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December 11, 2015

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

I am thinking that I had better get my journal written before anything else goes out down here! We have had a terrific amount of wind and rain and the storms have brought historic flooding with roads caving in, mud slides and loss of electricity this week. Dave has been working out of City Hall for the past two days helping to deal with the emergency, and I have been doing my thing as a neighborhood captain for the emergency volunteer corps, making sure our neighbors are up to date on all the problems we have been having. We now have our electric power back, but we now have to boil our water we use for drinking and cooking, as the water reservoir (which is leaking badly) may have been contaminated with all this rain. The road repairmen have been working Highway 101 just a few feet south of us since Tuesday night. (You can't see it through the trees, but our place is just at the bottom of the "diamond-shaped" sign on the left of the photo.) We're watching a lot of disappointed drivers turning around at our place because they can't go south of here. Really, there is little need to head that way as Tillamook is also flooded and Hwy. 6 to the east is also closed because of a mud slide and more flooding over there.

Just north of us in Nehalem, the Nehalem River has overflowed its banks and has blocked Hwy. 101. So, twice a day when the tide is high, we're stranded here. Water is keeping us from driving north and the highway washout to the south means we can't go that way.
Our little town has seen its share of flooding also, we had a creek running down the middle of the street so there is mud everywhere and businesses down there have all had flooded basements. The flooding creek also did a lot of damage in Waterfront Park, so after the water recedes we are going to have a huge clean up.

So we will just hunker down for now and ride out this storm. It looks like it may last all weekend and be the first of the week before we get any kind of a break. Thank goodness we are prepared with bottled water and candles. It took some looking, but we were able to come up with enough oil to keep the lamp lit while the power was out. If it wasn't for the fact that it was storming so much, it might have been kind of nice.

Let me see, what else has been happening this week. Dave and I took the opportunity to watch our thirteen-year old soccer player - who also plays basketball - play some hoops in Forest Grove the other night. We debated whether to go or not, because the weather had been so bad. But even though it had been raining hard all day, it let up just long enough for us to drive to the valley and back without much trouble. Paige is not only a superstar in soccer but she also plays basketball pretty well too. Since we used to live in Forest Grove, we were able to drive straight to the school where the game was going to be played. Leslie was delayed by traffic, but still managed to get there shortly after tip-off. We had a nice visit with her and thoroughly enjoyed watching Paige in the game. Her team won be something like 40-10 and I think Paige scored 15. We're glad we went and we were able to get home before the weather turned bad again.

My cousin Jack and his wife Sharon came by on Tuesday afternoon. They were staying at a condo in Rockaway Beach for the week and came by for a visit and stayed for dinner. The condo is a time share that belongs to their neighbor and he wasn't able to use it, so offered it to them. They had a great beachfront view for watching the storm. Luckily they were staying the week, as after Tuesday night, they were pretty much isolated because of all of flooding. In fact, unless some roads open today, they may be staying longer than they had planned!

With nothing better to do, I got up in the attic and retrieved my Christmas decorations. I got the stuff out and placed it around the house and now the place looks a little more festive for the holiday season. I have this tree that is only 4 feet high and I place that on my kitchen counter and put "cookie" decorations and lights then call it good. I have had that tree for 40 years and it still is holding up. Dave switched the lights on the outside of the house so I guess we are all set. I got my Christmas cards mailed on Tuesday (hopefully before the post office was flooded in the storm) and I still want to make some cookies. The shopping this year is mostly online, which makes it easy since I can't get to town to do any shopping anyway. Let's just hope the FedEx truck can make it down here!

A big "thank-you" to my good friend Diane, who pointed out that the email link at the bottom of the journal hasn't been working. I think it is now!

I hope you are all safe and warm where you are and I think of all the people who are less fortunate than I am and I feel very, very blessed.