Homeowner's Inauguration

While it was a joke, I did mentioned it that afternoon, "Perhaps we should consider building the ark?"
We should have.

I thought mom was a little crazy for wanting to go to Kohl's in all that rain when she pulled the car out of the driveway to let me out for work. I followed behind her down our residential shortcut to 13 mile, pausing periodically to let the oncoming car go through the flooded streets first. It was still raining big fat drops at soaking speeds. I did my two quick right hand turns into Beaumont's employee entrance and found more puddles waiting for me. I had no idea how bad it really was.

This is the vantage point from the basement ceiling!

While I was at work on my first night off orientation and blissfully unaware of the magnitude that was the second world flood, my fiance unexpectedly went sailing on Ocean Woodward and swimming in Lake Princeton. His Mustang drowned at the corner of our street and forced him and Tybee to abandon the car and walk the block home. Well really, Rick waded and Tybee swam. He had onlookers on Woodward calling out to him, "Hey! Can your dog swim?"  We discovered that our new house sits at the lowest point of our street and he was welcomed home to our new indoor pool in our basement. Our brand new washer and dryer that we were so excited about getting--the washer was tipped on it's side, floating, water lines still attached and the water level was halfway up the door of the dryer. Neither had even seen a load of laundry yet.

Overwhelmed, Rick stood at our front porch wondering how he was going to get back to my parents' house with his car stalled out at the end of our street and a lake in our front yard. Rick said, "It was like out of the darkness, I saw Ryan at the end of our street wading through the water with a big beer can in each hand held up over the water surface!" It was a magical sight, I'm sure!

They took pictures and videos of the disaster in our basement. Facebook was "flooded" (ha, get it?) with similar pictures documenting the "Epic Flood of 2014". There were nurses that were 4 and 5 hours late arriving for work and nurses that were stranded at the hospital unable to get to their cars. When I got home, I learned that my dad and Rick pushed the mustang from Woodward to our driveway, Jenny was ripping up carpet, my mom was stranded at Kohl's, and my personal favorite: my little niece and nephew rode home in a kayak from I-75. My dog was so traumatized that he spent half of the day vomiting in mom's kitchen from all the stress. Mind you, this is the dog that doesn't like to walk on wet grass and he was forced to go swimming in the streets.

my mom laid out all my pictures to dry

It's a mess. Rick and I have been homeowners for barely 3 weeks and now we get to learn very quickly where our homeowners insurance's rubber actually meets the road. I can't help but think if our washer and dryer were still on back-order, we wouldn't have gotten it delivered last week. If we didn't go to the storage locker and finish emptying it out on Sunday, my high school yearbooks and memory book from my grandmother would still be intact. And my collectibles from American Girl wouldn't be ruined. While it's a big mess, it certainly could be much worse. I think about those with finished basements that are tearing up carpeting, throwing out furniture and replacing TV's and children's toys. I am thankful that what we lost seems minimum in comparison and all we may be facing is a concrete scrub down and painting. Our furnace and hot water heater still seem to be working even (we're keeping our fingers crossed!). We thank God for our families that rushed in to help with the aftermath. My dad running from one house to the next, my aunt and uncle, and even Rick's parents somehow found a way from Howell to help him make sense of our basement while I slept for work tonight. Thank you.