I know I’ve really got no room to complain about the effects of the flooding here in Cedar Rapids since the only losses I’ve had were ones that affected the whole community, but I’ve still been struggling with dysphoria. My asthma is bad enough that I can’t go help with the clean-up. I could help with reconstruction, but people aren’t ready for reconstruction yet. Some can’t even begin clean-up until someone else tells them if they can rebuild. I’d donate books to the library, but they’re in no shape to take donations yet. It’s like everything’s on hold right now, waiting on something (decisions, funding, repairs, inspections), before things can move forward.

As part of my whole mood, I frogged everything that wasn’t done and wasn’t a gift or a sock, just to give myself a sense of having done something without waiting for someone or something else before I could go forward. Once things were frogged, I pulled out new yarn and started this:

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In the comic (and movie) Hellboy, the title character is addicted to kittens.  So is my roommate.  With the fact that animals from here are being sent to other parts of the country to find homes, the kittens that our (evil) neighbor rescued and has been rubbing under the Rosie One’s nose for the past month are most likely coming to live with us this weekend.

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Just a little meme while I work on getting enough of a start on the new project to decide whether or not to share it.

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My youngest sister, Pookie, wrote a one sentence entry in her blog today.  “Where has Toad been?”  It’s a question that deserves an answer, but the answer isn’t short or easy.

I’ve been alone with my thoughts about this all week.

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28 feet high, and rising.

No knitting to show.  I’ve had a migraine since Sunday morning and had to get medical assistance with it yesterday.  The elephant tranquilizers put me out from about noon yesterday until about 9:30 this morning when I woke up to no power and the river advancing to levels never before seen.

At least I’m mostly dry, have power and internet, and still living in my own home.  That’s significantly better than thousands of people here in town.

Cedar River approaches record flooding levels. The Cedar River is predicted to crest on Thursday at 20 feet, higher than 19.27 foot crest of 1993.

The record books call it “the Great Flood of 1993.” Around here, we just call it “The Flood of ‘93” and it has become the measure for bad flooding. I remember being a much younger woman and going places to sandbag. Downtown, Iowa City, Des Moines, everywhere. There wasn’t anywhere that didn’t need some kind of help. I don’t remember ever really getting dry that entire summer.

It changed the way we thought about flooding. It changed the way I think about the environment. Global warming? Global cooling? 500 year flood plain? I didn’t know and I really still don’t, but I knew then something was wrong. Something is still wrong.

It’s 2008, and we’re going to break those records here in Eastern Iowa. The Corps of Engineer are opening up the floodgates on the Coralville Reservoir to their maximum, sending floodwaters into Iowa City and Coralville once again in the name of flood control. This kind of rain and flooding just doesn’t seem right, especially after with near record breaking snowfall, too.

To top it off, I struggled with a headache all day. I very little progress on the reknitting of the Gatsby falling leaves. No sun means no picture of what little I got done. Hopefully I’ll make more progress over the next few days and perhaps catch some sun between periods the predicted showers this week to update the pictures.

The Koi Sock, it has toes. It also has it’s pretty yarn out from around the needles I need to re-knit Gatsby, so that’s good, too. I have happiness on two counts. Admittedly, there’s still another Koi sock to knit, but I want my birthday socks first!

My toes, they are the sexy. Non?

While you contemplate the aesthetic qualities of my peds, I’ll go back to my date with Tim Robbins, who is currently reading me The Great Gatsby. Read to me, Tim. Read to me while I reknit my sock.

I’ve almost got the toe done on the Koi Pond Handpainted Highlights sock. I’m doing a modified flat toe, rather than the toe the pattern suggests, with the hope that it will better accommodate my Very Wide Toes^TM. The toe of the Gatsby socks (which I hope to be able to restart this weekend) was a variation flat toe, and I found it fit much better than the toe of the Aquarium Broken Rib socks.

I’ve only got a few more decreases before I finish the toe, but since Rosie was out to early birthday dinner with her family, I took the opportunity to go shop for her birthday present. We’re doing all our celebrating early this year. Her birthday is Sunday, but she’ll be winging her way to Paris on Sunday chaperoning her cousin’s senior trip.

She gets two weeks traveling France and Spain with a passel of 17 & 18 year olds. I get two weeks to knit undisturbed and to remember why it is that I choose to live with a roommate rather than by myself. I think I get the better deal of the two of us, though Paris is quite tempting despite the responsibilities she’s got while taking the trip.

I got far enough on my Gatsby Falling Leaves sock to try it on and discovered that I needed to go down one more needle size for perfection. I’ve since frogged the sock. I won’t be able to get back to it until I finish my koi pond hand painted highlights socks, as they’re currently on the needles I need to use. It’s disappointing, but I’d rather have perfect socks.

I didn’t get very far on trying to finish up the koi hand painted highlights sock. We went out to dinner at one of the local sushi restaurants, in honor of the date. Fortunately, I’ve only got two more pattern repeats and then I’ll be on the toe, so it won’t be terribly long before I’m back to Gatsby and falling leaves.