Flood Mama

Thank you, Betsy Thorpe, for this clever post title! We are digging out of the aftermath of our flood here in Nashville. FEMA has come to record our damage. Though it could have been worse it is going to set us back thousands. Our hot water heater is still blown. Because of flooding at one of Nashville's two water supply plants we have all been asked to cut our water usage in half until this situation is resolved.
For Mother's Day I went to one of my favorite restaurants in town with my dad, Jim and the Little Man. I was surprised to see that they were serving their fine food on (recyclable) paper plates, and the fine wine we ordered in (recyclable) plastic cups. It was weird to see, but admirable that they were doing the right thing by majorly cutting back on dish washing. They also are giving 10% of their profits to flood relief this month. You see things like that going on all over town. I am going to rename my hometown "Niceville"!

Mud Mama's Mud Room

Be careful what you call yourself ... I am now surrounded in mud! I am (along with my husband and the help of Steramatic) digging through the rubble of our basement from the Nashville flood of last weekend. Though it is sunny and 83 degrees today, Nashville is left to clean up from a flood the likes of which the city has never seen. I consider ourselves lucky, we have our house and our lives, but we have thousands of dollars worth of damage and damaged property. Our sump pump could not keep up with the demand of the 2 feet of rain in two days and at one point there was three and a half feet of water in our luckily unfinished basement. It knocked out our hot water and air conditioning because all of the wiring was down there. We are left with inches of mud and lots of soggy things that we are sifting through.So it is a big mess and a big expense. BUT, like I said we are still lucky. There are people we know that totally lost their homes and had to be evacuated by boat. People lost their lives. The Grand Ol' Opry and the Opryland Hotel are currenty under water. I know musicians who lost all of their equiptment (we lost our sound system)But Music City will heal! I am proud of my home town. No reports of looting, just people helping each other here in the "Volunteer State". It was frustrating that there was not much national media about this all week, but, last night Anderson Cooper put it as the lead story on 360 and apologized for not giving it more coverage sooner. He will be live in Nashville tonight.
I am feeling fortunate and sending love and healing to those who did not weather the storm as well. I heart you Nashville!