LaughingSeven

I could survive for 1 minute, 9 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

One of the best days of the year is today, free cone day at Ben and Jerry’s. Get in line early, because lots of folks will be heading out to B&J’s today to gobble up some chocolate fudge brownie (my favorite flavor, though the coffee coffee buzz buzz is a close second). 

I’m starting this blog here as a move from my old domain name. In the future, I hope to move all my content from the old site to here, but at this time, I just don’t have the time to mess with it all.  So why laughingseven?  Well, for one thing laughing has become one of my new favorite hobbies. And seven is the most biblical number out there, right? ha! Seriously though, the name just popped into my head one day when Nathan (my 3rd kiddo) was smiling/laughing behind me as I was working, and the name laughingseven just popped into my head. So there you go. Thanks for reading my thoughts. 

Retail Therapy: Does Sadness Mean Spending? We may be willing to spend more when we’re feeling down, new research suggests.
HT: ABC News

Why we love, and Flirt.
HT: MindHacks

Griefer madness The subculture of online gatherings surrounding antisocials and those that like to cause grief. HT: MindHacks

Get eBay and Craigslist Spelling Ideas with TypoBuddy.
HT: Lifehacker

Insult generator Easy ways to insult your friends | Insult Me!. HT: Me

There’s a great software bundle for the Mac being sold at MacHeist.com. For $49 you can get an image editor (like photoshop), password program (manage passwords, credit cards, online identities, etc), and much more. It’s a pretty nice bundle of applications.

I haven’t fully developed my dissertation that will look at Personality disorders (narcissism, bi-polar, borderline, etc) as seen in larger contexts (religion, marriages, race, and others), but here’s a great look into what I’d consider a prime example of a narcissistic religion (or cult, if you will). More thoughts on this later…

“When you’re a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one who can really help… We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures.”

Watch the full video here: http://gawker.com/5002269/the-cruise-indoctrination-video-scientology-tried-to-suppress

The flood is over
The house is clean(er)
The finals are completed
The papers have been turned in

The Hogs found a coach
The Christmas tree hasn’t burned down
The wii is hooked up
The jumpy house still works

Finally rest can come
Finally the holidays are here
Finally, Finally, Finally, ahhhh….

Below is a long version of our past 48 hours, something that I’ve needed to do for my own sanity. Writing helps me to calm down and self-soothe. Believe you me, I am in need of soothing (as is the rest of my family).

I ask you to read so that you can know how to pray for us. Ultimately I am asking for prayer for me, my wife, and my family (skip to the end of the post if you can’t read all of it. the end of the email has our prayer request).

Saturday was an absolute blast. The snow flakes were the biggest I’ve ever seen, and they lasted a good 3-4 hours. Peterson, Gabby and I suited up, and headed outside for sled races (I pulled gabby, peterson pulled nothing :)) and then over to the park for some snowball fights and more playing. It was fun.

Shortly after 6 that night, the snow turned to rain and by Sunday morning all of the snow (2-3″) was gone. The rain continued (as it usually does here in Seattle) all day and through the night.

When I awoke on Monday morning for work (7 am), I noticed that something outside didn’t look right. It looked a bit like fog, but upon closer inspection it was water. At 7:30 Monday morning, our house was surrounded by 12-15 inches of water. I put my hiking boots on to go out and survey the damage. I didn’t realize it was so deep and after a few steps from the door I’m wet from the knees down. Cold Water!

I make it to the garage and see that boxes, toys, tools, blankets, and a bunch of other stuff is either floating or submerged in knee-deep water. I spend 20 minutes or so trying to move stuff around to keep what was dry from getting wet with the rising water (and the shifting stack of boxes). I was too cold after 20 minutes to continue, so I go back inside.

On my way back inside, the back door showed me that we had 3″ to go before the water made it into our house. So we quickly moved all the stuff from the back room (2″ lower than the rest of our house) into the living room. It’s about 8:30 at this point. Barely a new day, and we’ve already lived 3 days worth of life. This room we just emptied has our gas furnace and our water heater. I figure that those being submerged would not be a good thing, so I called the gas company.

The gas company told me to shut off my gas. I tried, but couldn’t…the meter was under water. They sent someone out to do it, and he discovered that he couldn’t shut it off either. In the process, he saw bubbles rising around the gas meter; not good. A quick inspection inside with a gas-gauge showed that gas was leaking into our house. Steph and the kids left to have a play-date (later realizing it was more of an escape than a play date) and I stayed behind. The gas company sent out a backhoe to dig up our drive way to shut off the gas-main coming into our house. They were sure if the entire neighborhood was leaking gas, or just our house (there was THAT much water everywhere).

It’s about 10:30 at this point and still raining hard. Water has reached the floorplate in the back room which means that water is going to come in our house in a matter of minutes. I then realize that the sewage is backed up when I see 6-10 inches of brown water filling up in my bathtub and toilet. About 15 minutes later and I’ve reduced the amount of water in the tub and toilet by getting a 5-gallon bucket and throwing water out the front door into the water out front.

So the backhoe is working out front and I realize that all our stuff in the garage needs more help but I really can’t go out there b/c I don’t have shoes/boots to stay dry. So I go to a local sporting goods store and buy some hip waders (real-tree camo btw, which Peterson refers to as my ‘army boots’). I put them on in the store and drive home. I back my car up to the garage …. well, halfway to the garage. There was too much water, and my exhaust pipe was going under water. I opened the garage and began loading floating christmas presents into the back of my SUV. After that I loaded boxes of clothes and other odds and ends.

I’m trying to get as much out of the garage that I can, and at this point (11:30) I am exhausted. But there is so much more to get. None of my friends are able to help due to being sick, unreachable, working, or other stuff. I’m alone wading through 2+ feet of water trying to save as much junk as I can.

The gas company finishes up the driveway around 1pm, and we’re finally safe from the gas. Yet at the same time, we don’t have heat in our house or hot water. The water has made it’s way into the back room, and I’m fearful of h ow much higher it’s going to get. Reports on the news show that Seattle has gotten 6″ of water and other parts of the area have gotten as much as 15″ in 24 hours. With the forecast showing more rain for the next 2 days, we’re looking at total disaster if the water doesn’t recede.

I continue bailing water out of the tub/toilet, and estimate that I’ve thrown out 200+ gallons of water from the tub. Thankfully I could stay ahead of the water coming in, otherwise the house would be under water.

Around 3:30 the water starts dropping a little bit, and by 5 the water is out of the house and dropping lower outside. The kids come home and we give them (and me) a quick shower with the remaining hot water in the tank. Thankfully we have electricity and space heaters to keep the house a little above freezing.

Tuesday morning and the water is 90% gone. There still standing water, but nothing like Monday. We get the kids to school and head over to Belevue (30 minutes away) for Nathan Andrew’s circumcision appointment. He was supposed to have this done last week, but due to some scheduling snafu’s by our doctor, it was postponed. We’re already raw from the previous days events and now we’re taking our newborn son in to have surgery. It’s not something that we’re looking forward to at all. Thankfully the doctor and nurse are both kind and gracious. They treat us like humans and not a number (something we’ve been the victim of a lot lately, but that’s another story) which feels like a gift from God. Everything goes fine for Nathan Andrew, and we head home to pick the kids up from school.

I call a good friend who had experience in cleaning up from flooding (his home was destroyed by Hurricane Rita — after Katrina — in LA) to come give me a hand in cleaning the garage and all the junk in the yard (our yard looked like a tornado had come through there). We spend 2-3 hours cleaning and trashing all kinds of stuff. We would have cleaned longer, but I had a client at my internship at 5 so I couldn’t stay home. I took a quick bath with water we heated on the stove (it was really a cold bath, but oh well) and I ran out the door to not miss my appointment. The crazy irony of all this is that in my new profession, work doesn’t stop when my life is in chaos. I have to be able to put aside my exhaustion, pain, chaos, and anger in order to help someone else who is likely dealing with the same thing. During the first 20 minutes of our session, I felt like falling asleep.

I’m done. I’m done in the story and now as I’m telling it.

There is so much that has gone on yet at the same time, I have shared so little of it. I’ve not told you about the kids ’swimming’ in the flood water on Monday, the sleepless nights because of a newborn, the finals and papers (and group presentation I did today) that I have for school, the lack of clean clothes because of no hot water, the mess of a house, a cold house, Gabby’s cough, Stephanie’s exhaustion, and on and on and on. There has simply been too much happen in the last 48 hours for me to convey in any way possible.

If you’ve made it this far, bravo. Thank you for reading and for caring. Now I’d like to ask that you pray for my family.

Pray for:
- health. We need physical health (Steph and Nathan Andrew might be getting sick). We need emotional health and prevention from emotional pitfals that happen after life like we’ve had lately. Our kids need health.

- patience and grace. We’re all extremely tired and worn down. As parents, we need patience and grace with our kids. As husband/wife we need patience and grace for one another.

- vision. We need eyes and hearts to see beyond the mess, beyond the pile of laundry, beyond the waterlogged garage, beyond the kids needing, beyond the papers, and most importantly beyond ourselves. As I’ve written many many times before: There Is More.

Well, we’re up to 20-24″ of water in some areas of my yard. At least 15″ everywhere, with an additional 1″ in my ‘mud room’ (the lowest room of our house). We’re hoping that the water doesn’t rise anymore than it already has.

I spent the past three hours cleaning out things from the garage. We’ve got boxes of baby clothes, summer clothes, shoes, books, files, etc. Oh, that was after I went to GI Joes (sporting goods store) to buy a pair of hip-waders. I half expected some ducks to come in and land in my back yard …. hmmm, maybe I should have put some corn out there for them…

Click on pics for more detailed misery… (oh, and I DIDN’T take pictures of my toilet/bathtub backing up from the sewage … you’re welcome)

So Saturday we were treated with 2-3″ of snow. Peterson, Gabby and I got all decked out in our snow gear and played in it for about 2 hours. Peterson shares my love for the snow …. there is something about snow that makes my heart glad.

We had a great time with some snow-ball fights, running and sliding, and catching snow on our tongues. Gabby is an absolute doll in the snow. So much fun.

The snow stayed around through the evening and then a warm front moved in and turned the snow into rain. Sunday morning, we were back to our drab-gray colored Seattle.

It hasn’t stopped raining since. And that’s a problem.

This morning on my way upstairs to go into work, I noticed that it looked really odd and foggy out the window. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the ‘odd and foggy’ look outside was standing water. There’s 10-15″ of water standing around our house (and in our garage :(). We’ve lost a good amount of stuff already in the garage, and the house is next for the water…. ugh.

Here are a few pics: