Shirking My Responsibilities

I had many things planned Tuesday after the mail route. I had a long list of things I wanted to get done in Longview and around the house. Then Drew called.

I tried to say no but it was 100 degrees and what is the point of living in a place like this if I don't take advantage of it once in a while? Too bad Matt was stuck at work. I am a lousy wife!

My boatmates, Chris (the owner of the boat), his son, Dakota and Drew.

Drew and Dakota.

I do not regret abandoning my chores and spending the day on Mayfield lake. Not one bit.

Bad Weather Mojo

The thermometer here is through the roof. Yesterday our temp climbed above 105 degrees! This is not normal Washington weather. I think the heat is breading bad mojo.

At the post office I learned that one of my customers was in an accident on the same road where one of the carriers crashed. It doesn't look good for her and I am sad. She is always really friendly and I like taking packages to her house. There have been other deaths on that road and I am starting to feel kind of spooked there.

Then out on the route, a heat addled bird flew in front of my car and I am pretty sure I hit it. Usually the birds get out of the way but not this one.

Later I saw a peacock in a shady patch on the side of the road. I looked closer and saw there were two. I drove by slowly so as not to spook them from their cool spot and realized that the male peacock was not resting but actually dead and the female was keeping a frenzied vigil. I understand that peacocks mate for life and I felt sick in my heart for her. I asked at the nearest house if the peacocks lived there but the owner's didn't know whose birds they were.

But the bad bird day wasn't over. Towards the end of the route I came upon a Canadian goose wandering down the middle of the road. Something was wrong with his wing and was breathing heavily through his open mouth. Like a fool I tried to chase him down. To what end? To squirt water on him? To grab him and stuff him in the mail wagon with all the mail? I don't know what I was thinking. The best I came up with was to chase him off the road into a shady glen and hope for the best.

Where Have I Been?

It is oft commented how hard building or renovating a home can be on a relationship. I am here to tell you that I have been knocked off my high horse. I was certain we were up to the challenge. I am very humble now.

I have not wanted to post because I have been in a really bad place and didn't want to share for a multitude of reasons: Some info was too personal, I didn't want to spread the poisonous mood, I lacked the emotional energy get through a real day let alone re-live it by posting on the blog. I intended the blog to be an accurate account of this adventure but you and I will have to settle for an account filled with holes. I guess I will let those posting dry spells speak for themselves.

Not to worry, Matt and I have made it through and will be better for having slogged into and out of the dark places. I know I have made mention to my mood in past posts with the hope that things were turning upward. That was me willing myself out of a bad place and not quite getting out. I have made it out now. It is a huge relief.

I can now say that we expect to be all finished up with the house by July 1st - final inspection, transfer from construction loan to mortgage, etc. I am so glad to be here. I am profoundly, inexpressibly grateful to Tom and Kathy for the hundreds of hours of labor and million acts of kindness they have given. I am so sorry I collapsed so completely in the middle of the process. I thought I was made of different stuff.

I am going to tell you right now that you are in for another posting dry spell. This drought will not be because of a black mood. This drought will be because we are working our tails off to put this project to bed. Expect the next post to be an unveiling of sorts - a kind of "Driver Move that Bus" moment from Extreme Home Makeover. People, we are at the finish line here! Happy Spring! Happy Summer! Happy Life. And love to all my family and friends who I have so horrendously neglected over the past 6-9 months.

Love, -Michelle

Oh, I Almost Forgot . . .

You might want to make a mental note to yourself. If you ever need to dig a trench and you think to yourself, "no big deal. It's not that far. 2 feet down is not that deep. I have a shovel.", take that moment to punch yourself in the face and rent a trencher. Seriously. You DO NOT want to dig it by hand. Especially in winter when the ground is freezing and thawing in turn and the soil is 75% clay. It is a bad idea and you will cry.

The trench from hell. To China. Those are the electrical lines down there. They will soon be joined by water and gas.

It Snowed. Again!

I am almost embarrassed to make this post. Just spoke with my Mom yesterday and she and my Dad are digging out of a truly major snowstorm in Utah. These pictures are from last week. Our snow is gone now and we are enjoying some nice, sunny skies!

Clinically Eeyore

In no particular order, here are some things that both you and I missed while I was wallowing in depression:

Sunrise behind Mt. St. Helens taken just this morning as I was on my way to the dentist

Fog! We were socked in for 3 days. I took this on my mail route way up on a hill that would normally be well out of fog range, especially by noon when this was taken

The shingles going up on the house. We are farther along than this. I will post again when this section is finished

Our heating beast. All the ductwork is in now. As soon as I finish digging the trench for the electrical connection we can hook up and heat the house!

The great snow of 08, compressed, frozen and sliding off the roof destroying gutters on it's way. These pics were taken at 6:30am and after I took them I went and knocked the snow down so the gutters wouldn't get too mangled. It looks like the snow would just fall off when hit with a broom or shovel but it hung on and I really had to beat at it to get it to break!

South Military Road during the storm

South Military Road after the storm. Not many snow plows around here! These roads were a mess for many days.

Wilma! Created by Kathy and waiting to greet me when I got home from Utah on Christmas eve.

Raccoon visitors!

Stuck in Tom and Kathy's driveway on Christmas Day. My car wasn't high enough to clear the snow.

The burn pile awaiting the appropriately rainy day to go up in flames

Fraq buried. While I was in Utah, Tom came over and spent a day scraping snow off the driveway with the CAT and cleared off the mail car. Then it kept right on snowing and I ended up getting stuck in my own driveway the Saturday after Christmas.

Before we went to Utah I found a bat in the Sister House. This bat wasn't right! Matt and I took some video of it before we, uh, put it to sleep. With all the cats around it just isn't a good idea to let a sick bat run loose.

Speaking of cats, Lily was just diagnosed with FIP. This is BAD news. It is incurable and there is no way to know how she contracted it. It is possible that she may have caught it from the kittens or it may have been hanging around inside her dormant. It is somewhat infectious so we are now worried about the rest of the cats. The Vet suggested that we bring her in for euthanasia but we just haven't been able to bring ourselves to do it yet. Crap.

Western Washington is Buried!

I haven't downloaded any picture yet to share. Just wanted to mention that, instead of leaving Utah on Christmas Day like I planned I left on Christmas Eve. The forecast for Christmas Day in SLC looked awful and I couldn't risk getting stranded and not making it home for the mail route on Friday. I wasn't the only one desperate to get from SLC to WA. Check out this story. Drew found it and laughed out loud and the lengths people go to either get out of SLC or into WA. You decide which.

A Note About the Weather

It is cold at night here. I packed away our winter comforter because, duh, it's summer. Or so I thought. Last night I slept all bundled up ruing the weak heat deliverance of the summer comforter. We have a heated mattress pad and it has been put to use a few nights this past week - last night included. IT IS AUGUST and I am heating my bed.

All walled in

Notice anything different? No. It's not the bright blue sky although that is different and VERY welcome. Look closely. . .

Every exterior wall has been framed. A fellow from the truss company came out this morning to measure for our trusses. We expect them to be delivered in about a week and a half. Will wonders never cease?

No Clams for Me

On Friday afternoon Tom, Kathy, Matt and Walker left for the beach house. This weekend is a clam tide and they hoped to get a bucketful. I was to join them Saturday evening after my mail route. Things didn't go as planned. I ended up doing Route 02 on Saturday instead of my usual Route 01. I am not up to speed on Route 02 yet so it took me an ungodly amount of time to sort the mail. The weather has been crap here and by the time I got out on the road everything was slushy and slippery. Not being super familiar with Route 02 I wasn't quite sure which boxes would be problematic in the snow. Plus I hadn't driven my mail wagon in the snow yet so I didn't know it's particular snow foibles. I slipped around a bit but managed to avoid any disasters. The day had everything: snow, hail, rain, sunshine. Sometimes the hail blew sideways, sometimes the wind blew snow off the trees and the car got pelted with wet, slushy snowballs from above. Fun stuff. I keep a plastic bag in the car to protect the mail on days like this. It got so full of hail from the open window that I had to regularly unload it out the window!

I was kind of strung out by the time I finished my route. Matt called to tell me that nobody got any clams on the Saturday morning tide. He said the weather was bad at the beach too. You see where I am going with this?

1. I don't eat clams.
2. The tides are out at around 5:30am so if clams are to be had that is the time to be out on the beach.
3. It is stormy and super cold on the beach in the wee hours.
4. I was not too keen on an additional 2 hours of storm driving to get to the beach on top of my 4.5 hours of stormy route driving in order to dig up things I don't eat under lousy conditions.

So I stayed home, watched a movie, ate a bag of potato chips, finished a book and called it a day.

Nothing like North Ogden but. . . .

While my parents, family and friends got (and are still getting) pounded with feet upon feet of snow in Northern Utah we enjoyed this lovely vision. The locals here are freaking out because this is a ton of snow compared to other years + the deep freeze and the buckets of rain far beyond the usual. What do we know? It's our first winter here and so everything seems normal to us. Anyway, I hope all you Utahns are keeping warm and finding places to put all the snow. What does a person do when the snow they shovel off the groaning roof piles so high it reaches the eaves? Start tunneling like moles?

Uncle

Behold the giant hunks of frozen earth - and this is the least frozen side of the house so what you are looking at is only 8" thick.

I cry Uncle. I give up. After our non-pass from the foundation inspector we had to get a soil engineer in to make a recommendation. The soil engineer came last Friday. He was dressed in penny loafers and a button down shirt and his wife was in the car waiting. He tip-toed around the area that was not muddy (uh, nowhere) said "you've got to get rid of the water" (uh, duh!), and was gone in 5 minutes. He was supposed to stay to meet with the county inspector but he was gone by the time the inspector arrived. On Tuesday we received his drawing. The plan called for digging a trench 8" below the bottom of the footing all around the exterior of the forms. Then we are to put a 4" layer of gravel, a 4" perforated drain pipe, and another layer of gravel. The point being that the ground water will drain into the gravel and pipe in the trench and be diverted around the house instead of sitting on the pad.

This plan is better than ripping out all the forms but worse than we had hoped for. The rain let up and we are now in a deep freeze. We rented a tractor to help dig through the frozen ground (thanks Grandpa!) thinking that one day should be good enough to get all the way around. Mother Nature had other plans. On day one of the rental Tom and Matt made it all the way along the west side of the house and partway along the north side of the house. Every foot things seemed to get worse. We revised the scope of work at the end of the first day. We thought if we could just get through the ice and finish up the north side until the thaw that would be good. We started up on the north side again this morning and didn't even make one foot of progress. The ground is frozen over 1 foot down and the tractor just couldn't pry anything loose.

So. I concede. I bend my knee in surrender. This foundation will not be poured anytime soon. We have done everything possible to appease the inspector and work around the slings and arrows Mother Nature is throwing at us. It is not enough. I am going to stop fighting and raging and just go with the flow. Otherwise I am going to burst something inside - either a vital organ or my emotional stability (which is already in question). The foundation will be done when it is done. The house will be done when it is done. My time line means nothing to the rain, mud and ice.

Digging on the west side of the house. This side was easiest because we had to dig down the farthest. We were able to get below the frost line and pry the frozen ground up. The rest of the perimeter was frozen down well below what needed digging out.

Matt working the tractor.

Frosty Shadow, Frozen Pinecone

While Tom and Matt were picking away at the frozen ground I took a shot of my alter ego on the frozen ground and a frozen pinecone. I am a great help.

What? No rain or fog?

A week ago we had a beautiful, sunny Sunday. It was a perfect day for a drive up to the mountain. I got this gorgeous shot.

White Christmas and a little deer

The foundation guys seemed to prefer working in the snow rather than the rain. They like our project because they are all outdoors men and enjoy driving past elk herds in the fields on our street. Plus, our little deer family come to check them out during the day. Yesterday when the crew got here they found the place where the deer had spent the night. There were steaming indentations where they had been sleeping until the truck pulled down the drive. One of the little ones came back later for a nibble under the trees.

Quick Update

It is very unlikely that the house will be moved this weekend for a number of reasons. First, the office from which we were waiting for the permit (Washington DOT) is in Chehalis (currently underwater) so we are no longer on the top of the list of priorities. Also, both utility crews we need would be traveling from the north and I-5 is still closed. There is no way for them to get to the site. That means the move will probably happen on Dec 16 and that sucks big time because Matt will miss it. He will be back in Los Angeles and absolutely cannot change his trip due to work constraints.

Here are some pictures of the flood taken on Tuesday. I can't credit them because I don't know who took them. Tom emailed the link to me. Anyway, to clarify, we are on one side of the water, the utility crews are on the other side of the water and the permit office is in the water.

Aftermath

Well, Matt got home from Los Angeles last night and arrived under clear, starry skies. It was too dark for him to see the extra high water in the rivers and standing water in places where there shouldn't be water so he is skeptical about our ferocious rain and flooding. He keeps teasing me that we are all just a bunch of excitable sissies. But I will just show him this associated press article that I found on the internet this morning and he will have to believe me. Here are some excerpts about the places near to us (in red):

The drenching rains and howling winds were gone but flooding concerns persisted Wednesday, as anxious residents waited for waters to recede so they could see what was left after this week's fierce storm.

The storm, which killed at least seven people, battered the Pacific Northwest before moving on Tuesday, leaving behind flooded homes, fallen trees and washed-out roads, including the region's largest highway.

Some were spending Wednesday looking for the lost. In the Lewis County town of Winlock (That's us!!), a dive team planned to search normally tiny Wallers Creek for Richard Hiatt, 81, believed to have been swept away when a bank gave outfrom underneath him.

"It happened so quickly," daughter-in-law Sharon Hiatt said Tuesday as searches continued. "That's the only possibility, that he fell into the creek.". . .

. . . National Guard troops were summoned early Wednesday morning to help evacuate a 20-unit trailer park near Elma threatened by the flooding Chehalis River, Kelly said.. . .

. . . As the water started to rise outside their Lewis County home, Terry Roberts moved his cars to higher ground, shepherded his wife and two children into their RV and hit the road.

They didn't get far.

"We were on dry road and all of a sudden, the water started swirling around," Roberts said, standing with his wife in a temporary shelter in Chehalis after being rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter. "That's when we got on the CB and called for help."

Roberts, 64, was among the hundreds who fled their homes after the storm.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, who toured the ravaged region by helicopter Tuesday, touched down at a high school shelter in Chehalis and offered encouragement to the roughly 40 people staying there.

She also ordered a plane to deliver food and emergency supplies to the high school in Pe Ell, about 25 miles to the west, because the roads were blocked by water.

"It's hard to comprehend 5- to 10-feet under until you see those houses," Gregoire said.

The governor also flew to the water's edge on Interstate 5, which has been shut down since Monday at Centralia because of flooding. At one point Tuesday, officials said a three-mile section of the road was under as much as 10 feet of water from the surging Chehalis River.

The interstate, which is the main north-south route between Portland, Ore., and Seattle, was expected to be closed at least through Thursday.. . .

. . . With I-5 closed, state officials were recommending a lengthy detour -- Interstate 90 across the Cascade mountains and down U.S. 97 through central Washington to the Oregon border -- a route that roughly doubles the three-hour trip from Seattle to Portland.

David Dye, Washington state's deputy transportation secretary, said workers were cleaning up lots of debris -- "garbage, tires, dead rats everywhere" -- while they waited for the water to recede.

On the edge of downtown Centralia, waist-high water the color of chocolate milk covered streets as police used small boats to get to houses in flooded neighborhoods.

More than 300 people had to be rescued in Lewis County, many being plucked off their rooftops by helicopter, Sheriff Steve Mansfield said.

Chehalis City Manager Merlin MacReynold said between 70 and 80 people had to be rescued in the city limits alone. He called the flooding worse than the 1996 deluge, which is still legendary in the area.

So it is still a bit messy here. There is no going north for at least another day. The freeway closure is from mile marker 68 to 88. Our exit is 63. We are really lucky we are not 5 miles north. When we were looking for land one of the main requirements was that it be as high and dry as possible. So we are fortunate that the only water we have to deal with is what falls from the sky, not what spills over from nearby rivers or dikes. On our property the standing pools of water are gradually seeping into the saturated ground. As far as we know the rest of the family made it through OK too. Ben is in Olympia and I don't think he has to worry about flooding in his place, Andy is in Bellingham and they got hit but not as hard as Lewis County apparently. Tom and Kathy are dry too. So, yeah! Today I will be looking around to see if I can find out what we can do to help the people who were affected by the floods. It's a crappy time of year to have your house under water.

Snow (sort of)

Woke up to a dusting of snow this morning! Not a big deal to you folks in Utah but certainly a little thrill to me. Matt is in Los Angeles again for work so he missed it. But not to worry. With our luck it will snow on the day of the house move so he will get to "enjoy" it on that day.

Una debates going out into the white stuff. She ended up stepping out just to the edge of the snow and then decided it was better to be inside.

Someone else was more adventurous than Una. My guess is Quinten.

Frosty

I stepped outside this morning and almost slid right off the wood porch. The cars are covered with ice crystals and my fingers can't seem to get warm. Looks like the first frost is here. Is it wrong of me to wish for Southern California weather even in the midst of the fire disaster?

Helping out

Consider making a donation to Noah's Wish. They are sending teams to San Diego county to help the animals that evacuees had to leave behind. Imagine losing your house and then losing your pet who gives you unconditional love whenever you are down. Noah's Wish tries to take the added burden of losing pets off of the shoulder's of people who are already pushed to the limits of stress and fear. They did (and are continuing to do) a great job helping after Katrina. Also consider a making a donation to the Red Cross.