not running much

 My last post from July talked about the differences I have had in a year. I definitely see the difference a year makes and I'm happy with that.  However,   I've been annoyed with what I consider my perceived differences between now and the last time I was at the weight I am now {150).  The last time I weighed 150 consistently was in 2019.  So... looking at pictures from the middle of 2019, and comparing them to now . . . I look the same.  Also, I didn't remember it was so long ago that I had started gaining weight.  I know I did during the pandemic, but I didn't realize I never got  back down that low again.  

I can't believe I haven't taken a running picture since April.  I need to do that more often.  I know I'm not running as much, but I am still running a couple times a week (usually).  And actually in April of this year, I weighed 158.  Maybe I have a non-running picture from both years. . . . I'll look

  

Obviously, completely different outfits, but it's the best I could find with similar angles.  And I think that the pictures could have been taken within days of each other rather than 7 years apart.  

I am still taking the retatrutide, and as my office manager mentioned earlier this week, I don't really want to take it for the rest of my life.  I don't even think I'll be able to, since the USA's FDA is trying to get it approved and I've heard that they may change it.  I'm not sure why though.  I've been stocking up, but I won't be able to get enough for the rest of my life.  😂  This means that I really need to figure out how to motivate myself to exercise to stay small.  

I did not follow through with my plans of trying to increase my running.  In fact, i think I'm running less. We went to eastern WA the second week of August (right after the Spokane fires made national news (our lake house is 30 min west of Spokane) and i ran a couple days there, but it was pretty smokey for the first part of the week.  We spent a lot of time inside the first few days.  

We could barely see the other side of the lake.  But as it got clearer, we were able to go outside more, and I was okay running.  I also quit the dead hangs. I know it's an excuse, but the bar doesn't have a good "home," it was in my bathroom doorway, and even though I have a room to myself and the bathroom is in there, it still feels odd to have the door completely open while I'm on the toilet.  I want one of those bars that doesn't hook around the door, then I can just put it in a closet doorway or something. {I have a closet without a door.)

Okay, I think I'm done with this post.  I'm typing it on my Kindle, and it is pretty annoying. 

Differences

 This morning I decided to take my blood pressure because I haven't taken it for awhile.  Retatrutide (reta) is supposed to help with blood pressure, and I have noticed a difference.  I took it 3 times and it was different every time, but all of them good.

While I was looking for the notebook I record it in (couldn't find it) I found a notebook I was keeping my weight in from 2018-2022 (not reliably though)  Anyway, it also had some measurements from 2021, so I decided to compare my current measurements.  Plus I know where one measurement is from 2014, so I looked at all three.  Surprisingly, I am extremely similar to the 2021 measurements, and only a few inches in my waist higher than 2014.  I don't feel the same weight or size.  I feel bigger.  If you look at my scale page, I am actually smaller (weight wise) than 2025-2018.  Apparently my body really likes the 150 range.  

I think the difference in how I feel about my body, is that I didn't work hard to get it.  I took a pill for six months, and now a shot for 4 months.  I did clean up my eating, but a lot of that has to do with not being hungry.  I gotta figure out how to work on habits because it is pricey, and they are talking about changes in reta and the availability may go away.  

My last post I said I was going to walk the hills more and start running.  Well, it took longer than I meant for it to, and I'm not doing it as often I planned.  BUT! I am running.  I only did 2 times this week, but I'm pretty pleased with it.  I was doing a walk/run for a few weeks, now it's a run/walk.  (running more than walking vs. walking more than running.)  I also had an idea on my last run of hitting "lap" on my Garmin every time I start running or walking to see if I could see it decrease.  Then I noticed a cool feature on the Garmin website, it literally tells you how long you walk and how long you run.  So I'm going to look at that more often.  However, it doesn't do it if I set my watch to "walk" instead of "run."

I also saw an Instagram post talking about how good dead hangs are for your body, so I started doing that last week.  I can only hang for 20 sec, but last week it was 10 . . . It kills my hands.  I'm thinking I really need to work on my butt too.  The stretch marks are ridiculous, and also makes it a bit crepey so maybe with a more muscular butt, they won't be so crepey.

Oh, and more protein.  I need to do eat protein.

We'll see how long my motivation (if you can call it that, I didn't run today like I planned) lasts.

These pictures are about a year apart.

While looking for comparison pictures, I found these two.  My work does a day camp for the clients every summer and we take them to a Cat Cafe.  I didn't remember that I had the first one from last year.  The second one is from this week.

This and that

 I think I mentioned that I started walking a few weeks ago at work.  I am walking the hills I used to run, with the intent to run them again.  (My work is about a mile from my old house, so very easy to walk the same neighborhoods.)  (Do you remember when a mile seemed so far?  I wrote that and thought, no way, it's much closer, but I've walked to my old neighborhood from work, and it's about a mile.)  Anyway, a couple weeks I was only able to get in 1 walk because I took 2 days off, one for a training and one for camping.  Last week was also a 3-day week for me because I came home from camping on Monday and Friday was Juneteenth, a holiday here in the States.  Not everyone celebrates it, but I am happy to work for a company that does.  You can find more about it here. Anyway, 3-day weeks mean they are usually very busy, having to fit 5 days into 3.  However, I did get a walk in on Thursday.

My plan had been to walk my route for a couple weeks and then last week, I was going to make the uphills longer.  However, that didn't happen, so this week longer uphills, with the goal of running at least part of it the following week.

Speaking of these hills . . . the first time I walked the hills (up and down) I saw the route on my Garmin app and it immediately took me to my 1st anniversary of my runstreak.  I had decided to run a pattern that said "365" for 365 days, and I even made it so that it was 3.65 miles.  I was soooooo proud of it.  I even bragged about it on Facebook and Instagram.

Can you see the problem?  🤣🤣🤣 It took a friend on Facebook asking me what E65 meant before I realized my mistake.  

Damian has been working (finally) in his area downstairs.  He has his room walls done, although, he's not super happy with it. We are sorta waiting on the 4th of July sales to see if the flooring he wants goes on sale.  It is quite pricey, so a sale would be really nice.  We know that refrigerators are going on sale, and it might just be cheaper to buy it all at once.  

He did start on Asher's room, and is being more intentional with the walls, leveling and all that better.  We can't really afford him to take out the stuff he's done in his room, and redo it, so I think he's stuck with it.  

Perimenopause, weight loss, house

 I don't mean to not post, and I don't want to stop blogging.  I just feel like I have nothing to talk about.  My blog name doesn't even fit because I'm not currently running.  I haven't run at all since May 3rd.  My mileage for May is 3.5 miles (2 runs).  My back has been bothering me and when I did those two runs on the 2nd and 3rd my back flared, so I quit.  I had pretty much decided that maybe my running career was over.  I started thinking about what I love(d) about running and it really is the views and seeing new places that I had propelled myself to on my feet.  I decided I wanted to try going for bike rides, but didn't want to buy a bike, especially a fancy one if I wasn't going to use it. 

When the entire world shut down in 2020, Damian decided to buy a fancy bike.  He only rode it a few times, and then it's sat in our backyard forever.  I think he moved it once from one spot to another at our "new" house, but it hasn't been used since before we moved (2022).  I decided I would use his temporarily to see if I liked it so I dug it out of the weeds and we went to go get new tires, but they didn't have what he wanted, so they ordered them . . . 3 weeks ago.  Still no tires.

Then, last week I decided I really wanted to run again, but I haven't run for a month now, so I started walking the hills at my work.  My back has not been bothering me much at all, so I'll maybe increase the hills?  I don't know, I still lack motivation to actually do it.  I think about it.  I think about wanting to do it.  But then I don't do it.

I really think this is part of perimenopause.  And actually, other than the weight gain, might be my least favorite thing about it.  

Speaking of weight gain, I have lost close to 30 lbs since September.  The first 6 months I was taking the phentermine and had lost 14 lbs, but all of that loss happened in the first 3 months, and the last 3 months I had not lost anything.  I was pretty frustrated.  I have a coworker that can get GLPs from her cousin who works for a big pharmaceutical company, so I started a GLP in March and have lost another 13 lbs, with no plateaus. Well, I'm sorta in one right now, same weight now for 2 weeks, but I have consistently lost 3 lbs, or more, a month since March.  

I am actually quite worried about the maintenance.  I don't know how that will work.  Things I've read and heard, all say that most likely I will have to be on some sort of lose "maintenance" dose, but even though I get a discount (well, technically 2, one for going straight through the pharmacy, and one from my coworker), it is still expensive.

I have noticed that the weight loss now is definitely different than 10 years ago.  Meaning my body is "fluffier" at 150 now than it was 5 years ago when I was running all the time.  My 150 back then was from running and eating well, now it's just from eating better, with no exercise, so less muscle.  (Although I am still doing yoga/pilates about 3x a week.)

BUT my old pants fit.  I had a couple pairs of Lucky jeans I had bought at Goodwill forever ago and couldn't bear to part with them, so I've kept them even though I couldn't even get them up past my knees.  I can now wear them.  Which makes me happy.  (now to get into my size 6 pants that I wore in 2015 during my heyday marathon running days,)

August 2025

May 2026

You can definitely see the difference in my face, shoulders, collarbone, etc even though they're different angles and different lighting.

Don't even ask about our house.  We have finally received all the money, but Damian is his mother's son and has procrastinated doing the work.  I am letting him lead, because it is his space, but I am about ready to send him an eviction notice for our living room.  😉  I told him this weekend that he would have an entire bedroom done if he had started the work on Memorial Day (when we had the materials), but he's put it off for 3 weeks.  We decided to go with beadboard, which I'm happy about, it's recycled PVC, which means waterproof, and we found a completely waterproof flooring, so . . .  He finally did some work on Sunday, about 3 hours worth, and got most of his room done (walls).  

We talked about doing his entire room first (floor and walls) so that he could move his bed back down there, then we'd go to Asher's room, and then the rest of the living space.  This way, Asher and him would at least have bedrooms, and we can work on the living space afterwards.  

It's looking really, really good.

Still stressed

 With all that's been going on, I decided to do a virtual conference at our Lake house in eastern WA this week.  The conference was about child trauma (I'm a child therapist, if you didn't know).  I think it was a good conference, however, I had a really hard time concentrating on it.  Also, last weekend at the Lake the weather app I have said it was 80, so far this week it hasn't reached 60.  Next weekend is supposed to be in the 70s.  How frustrating.

I got here on Wednesday, the conference started at 6:30am Thursday.  Wednesday, when I got here was very nice, but then I was woken up in the middle of the night from the wind.  I had brought my hammock chair and it was blowing around and hitting things loudly. I thought someone was in the house, then when I realized it was outside, I thought someone was trying to get inside.  I finally realized it was my hammock chair and took it down, but then the rest of the night I dreamt that someone was in the house.  (I am alone here, well, alone with my dog.) I had to remind myself that Peanut would bark or growl or something, so I was finally able to calm down.  

It happened, sorta, again last night.  I thought I had closed the door to the entry way, and it was open, so I closed it, I thought.  Then I noticed it was open again and it looked like my shoes were moved.  Freaked me out.  I grabbed my phone and the pepperspray I brought, and searched the house.  I realized I was being stupid, because once again, Peanut would have alerted me.

I don't think I have any updates.  My last post about my house was the beginning of April, before that it was in the middle of February.  I'm sure more things have happened other than trying to figure out my flood damage and the rot damage in my house, but I have no idea what.  I'm not running much.  I've been sick 3 or more times since the beginning of the year.  I'm pretty tired of it.  I am still taking weight loss meds, and have lost about 20 lbs since September, which is nice.  I keep worrying about what happens when I go off them though.  I've heard bad things about weight gain when you go off them and I don't want to stay on them indefinitely.  I am struggling with motivation to exercise, right now I'm eating really well, but a lot of that has to do with the weight loss meds.  

I guess my plan is to decrease the dosage slowly when I get to where I want to be, and work on the eating while decreasing the dose.  I also really do want to exercise more, I enjoy running, we all know that, and I think about what a nice day it is and how much I want to go run, then I get home, put on comfy clothes and sit on my ass. I don't know why I am not actually running.

Worn down

2/24/2026

 I have very little time, but thought I'd do a brief post.  

I had my consultation with a surgeon on my abnormal breast cells and I am scheduled for surgery.  He said that the cells they did already test are not cancerous, but they are a precursor to cancer and he wants to remove them all and test those just to be safe (make sure none of them are cancerous).

4/9/2026

-Wow I didn't realize I didn't finish this, nor have I updated for a full month.  I have had A LOT going on.  The surgery for my boob happened in March, he took out a bunch of cells and tested them.  Weirdly, they found no more abnormal cells, and no cancer. Yay!  So at this point I'm going in every 6 months to get checked.

-The week after my surgery, we had a contractor out looking at our house to repair the flood damage and found water inside the wall where there shouldn't be water.  The contractor took a look and found mold upstairs.  He looked at the door where the damage was done and saw that the frame was rotten.  They came out the next week and removed walls to see what was wrong, and found out that the whole support beam for the side of the house has rot. 

So now we have to fix that.  $30,000.

Then there's the flood insurance, still haven't gotten money for that.  We applied for a loan that goes through FEMA, still working on that.  However, all that money is meant for the flood repair and they want proof that things got done with it.  The contractor has suspended work until we have money for half down.  I have no idea when that will be, but it has to be done.

I am worn down.  I've been sick this year more than normal, and am just tired.  Tired all the time.  I need a break.  I need an adult to come help me.  I need money. 

2024 and 2025 recaps

 Every year since I started this blog I've done a recap of the previous year.  The last couple years, the recaps have been mainly about how much I sucked at running.  Actually, looking at last year's posts, it doesn't look like I did a recap.  It looks like my last recap was for 2023.  I didn't run a ton in 2025, but I tried.  I have historically liked having the recap so I can look back and see what I did running wise, but it has felt a little pointless the last few years since I haven't been running as much.  But I like it, so I'm going to do it for 2025, even though I'm late with the recap.  

Maybe I will try to do both a 2024 and 2025 recap hybrid thing.  I do like to see the progress I made or didn't make.  

I got an indoor spin bike but I'm not going to include those miles. Looking back at my posts, I never mentioned I got a spin bike. I think I got it in either December 2024 or January 2025.

January 2024:  I ran 16.05 miles, a very pathetic month
                         I walked 17.95 miles
                         For a total of 34 miles on my feet
              2025:  I ran 27.09 miles.
                         I walked 1 mile
                         for a total of 28.09 miles on my feet.

2025

February 2024: I ran 14.46 miles
                          I walked 4.59 miles
                         Total - 19.05
                2025: Run - 27.27
                          Walk - 0
                          Total - 27.27

2025

March 2024: Run - 4.11
                     Walk - 8.62
                     Total - 12.73
           2025: Run - 24.19           
                     Walk - 2.2             
                     Total - 26.39            

2025

April 2024: Run - 9.7
                    Walk - 15.21
                    total - 24.91
         2025: Run - 45.51
                   Walk - 8.4
                   Total - 53.91

2025

May 2024: Run - 12.89

                  Walk - 12.73

                  Total - 25.62
        2025: Run - 24.73

                  Walk - 0.63
                  Total - 25.36

2025

June 2024: Run - 16.49

                  Walk - 23.73
                  Total - 40.22

        2025: Run - 35.12

                  Walk - 4.27
                  Total - 39.39

2025

July 2024: Run - 26.01
                  Walk - 24.95
                  Total - 50.96
        2025: Run - 25.66
                  Walk - 10.83
                  Total - 36.49

2025

August 2024: Run - 27.21
                       Walk - 24.54
                       Total - 51.75
             2025: Run - 22.69
                       Walk - 12.42
                       Total - 35.11

2024

September 2024: Run - 34.41
                            Walk - 20.97
                            Total - 55.38
                  2025: Run - 32.59
                            Walk - 18.66
                            Total - 51.25

2025

October 2024: Run - 9.59
                        Walk - 2.02
                        Total - 11.61
              2025: Run - 38.88
                        Walk - 0.86
                        Total - 39.74

2024

November 2024: Run - 13.61
                            Walk - 0
                            Total - 13.61
                  2025: Run - 31.19
                            Walk - 2   
                            Total - 33.19

2025

December 2024: Run - 10.03
                           Walk - 5.01
                           Total - 15.04
                  2025: Run - 12.29
                            Walk - 2.06
                            Total - 14.35

2025

No pictures in 2024 or 2025 of me running so here's the flooded road, that really sums up December 2025 anyway. This is before it got really bad. Actually, now that I think of it, I'm pretty sure I was on a run when I took this picture.

2024: Run total miles - 194.56
          Walk total miles - 170.35
          Total miles - 364.94

2025: Run total miles - 347.21
          Walk total miles - 63.33
          Total miles - 410.54

Obviously I ran more in 2025 than in 2024 and I walked more in 2024.  I actually really liked doing it this way with adding mileage in 2025.  I've compared years before, but never like this.  2023, at the time, was my least amount of mileage for a year.  I had 391 miles that year, walking and running.  I didn't even calculate the run miles vs the walk miles, but obviously 2024 was worse. 

So do I have any goals for 2026? I want to get back down to 150 or lower in my weight, the pills are helping with that.  I would like to run more and I definitely want to increase the weight I'm lifting in pilates.  That is the only thing I'm not really tracking.  Maybe I should do a post on pilates and how often I did it.  I know that I slacked quite a bit in 2025, I lost a lot of motivation to get up in the morning.  Thankfully my sister was willing to adjust the time and do it at her work at 8am.  

Catching up

 I have a secret.  I had not run since January 24th.  And I only ran 5 times in January for a total of 15 miles.  I was doing pretty good, I was increasing my miles and running regularly in November.  I wanted to run more miles in December than November, but the wheels kinda fell off my bus.  Looking back I only ran twice before the flood on the 12th, but I suppose that may be because we had been getting flood warnings and it was suuupppeeer rainy leading up to the flood (which is why it flooded).  

Then I decided that since I was taking 3 weeks off to help Chris after his surgery I was going to get back to running.  I could do it during the day, and not have to worry about work.  And then I didn't.  I ran the day after his surgery (I needed to, he was driving me nuts) and then only on the weekends, but only one day of the weekend.  

Honestly, my life has been crazy stressful and I know running would help, but I just don't want to.  And since I've been back to work, I'm busy.  I often work until 5:30 or 6pm and then I have to get Maddox to swim practice (did I mention he's on the school swim team?) that starts at 7pm and goes to 8:30, then it's home and bed.  I was the only one taking him to swim because Chris wasn't allowed to drive yet.  The doctor originally told him no driving for 6 weeks, but last week Chris called and was told he could drive if he's not on his pain meds. So that's much nicer.

The weekend after his surgery was weird.  He was having very vivid dreams and googled his medications.  He saw that the interactions between them could cause hallucinations, so he went off Wellbutrin, which he was on to stop nicotine for the surgery.  Well, then he was really hallucinating, waking up in the middle of the night asking me if I was okay (he thought I was outside with my sisters, locked out) and one day in the middle of the day he came out and asked if the "resident nurse and the little girl" were still here.  They hung "little birds" from his ceiling.  Anyway, I work in mental health and know that many drugs (Wellbutrin is mainly used as an antidepressant) you should not stop cold-turkey. I looked it up, and yep, stopping cold turkey can cause hallucinations.  I called his dr and they told me to have him go back on it, and he can taper off. I was also told he should start tapering off his pain meds (every single one of them had the "rare" side effect of vivid dreams or hallucinations).  Once he went back on the wellbutrin his hallucinations stopped.  Now he's scared of the pain meds, which I find funny because it was the Wellbutrin that made it super bad.  😂

While I was on leave, I had a mammogram, which came back abnormal, so they had me come back to do another with a more microscopic look.  It was determined that I have calcifications in my breast, so they had me come back last week to do a biopsy.  That was awful.  I had a panic attack while attached to the machine . . . like boob being squished, and a needle in it, it was horrible.  I've never had a panic attack before.  Funny thing . . . they told me they were done, disconnected me and calmed me down.  Then told me that the machine didn't work right, and they needed to do it again. Thankfully the second time I was okay and didn't almost pass out.  They were really on top of it, and it was pretty obvious they were used to people reacting that way.  The nurse even said she had one lady pass out and she had to hold her head.  I'm really glad I did not.

My doctor called on Friday and told me that I do not have cancer, but I have atypical cells that could turn into cancer.  I have to have a consultation with a general surgeon to determine if he wants to remove the cells.  I may have to go off the birth control I take for hormone replacement, which has me worried because I do not want the symptoms of perimenopause.  It sucks.  Now I have to wait for that call.  All-in-all, it's been very stressful here.  

For my job, we have a crisis phone that gets rotated through the office, this weekend I had the phone.  On Sunday, I finally felt like going for a run.  I left the crisis phone at home and told my son to call me if it rings.  I've never had it ring while I was running before, but of course it did only half a mile into my run.  Thankfully I was close enough to home that I could turn around and call the person back before too long.  We have about 15 min to call someone back, I was a little over that, I think, but it wasn't a real crisis anyway.  Actually, looking at the phone now, it was only 8 min, so that's good.  

I did not go back out to finish my run.  I did a little over a mile, so whatever.  

Posts are better with pictures, so
here is Ari, laying on Damian's
bed in the living room.

Flood cleanup, Christmas, and a surgery

 How was your last month and a half?   Mine?? It was a piece of cake! 🙄  Soooooo much has gone on in the last month and a half, it feels like it should be 2027 already.

I will start with the flood since that's where I left off.  We were able to get back in our house on Saturday (flood happened Friday morning).  We spent that weekend cleaning out Damian's living area.  Chris has a cousin whose wife works for a restoration company that specializes in water damage.  They were on top of it, the wife called the owners (apparently she's friends with them) and the company called me almost immediately.  I was not prepared for it, we were still at my sister's house, my house was still flooded, I had no idea what kind of damage was still being done inside, it just felt rushed.  They were very nice, I was rather grumpy.  Chris actually was on top of calling the insurance company, so that was done quickly.  We still had water in our house.

After a couple weeks, the delay was mine not theirs, they came by and started removing drywall, insulation, and the flooring.  The water had gotten up to a foot inside (I REALLY wish I had pictures of it) and they said they will remove 2 feet because of seepage.  They said they would spray the studs with something that would kill and prevent the mold spores from spreading. Then they put big "fans" and a couple of giant dehumidifiers and it sat for a long time.  They have finally removed all their stuff and are now fighting with our insurance for payment.  They also partner with a company that does the repairs, so that company contacted me and came out and looked at what needed to be done.  We are waiting on an estimate for that, and I'm sure that company will have to fight our insurance as well, but because we are no longer in "emergency" state, they won't start work until estimates have been given and accepted.

We moved Damian's mattress upstairs where our Christmas tree was, and he is sleeping on that.  Asher is sleeping on the couch, and it just makes everything much smaller.  We have no idea when the work will start, much less when it will be done.

The county we live in offered free dump runs to anyone affected by the flood, so my sister came up 3 weekends (not in a row) with her husband's truck and helped us load stuff up and take it to the dump. 

I forgot to mention. . . after we were woken up in the night to the water coming in, Damian was getting stuff to take upstairs and slipped on the stairs (wet feet) and fell pretty hard, hurting his back.  Then when we got back on Saturday, he was again going up the stairs and slipped again and hurt his back even more.  That meant that he was not super helpful with moving stuff from the garage.  Plus, Chris's hip replacement surgery was scheduled for Jan. 6th, and he was very gimpy because his hip was bad, so he was no help at all.  Pretty much that left all the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively) to me and my sister.  I am soooooo thankful for her.

I am not sure how many dumps runs we did.  At least 2 every day she was here, but I think there were 3 or 4 runs the first day, I don't remember.  

We had my Dad's old truck in our garage and the guy who owns it now was very nice and came and took it the weekend after the flood so we'd have more space in the garage.  I am very thankful for that as well.  We were told to take pictures of everything, so I have soooo many pictures, but not one that encompasses the giant mess of the garage.  

Maddox was done!

I was not good at taking pictures of the stuff inside Damian's area.  I didn't realize they wanted the stuff, not the walls and floor.  I did take a video, which is not good quality, but it's all I have.  And thankfully I have it because I had to pull screenshots off it to show the insurance adjuster stuff we want replaced, still terrible quality, but it's something. 

Damian's back?  Oh, yeah, he was going down the outside stairs a couple weeks later and slipped again.  He caught himself weirdly on the railing, but it tweaked his back again.

While this was happening, we still had to do Christmas.  The flood happened on Dec. 12.  I think we got the last of the stuff out on Jan 10, that was mostly just appliances.  We had to get rid of our refrigerator and freezer that were in the garage, and I had a washing machine that was brand new 10 years ago, and only used for less than 6 months.  I was not in the Christmas mood at all this year.  It's good I decorated before the flood, because there's no way I would have done it after.  I still have all the decorations up because I don't want to deal with it.  I would pay someone at this point to undecorate my house.

Plus, Chris had hip replacement surgery on January 6th, and was not allowed to do much for 2 weeks.  I took 3 weeks off to help him, this was my first week back.  He's doing okay now, walking without a cane, and says he's feeling okay.  He still has days where he's more sore than he'd like to be, but I am happy it's done and we see the light at the end of that tunnel. 

Honestly, I thought this post would be longer. I was thinking I'd end up doing another one for Christmas and a third one for Chris's surgery, but I don't think I need to.  For me, this year, Christmas sucked.  I was stressed the entire time, and had very little help.  Actually I may come back and do one on Chris's surgery, that has a story, but he's okay.

So I guess now we wait.  Wait to see what happens next and when I can get people out of my living space.  😆

Flood!!

2024 Christmas lights

If you pay attention to national news, I'm told we were on it.  Last week we had record breaking floods here in western WA, and my house sits in a 100 year flood zone.  That means that the area in question floods about every 100 years.  The last major flood, that didn't affect my house was in 2021 (a year before I moved) and the last record breaking flood was in 1990, before my house was even built.  The river, Skagit River, has had a dike system for a long, long time, which has been very affective at holding the river back.  

Last week they were predicting the river to get to 42 feet deep. Action stage is 23 feet, minor stage is 28, moderate is 30 and major starts at 32 feet.  Last week I was under the impression that the dikes only held up to 37 feet, so I was a little freaked out. Especially since everyone was saying that once the dikes are breached, they are more likely to completely fail.  The river was supposed to crest at 4am on Friday morning. 

They sent out emergency alerts, culminating in Wednesday a "get out now" alert.  However, I knew that the worst wasn't supposed to happen until early Friday morning, so we decided to stay.  Plus, our house is built with the main floor on the second floor.  The downstairs was originally a large garage, but someone had renovated it to be half living space.  Which is where Damian and Asher live.

Thursday they lowered the peak of the river to 38 feet (better than 42) and that evening Damian went down to the boat launch and saw some "official" looking workers there.  So he asked them what they thought and they told them the dikes hold up to 40 feet and since they had lowered the peak to 38 we should be fine.  I was a lot less worried then and went to bed safe in the knowledge that the river would be held back. 

4am Friday morning, Chris is yelling at me to get up.  Apparently National Guard had come to the door and told him that the house was flooding and if we wanted to get out, we needed to now.  At that time, the water was up to their shins.  By the time I was awake enough to figure out what was happening and had changed and grabbed my bag (yes, we packed for just in case) and was taking it to my car, the water was higher.  I moved my car and started yelling at Chris and Damian to move theirs as they are much smaller than mine, and I can't afford to buy new cars. We got them all up the driveway a little, so they were out of the water and I kept wading back and forth taking things to the car . . . I forgot to mention, I was barefoot.  My feet were frozen, and I was walking on gravel.  It hurt.

By the time we all got in our cars, the water was above my knees.  We went, parade style, through town and I messaged my sister and her husband saying we were on our way.  Yes, I had talked to my sister prior, yes, she was aware it was a possibility.

This was my panic first picture

The dog park under water

As we were leaving, Maddox snapped a picture.

I wish I had taken a picture inside.  I was helping Damian grab stuff in his area, and the water was bubbling in.  It was definitely surreal.  When we left, the water was inches deep inside, the water got up to about a foot deep inside according to water marks when we got back.  

I was glued to facebook and the news all day Friday.  I wanted to see how bad it was.  I actually wish we had stayed, we could have saved more of Damian's stuff and I could have seen how bad it got.  We definitely needed to move our cars, but we could have parked them at the dog park.  Of course at the time we didn't know how deep it would get, and it did get to the street, but it didn't get deep that far up the driveway.  

I got a message from our neighbor at about 2pm showing that the waters had already receded a lot. 

Damian and I wanted to go home to check it out, so we went up and found that the water inside was mostly gone.  We set up some fans and left.  We ended up going home on Saturday and spent the rest of the weekend emptying out Damian's area.  I'm rather scared of the garage, that has a lot more stuff and we haven't even touched it yet.  The power is mostly not working downstairs and we're not sure what happened.  There were a lot of extension cords plugged in, I tried to get as many as I could unplugged and up, but I know I missed a few, and didn't even think about unplugging things in the garage.  I don't know if my treadmill works, I know the fridge and freezer keep turning off the GFCI outlet they are plugged into.  

Here's a few of the pictures I took of the inside after the water went down.

And the stuff we drug out of the house and had to figure out what to do with.

Poor Damian is stuck sleeping upstairs for now.

Turns out that the river didn't flood us. It was the slough (pronounced slew) that is right behind our house.  Almost everyone that lives along the slough was underwater, some worse than others.  We were not nearly as bad as some.  I have a coworker whose parents live in a completely different area that lost everything.  

These are some pictures from the news of my neighborhood.  This area is a few blocks away, I run by it all the time.  There is actually a road there in between the two houses, it's underwater. The press pretty much set up camp on the road that is not underwater.  There were so many reports from that area on Friday.  They also did a follow up on the family that lives in that house with the giant skeleton.  On Friday they had a 10 day old baby (well, they still have the baby, it's just not 10 days old anymore).  The water got up to 3 feet inside their house.

This is looking right at the slough, it has to be after the water was already going down.  Our house is not very far beyond those trees in the background.

I wrote this paragraph a week or more ago and never finished the post. I decided to include it, just to finish up the saga of the move with my sisters.  

My sisters finally swapped houses.  What a crazy ride that was!  It is very sad though, with the way my oldest sister is (and her boyfriend) I will never step foot on my parent's property again.  I did make (sorta) peace with it, and went over there at the end of summer to say goodbye.  I will say that I think emptying a house and then selling it, is way better than this crap that we've been going through for 4 years.  Even though it would be strangers living in the house, at least I could pretend that it was taken care of.  I cannot even pretend that my childhood home won't become a hoarders house, because it already is.