Utter Exhaustion

I've worked hard before. I've been exhausted before. But I can tell you I have never felt as bone-tired, as dried up as I do today. Every muscle hurts. Every thought and action requires absolute concentration. I'm just toast.

I'm trying to keep a good sense of humor about this whole thing. It's waning. But, after reading a friend's facebook post yesterday, I was inspired to re-write the lyrics to two popular songs:

Mr. Sandman, build me a dike
bung, bung, bung, bung
Make it the biggest that I've ever seen
bung, bung, bung, bung
Wrap it in plastic. Tape it all over.
bung, bung, bung, bung
Tell me this flood's almost over.

Killing me softly with this flood, killing me softly.
Tearing my whole world apart, killing me softly. With this flood.

Some civil engineers were out at our property yesterday. They are serving the community by visiting affected homes and giving advice on the sandbag dikes, etc. The good news is that both our home and my parents' home have a ground floor above the highest predicted floodwaters. The bad news was they thought our sandbag dikes needed strengthening. So we collected four loads of sandbags yesterday. A formerly unknown neighbor saw us unloading sandbags and stopped to help. We've never before met this man but now we count him as another one of our "Sand Angels." My next post will be all about Sand Angels.

Today, we finally completed our interior preparations. Though we've been told our homes should stay dry, it's not a risk we are willing to take. So we took down our bed and put the upright piano up on blocks and plastic. All the other furniture is upstairs or moved out. Scott just finished removing the toilets and capping the drains. This will prevent any sewage from coming into the house if it is pushed up the pipes by the rising ground water.

Our old cul-de-sac was evacuated this afternoon. They have closed our old street and the street connecting our old street and our new street. This is because the river is at the top of its banks and threatening to come over the road at that intersection.

However, we still remain dry. And in many ways we still remain hopeful that we will emerge from this unscathed. As I look out my kitchen windows while writing this to you, I am again baffled by the amount of water that could be covering my yard. It has so far to travel yet at the speeds it is moving, it will likely close in on us.

Speaking of water, I have a few visuals to give you about the water releases.

-Today they have increased the water flow out of the dam to 115,000 cubic feet per second. That is roughly a World Trade Center Tower worth of water moving out of the dam every second.
-On or around June 15, they will increase the flow to 150,000 cubic feet per second. At that speed, the New Orleans Superdome would be full floor-to-ceiling in 14 minutes.
-One acre of land is 43,560 square feet. At 115,000 cubic feet per second, our 5 acre parcel could fill in under four seconds.

The truly sad things is I can now give these examples without blinking, without crying. This has become my life. I'm tired. I'm sad. I'm angry. But mostly I just miss the life I was living 10 days ago. And I know that that life is forever changed.

Keep praying.