I know this is a little crazy, but I’m actually a tiny bit relieved that we’re getting another cold snap before spring is ready to have officially sprung. Every year at this time, I get a little panicky that winter is officially over.

When I see the flowers coming up in my front yard (planted by a previous tenant, I should note), I find myself thinking things like:

But I’ve only used my crock pot twice!

I never wore those cream-colored tights!

I never used the fireplace! And I still need to burn that sugar-cookie-scented candle I got for Christmas!

Yeah, I know. Crazy. I may be the one person in the entire Midwest who is actually chagrined when it turns nice outside. (Then again, T.S. Eliot did say April was the cruelest month. I think it’s because, like me, he was pale.)

The real cause of my angst is that whenever I drive to work or go to the rec center, I pass by what feels like a parade of college girls who’ve apparently spent every free minute of their winter solstices simmering in a tanning bed. The first day it’s a few degrees over 50? Flip-flops and short-shorts everywhere, and everyone is so tan.

Yes, I know these girls will look like burnt ‘taters by the time they’re my age, and I should feel virtuous and lofty for keepin’ it pale and abstaining from the coffin-shaped-cancer-causers. But still. I can covet the color of a caramel thigh, can’t I?

(cue the Blue Oyster Cult music…)

Yes, this snowman is real, and yes, there is also another snowman with an empty case of beer for a hat (on a nearby street in Macomb).

(Saw this via a friend’s facebook comment and had to share for my out-of-town friends.)

At home from work today trying to write a eulogy for my grandmother. Meanwhile my pipes are frozen and I’m boiling pot after pot of water in my spaghetti-making pot and pouring straight into the toilet.

Do not be jealous of my day home from work.

Do you ever have moments that seem absolutely freaking scripted? Like there’s some force out there watching you and listening to what you say you’re going to do, and then just as you’re about to do it, rubs its hands together greedily and says, “Ah, but that’s what you thought you were going to do! Ha ha ha ha, eat that.”

This is what happened to me.

Metals are a Girl’s Best Friend

I have been waiting all year—scratch that, for close to 2 years now—for the annual jewelry sale put on by the art students at WIU. I’m talking about the students’ actual final-project artwork, which happens to be jewelry. (Not, like, a Lia Sophia party.)

A few years ago, I went to the sale to check it out, and I was impressed by a lot of what I saw. But I was also a bit shocked by the price of some of the items. (Not that the jewelry wasn’t worth it–I just hadn’t known what to expect.)

So I decided to do something radical— try to save up.

Perhaps I should explain here that I am the kind of person who, if you handed me a box full of diamond rings, would trade them in for cash. I would rather wear sterling silver costume jewelry than anything truly valuable. And the funky stuff that undergrad art majors make is right up my alley. Give me hammered silver, twisted-up metal, and stones-on-silver-slides, over diamonds any day, baby. (Yeah, my bf is probably not too upset about this.)

The Heat is (not) On

Anyway, I tried to stop buying costume jewelry all last year, saving up instead for one quality piece at the spring-semester sale.

But It never came. They didn’t have one last year for some reason.

So I wait and wait some more, and then finally it’s the end-of-fall-semester sale this week. And what happens? The first day of the sale—like, as I’m on my way to the art gallery—the freaking heat in my car stops working.

In December. In Illinois.

So I take it into the shop, and, a few hours later, have to drop $100.

After School Special

As I was writing out the check—a check for a heater blower motor resistor or some such nonsense, rather than for a funky piece of handcrafted jewelry—I felt like any moment, this narrator from a cheesy high school health-class film reel was suddenly going to appear and start speaking to an imaginary camera:

“You see folks, that was what we like to call an example of Adult Priorities. Now, before we begin to move on to our next chapter, Income Taxes and Other Reasons to Stay a Kid Forever, let’s review how our dramatized situation unfolded…”

Boo, adult life, poop on you!

First of all, before you read this entry, could you please just remember this very basic but oft-denied fact of life?:

Okay. Now that we have that out of the way:

Thing that can really suck about being from a small town, #149

When you call a plumber to come over because

A) your toilet is clogged again, since freezing temperatures and toilet-flushing-function are apparently somehow related, and your efforts at plunging seem to be making things worse,

B) your washer has water in the bottom and won’t seem to drain out or let you start a new load,

and when the very young and somehow-strangely-familiar-seeming plumber comes over and is standing right in front of you and you look down on the basement floor and see that somehow your washer has come unplugged,

and you realize in that moment that you, effectively, called the plumber to come over and discover that you are totally blond,

and immediately after THAT, when he checks out the toilet and tells you that, [and I quote]:

“It was just a soft plug, that’s all,”

and you realize that “soft plug” is very likely a euphamism,

and he leaves the house and drives away in his white van and you are already reeling from how this 10-minute episode has caused you so much embarrasxment that you are going to need a year’s worth of therapy,

at THAT moment, it dawns on you that the plumber dude, in retrospect, looks a LOT like a kid you once babysat.

That is thing #149.

As I mentioned previously (in the Tale of Detouring through Iowa When Already an Hour Behind Schedule), poor little Gulfport is still almost entirely underwater—the rooftops poking out not too far above the water level.

This article (from today’s Journal-Star) does a nice job of summarizing the situation– but seriously, I wanna know:

what about the strippers?

No word on what has happened to the hard-working pole dancers and/ or whether the, …er, “stripping community” will re-build.

Gulfport slowly re-emerging

Crews working around the clock to return floodwaters to Mississippi

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JODI POSPESCHIL

Hoses connected to industrial pumps snake to the Mississippi River levee just outside Gulfport in Henderson County. The county recently hired a contractor to ‘de-water’ the town by using 36 industrial pumps.

---

By JODI POSPESCHIL

OF THE JOURNAL STAR

Posted Jul 22, 2008 @ 08:48 PM

Last update Jul 23, 2008 @ 01:01 AM

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GULFPORT —

Twenty-six workers running 36 industrial pumps 24 hours each day are ridding Henderson County of billions of gallons of muddy Mississippi River water.

The workers have been in Gulfport for more than a week. On Tuesday, they continued the daily process of pumping about 75 million gallons of floodwater back into the river through enormous hoses hooked to industrial pumps. The result, according to project manager Paul Williams, is a water level drop of about one inch per day- if it doesn’t rain.

“But in this big of a pool, one inch is a lot of water,” he said.

Williams works for Readiness Management Support, a Florida-based company hired by Henderson County to remove water that breached the levee south of Gulfport last month. Another way the county is trying to return water to its rightful place is by creating a man-made breach in the levee at Gulfport by digging a trench, allowing water to flow back out.

Residents of the community of about 200 people, just over the river from Burlington, Iowa, still can’t return to their homes or businesses [...ahem, cough cough..] because most town roadways are still underwater. As the level recedes, the tops of submerged property, such as sheds and cars, continue to pop up.

Williams said residents frequently stop by the company’s office trailers to talk with workers about their homes and possessions.

“We can’t let them in because this is a construction zone,” he said. “But you have to have a lot of empathy for those who have lost an awful lot.”

Henderson County Board Chairman Marty Lafary said Tuesday the hope is that federal funding will help pay for bringing in the private contractor and subcontractors. He said the price tag for the “de-watering” is not yet known.

“It’s one of those things we’ll have to wait to see,” Lafary said. “But we needed to get something done, and we took it upon ourselves to do it.”

Officials are not sure how long the workers will remain in Gulfport.

On Friday night, a section of U.S. Route 34 approaching the river bridge was reopened to traffic [literally 10 minutes after I was forced by a state cop to turn around, double-back, and head for Niota, but that's beside the point...] after about one month of being underwater. One lane of the road is opened, built up above the water line by rock and run by a traffic signal that lets 10 to 15 vehicles through at a time [and like I said, you really don't want to drive across it in a 1985 Crown Victoria.]

Water still lapped at both sides of the roadway Tuesday, and nearby Carman Road, south of Route 34, remained closed and underwater.

One positive rebuilding sign was visible Tuesday as workers framed up walls for the Ayerco gas station at the junction of the two roads. But the station remains surrounded by water, and workers had to drive their trucks through about 18 inches of water to get there.

On Tuesday, Lafary said he credits the de-watering project with getting Route 34 open much earlier than previously estimated.

“It would probably still be under six feet of water,” he said.

Man, what a bad situation. It stresses me out just to have a damp basement. I can’t imagine what these folks are going through. It’s so sad to think of all the homes and crops that are being lost.

My parents’ home and farm is far enough from the Mississippi, thankfully, to stay out of the floodwaters’ reach. But just up the road, Dallas City is suffering.

Hancock County Sheriff John Jefferson is quoted on CNN.com today:

GLADSTONE, Illinois (CNN) — Residents of this small town in Illinois, like many others who live along the banks of the surging Mississippi River, raced against the clock Tuesday to erect a makeshift levee as rising floodwaters threatened.

Bryan Schulte watches over a sandbag levee Tuesday in Burlington, Iowa.

3 of 3

more photos »

“I’m not moving, not moving my business,” said Byron Sebastian, a longtime resident of Gladstone, Illinois, who also serves on the city council. “We’ve got a lot of good people here helping to try to save this part of town.”

Gladstone is one of many towns under threat Tuesday after rising waters breached a 300-foot area of a levee near Gulf Port, Illinois, before 5 a.m.

Levees all along the mid-Mississippi were being topped with sandbags Tuesday as the river, fed by its flooded tributaries, continued to rise.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich called up 1,100 National Guard members to assist in sandbagging efforts, said Patti Thompson of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. She also said inmates are helping on the levees and others are bagging sand in correctional institutions.

“We were very, very disappointed that this levee broke today,” said Thompson. “It’s a very powerful river, and it can be hard to harness.”

With the help of the National Guard, Sebastian and his fellow residents hustled Tuesday to build a barrier between Gladstone and the encroaching floodwaters.

Even though Gladstone is about four miles from the banks of the Mississippi, the rising floodwaters have submerged homes and created rivers where crop fields once stood.

The muddy townspeople worked with anxious resolve, cracking the occasional joke, as they filled bags with sand and dirt and loaded them onto ATVs.

On the receiving end were members of the Illinois National Guard, who piled up the sandbags as the tops of cornstalks rose above the waters behind them.

“Threats can happen in all shapes and forms, so we are trying to help out,” said National Guardsman Capt. Lanny Finn, whose unit previously served in Iraq. “We’ll be here for as long as we’re needed.”

Sebastian, who lived through floods in 1993, said he never thought he’d have to experience them again.

“We thought that was bad, but this is a lot worse than it was in ’93,” said Sebastian. “Now we got some lakefront property.”

Elsewhere in Illinois, authorities closed the Great River Bridge on U.S. 34 [They're talking about Burlington here], which connects Illinois to Iowa over the swollen Mississippi, as authorities evacuated about 400 people in Henderson County.

The sheriff of Henderson County, where the Mississippi River borders the entire western edge of the county, said authorities are still concerned about the communities of Gulf Port, Carman, Lomax and Dallas City.

“It’s been an uphill battle from the start, and the levee just broke loose,” he said.

Sheriff John Jefferson of Hancock County, Illinois, said water was “very, very close” to the top of some areas of the county’s two levees.

“We’ve had to evacuate some areas already, but the areas that have not been evacuated yet, we’re just keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that the levee will hold,” he said.

In two of the county’s communities, Rio Vista* and Pontoosuc, power has been shut off in all but 20 residences, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office said.

Missouri also began to feel the force of the surging Mississippi Tuesday, as water began to top multiple levees east of Highway 79, forcing authorities to suspend sandbagging efforts at a levee near Foley, officials said Tuesday.

In Northwest Missouri, towns and cities along the Mississippi River were bracing for flooding later this week as swollen waters head downriver.

Communities at high risk of record flooding include Quincy, Illinois, and Hannibal, Missouri, according to National Weather Service modeling. Moderate flooding is possible later in the week in Alton, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri.

The floods began heading downriver Monday to Illinois and Missouri, relieving Iowa somewhat after two weeks of natural disasters that killed 17 people, displaced 38,000 and caused more than $1 billion in crop damages.

“The good news is the floodwater is receding in much of the state,” said David Miller, administrator for the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division. “The bad news is we’re still in a flood fight.”

President Bush said he and a team will travel to Iowa this week [I'm glad he can find time in his busy golfing schedule.] State and federal officials also plan to meet there this week to decide the best way to house displaced residents, said Bill Vogel, a federal coordinator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

In Washington, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said the flooding has devastated his state’s corn crop. Floods prompted farm-equipment manufacturer John Deere to idle two plants in Waterloo, Iowa, he said.

“Across eastern Iowa, the flooding rivers have washed out railroad lines; Mississippi barge traffic has come to a halt and [flooding has] closed major roadways,” said Harkin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. “Thousands of Iowa businesses, large and small, have been impacted.”

Harkin said Iowans “are a resilient and resourceful people,” but will need “generous federal assistance” to recover.

FEMA has set up six disaster recovery centers in Iowa and has provided nearly $4 million in assistance, state and federal officials reported. So far, 24 counties are under federal disaster declarations, making residents eligible for individual aid, Lt. Gov. Patty Judge reported.

By Tuesday afternoon, residents of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where the Cedar River inundated more than 400 city blocks, were beginning to return home as the rivers lessened, said Lu Barron, a Linn County supervisor.

“We’re doing pretty good,” she said. “People are getting into their businesses, and getting into their homes.” she said.

She estimated that thousands of people had returned to their homes after authorities inspected them to make sure they were safe.

The death of one woman whose body was found in her car Monday was determined unrelated to the floods, said Courtney Greene, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office and the state Emergency Operations Center.

Amtrak service from Chicago, Illinois, to St. Paul, Minnesota, and to Kansas City, Missouri, was disrupted by the flooding.

Guess where I was yesterday when the really bad storm hit?

Standing out in the middle of the open prairie without a shred of coverage or shelter.
To be exact, I was taking a walk in the Oakwood Cemetery just near my house.
(Okay, so, not quite open prairie, but still.)

I am seriously lucky I didn’t get struck my lightning.

Of course, anyone who saw the sky right before this thing hit would know not to venture outside.

But in my defense, when I left my house about an hour beforehand, it was a perfectly pleasant June afternoon.

And as I did laps around Glenwood Park, people were pulling up at the pool and paying, going inside, the whole time I was walking. So all seemed to be perfectly peaceful. (In other words, I was not the only one who didn’t sense this baby coming.)

After I’d been walking about 45 minutes, I decided to cross over to Oakwood Cemetery across the street and run a lap. (Yeah, I know, “me” and “run” in same sentence. Don’t laugh.)

So, for the length of time it took to get to the end of the cemetery, which wasn’t very long, I had my back to the west.

As soon as I turned back west to head home, I had no more looked up at the green sky and thought, “oh crap,” then WHOOSH, this huge blast of wind and rain unleashed and a bunch of flowers and other grave-decorations left over from Memorial Day lifted up in the air as if by a giant vacuum.

If there had been thunder serving as a warning, I hadn’t heard it because I was rocking out with the ‘pod.

There was no sprinkling, my friends.

There was not a single drop of “hey, it’s coming, you might want to find shelter” kind of rain.

It was just instant inundation—and I was trapped. All at once I tried to wrap up my iPod and stick it the waistband of my shorts and dart to someplace, anyplace where I’d be protected.

I ran to the east entrance of the cemetery , panting and frantically trying all the doors of the shed and outbuildings, but all were locked. With about every other step, I jumped and yelped as lightning flashed.

I couldn’t decide which was more safe / more stupid: to stand there trying unsuccessfully to find shelter, or to try to run back home, because in either scenario I was like a lightning magnet.
(Damn underwire bra.)

Finally I decided it was too far to run home, so I ran toward the mausoleum. I guess I would rather spend a few minutes potentially being haunted by ghosts, I figured, than getting fried. But it, too, was locked. So I tucked myself in the teeny-tiny bit of coverage that its entryway afforded me, and watched as Memorial Day decorations whipped through the sky. I was so drenched my shoes were full of water. My clothes were so drenched they were heavy.

After it seemed to have calmed down a little I decided to make a run for home.

But as soon as I was out of the mausoleum doorway and out onto the street, I realized it was still lightning- ing.

All the way up the hill to my house, with each squishy step that pounded the pavement, I prayed “pleaseGoddon’tletmegetstruckbylightningPleaseGoddon’tletmegetstruckbylightningPleaseGodPleaseGod” etc. etc etc.

(The moral of this story?

Never exercise.)

–
Later, I talked to my parents, who said Carthage had bit hard; most businesses didn’t have power and my parents’ phone was out. They lost several shingles off the roof, too. The storm did this to a friend of mine’s house in Bushnell:

Finally, a news report (from the soon-to-be-GateHouse-owned Macomb Eagle) about what went down this weekend, proving that I was not exaggerating when I told you about my Flashlight Night and the uprooted tree only a few feet from my house:

Strong storms batter Macomb
5/14/2008

By NATHAN WOODSIDE

Eagle Staff Writer

MACOMb – Strong storms tore through Macomb in the early hours of Sunday, May 11, knocking out power to several customers, splintering trees and coating roads with debris.

Jim Teeter, Macomb Public Works representative, said as far as damage goes, it was the worst storm in the last eight to 10 years.

“ The wind velocity kept increasing,” Teeter said. “At the initial time we were called, there were only four trees down. We called enough personnel out to take care of the problem and after we got going, more trees kept falling and they were falling faster than what we could get picked up.”

According to Teeter, trees were blocking traffic at approximately 10 “hot spots” or areas.

Teeter said his workers did a great job working through the storm and facing the potential danger of more trees breaking.

“We have excellent workers,” Teeter said. “You have to have power and your streets have to be open.”

Some of the worst damage occurred to the southeast of the WIU campus where several large trees smashed vehicles.

“I saw it go down,” said Elizabeth Warren, an Illinois State University student in Macomb to watch her sister and brother-in-law graduate.

“It was just a huge gust of wind and everything crashed,” she said. “I’m just glad nobody was hurt. It’s just metal and tires. We’re pulling through this as a family really well.”

Warren’s mother’s van, parked on the same curb on West Wheeler Street [just near the location of the cookout I attended hours before], was also destroyed by the falling tree.

Warren added the family was lucky they weren’t outside as they were planning on leaving just minutes after the tree fell.

Word on the street is that the tornado siren went off in Macomb around 6:30 Sunday morning.

I didn’t hear it, and I didn’t notice that this tree in front of my house was uprooted until after the wind had died down. (Nor does this wrap-up of scary weather from today’s PJ star mention anything going on in Macomb, but there was, yo.)

However, I did experience weather-related drama a few hours before, when, late Saturday night, I had to endure the experience of trying to enter my pitch-black home after midnight, using my cell phone to try to illuminate my way into the house.

Thanks to the lack of windows (and the music*) in Digger’s City College Bowl, none of us taking part in the Saturday-night bowling extravaganza had any idea, until opening the door to Adams Street at midnight and being nearly blown away by sheets of rain, lightning, and wind, that anything was going on outside. (Oh, and btw, thanks but no thanks, once again, to the barflies [whoops I mean distinguished gentlemen] who so politely pointed out the opportunity for an impromptu wet-tee shirt-contest.)

(Just a friendly note of advice: past midnight, on a Saturday night, in a town with a University in it, on the last night of the year that students from said University are out celebrating, and after you’ve had a few bowling-pin shaped beers**, is probably not the best time to roll through a non-functioning stoplight being manned by two cops.

Nor is it a convenient time to come to a completely darkened home and have the munchies.

(Now you know).

* You would not believe the catalog of hair-band hits this place possesses (and plays in what seems to be complete earnest). Seriously, until frequenting Digger’s this semester, I had not heard “Where the Down Boys Go” or “When the Children Cry” since, like, 1989.

**