it and bleach to kill the smell, so i vacuum that out while i'm at it.
At one point brook points out that we are the high tech equivalent of two guys trying to bail out a leaky boat with buckets. I laugh.
At one point I point out that I am soaked to the bone, and I can't tell what parts are bleach/rain/floor/sewer/sink water, what parts are rain on me from when I go outside to dump the vacuum, and what parts are sweat. My eyes burn.
After one load, I hear shouting in the street, so i head around to look, and my jaw drops on the ground.
I will preface this by saying that we didn't get nearly as much actual floodwater in houses as other parts of milwaukee, but we got something few other areas got. Our block is the low point of our street on both the north and south sides, and the v comes to a point almost right in front of our house.
The water was up to waist level. The shouting was a group of kids trying to push their car through waist deep water.
"Brook, get up here NOW. You HAVE to see this!"
THe water had begun creeping up the front lawn, no mean feat because the house is at the top of a small hill and the top plateau of the front yard is a good six feet above the level of the sidewalk.
Brook- "We might be in trouble here."
After we spent time gawking in amazement and watching some dumbass go swimming in the street water (uh...dude, the street can only flood like that if the sewer is full...you're swimming in wter that is at least part sewage nad you are going to get so sick later), I rememberd i had a shiny new camera, so i started taking pictures.
Of water in the street up to a man's chest.
Of the water coing up to the wooden steps of the front porch.
of the now lost battle in the basement nad the water beginning to pour in.
We paid a couple neighbor kids to help us get every box and bag upstairs and into the living room. by this point the water was almost level with the steps of the porch, meaning another few inches and we were going to have water coming in through the front door. The fire department was coming by telling everyone to unplug all their electrics in case of short circuiting. Minion got put back in her cage upstairs after cyndi promised me she'd be ok for a night, brook and i packed a bag each, were very grateful that the garage was up on another rise and the back alley was free of floodwater so we could get the hell out of there, and then we proceeded to get the hell out of there, evacuating to a hotel for the night and coming back to survey the damage the next day.
Like I said, we got off lucky- the houses across teh street were level with said street and got feet of water coming into basements and first floors. Our waterline came to about 4 inches in the basement, and our sump pump, which was named the offical MVP of the whole incident, cleared most of it out overnight while brook and i awkwardly tried to have fun at em's bar.
we had to toss some empty boxes and stuff that was mold damaged (turns out the bathroom leaks into the baesment already anyway) and i had to mop the whole basement with a bleach solution, but within a few days only the intense humidity still downstairs really gave an indication of a flood taking place.
Though the battle of the basement was a crushing defeat for our heroes, take comfort in knowing that they fought valiantly and resourcefully with the tools they had at hand, were able to make a relatively clean getaway and live to fight another day, ultimately won the war, and learned a valuable lesson about becoming jaded to weather alerts, because mother nature will groin stomp your punk ass anytime she feels like and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Ken
though our paths in life have parted
You no longer care for me
but when youre happy with another
Wont you sometimes think of me
when the evenin sun is sinking
down behind the trees
and the moon is slowly rising
Wont you sometimes think of me
I'll always keep your picture
it means so much to me
And every night I'll pray dear that
You'll sometimes think of me
think of days that are gone dear
days we could recall
if you would only try dear
But still you blame me for all
when the evenin sun is sinking
down behind the trees
and the moon is slowly rising
Wont you sometimes think of me
all I can says I tried dear
But you wouldnt let it be
So if youre ever sad and lonely
Wont you sometimes think of me
when the evenin sun is sinking
down behind the trees
and the moon is slowly rising
Wont you sometimes think of me
�
