Flooding...

Distracted side note: Why is flood pronounced "Flud"? It makes no sense to me. Does that word follow pronunciation rules? I had to spell check that just to make sure it was right.

Anyway, it's flooding in KC today. Sorry, it's probably my fault. Ask and you shall receive and all of that.

We lost power last night. How do I know? Not from the blinking microwave/DVR clocks. Nope. It was Darling waking up SCREAMING like she was being disemboweled at about 3 am this morning. Her CD she listens to wasn't playing and the hall light was off. She freaked.

Aren't you jealous that you didn't get the priveledge of explaining the complexities of electricity to a 3 yr old at 3 am? Some of us are just lucky.

Needless to say, I didn't get back to sleep.

Handsome and I discussed flooding on the way to drop Darling off this morning. My most traumatic flood experience came when I was about Darling's age. I grew up at a suburban lake and was spending the night with my grandparents' (in the house that one day would be where my family lived when the grandparents moved back into town).

One particular night, my Grandma rushes into the second floor sunroom where I was sleeping (probably at 3 am) and picks me up, abruptly waking me up. I start to freak and ask what's wrong.

She tells me to look out the window. The lake has jumped the seawall and is flooding the entire yard. The next door neighbor is swimming (!) through our yard to rescue my grandparents' white German shepard from the backyard kennel and my grandfather is fiddling with the breaker box and cursing in German (He did this when I was around and he wanted to mask his fury, I always thought it was cool to listen to him.)

Anyway, I remember being terrified for my toys that were downstairs. My grandpa had to wade thru knee deep water to rescue a water logged stuffed animal, Monkee. He was a relatively good sport about it.

Needless to say, we survived, but I had a huge fear of the lake for a couple of months afterwards. This happened in about 1980 and it took the homeowner's association another 12 years to put in better floodgates. Just in time for the 1993 floods, which never affected us, but we had some pretty cool, but nowhere near as dramatic flooding in my childhood.

Handsome grew up in middle Missouri near Hermann, MO. Ya know, right in the Missouri River flood plain. One little town, Rhineland, was literally picked up and moved by FEMA onto the bluffs above the flood plain.

Handsome's family has about 80 wooded acres with a "wet weather creek" running through it. Apparently, the night he was born was a particularly stormy night and the creek became a rushing river o' doom. MIL called FIL at work to come take her to the hospital since they lived in the middle of nowhere and she couldn't ask a neighbor to drive her. FIL speeds along their not so gravelly road and realizes he is on one side of the creek and his wife is on the other side. The bridge is completely submerged.

What's FIL do? Swims across the creek (scary) grabs MIL, hops on the tractor and drives on over the bridge. Handsome, their first child is born less than 15 minutes after she arrives at the hospital.

Whew. Death defying, huh?

I'm going to go listen to They Might Be Giants now.