Enough Already!

Jim and I went to the meeting King County had for our specific neighborhood last night.  It wasn't nearly as informative as I was hoping it was going to be.  The planner they had there has a great deal of experience in flooding issues, but is new to our area and had not even walked our neighborhood.  So, after a period of general questions, it was more along the lines of "what do you think we could do to help mitigate the damage".  Gee....how 'bout ya'll build a levy on our side of the river!?!?  Say what?  It's already been decided that it's more feasible to protect the other side and let ours flood?  Great, thanks for the help.

One thing that did come up was the possibility of them doing a sand dump in our neighborhood so we could sand bag without having to make the trips back and forth to the more regional sand bagging facilities.  Sand bagging is not going to do Jim and I a lot of good unless the flooding is very minor - there is no way we can sandbag around our entire home and keep the flood waters out.  If the flooding comes hard and the river rises to the worst case scenario flood levels, the engineers have equated the strength and volume of the entire river at that point to 4 railroad trains stacked two wide and two high coming at us at 40 miles per hour.  Nothing but elevation is going to protect you from that kind of power.  The worst case scenario flood level is at 70 feet above sea level.  Our home sits at 64.  What we can do, however, is have sand bags ready to cover our air vents from the crawl space and the doors.  That way, if it is just a foot of water instead of six feet, we could try to keep it out of the house.  The garage would go, but the house might possibly stay dry.

The one other interesting piece of news we found out is that if we flood more than 4 to 5 times, the FEMA regulated insurance we have on our home will buy us out and turn our land into green space.  Since the Army Core of Engineers say it will take them 4 to 5 years to fix the damn if (notice I said if) they get proper funding, realistically, it could be a lot longer than that.  So...good news folks, we only have to flood 5 times and we're out for good.  :::sigh::::

It's so surreal, making decisions about what you realize you're going to have to sacrifice if push comes to shove and what you're going to try and save.

But I digress (I know...shocking)....

The real thing on my mind this morning is the amount of literature and TV entertainment that seems to be coming my way lately in which children are either in harm's way or harmed themselves.  The last three episodes of Grey's had children getting hurt or losing a parent.  Same with Private Practice.  Even the books I'm reading...the last two have had children or their parents put in very difficult emotional situations.

What's with that?  I've always been a kid person and thus more easily affected by stuff like that, but now that I have Madelyn it just kills me.  It can bring me to the "ugly cry" (thanks Oprah, I love that term) thinking about her being in a similar situation.  On last night's Grey's, the major story line was about a young mother in for what seemed to be minor injuries.  When they turned major, her very young soon was off to the side crying, watching his mama suffer.  I can't even imagine Madelyn in that position.

It's enough to turn me off of my two favorite shows and stop reading for awhile.  Since...we've got some packing to do and furniture to move, that's probably not a bad plan. 

But in the meantime, hey Hollywood, lay off the kids for awhile!!!