What I Threw Away

• Cardboard box printed "Mount Holyoke College Storage Box" and tagged "Lisa K / '88 / 1837 [Hall]"
  
• Several cheap frames from said box, two complete with poster board or construction paper Mom cut as a mat for cross stitch, etc., I made as a kid
  
• Also in said box, the frame on a caricature CDF had done of himself, before I met him (I am on the border line over a frame he loved on an unharmed photo of C and his brother; only the cardboard back got wet)
  
• A print of a Renoir dancer
  
• A coloring book CDF brought me in the spring of 1990 when I had a terrible cold
  
• Pink sheets turned into curtains for dorm room windows
  
• The original boxes from: my swiss army knife, my fancy backpacking flashlight, and my big, camp counselor's flashlight. All of the camping gear itself dried in the sun, today. The jury is out on the chip-board (wow, did that wick up water!) camp trunk that stored it all.
  
• A Godiva chocolates box that I took to camp as a organizer of little things in my trunk -- and most of the beads and junk jewlery in it
  
• The giant box my new TV came in
  
• A small cardboard box and the paper packing holding some Urquhart's Place merchandise; the antiques were fine
  
• A broken VCR that's been lurking in the basement for three years
  
• The wrapping on spare roof shingles I wish I had remembered in the fall . . .
  
• A box and scraps of the vinyl squares from my kitchen floor; I saved complete tiles in a new box, not sitting directly on the floor
  

In other words, once I did venture into the basement, I found water. I don't know what I thought I was doing, not going to look: that I would hear water rushing in and then I should check? With the floor down there being so uneven, the 1/2 inch of water wended its way to just those few heaps of things.

I also ventured to Brook & Azalea Roads to pick up the sib., stranded there for a couple of hours before I felt I could safely try it. It took nearly 30 minutes to get there (traffic at a standstill on Chamberlayne), but I didn't have to turn around anywhere. Two unfordable streams kept us from getting over to Buckingham Palace by a very direct route.

S called this afternoon, on her way out of town to relocate to NY's Capital City. It turns out, she was one of the 20 or so people trapped at Bottom's Up Pizza last night. Luckily, she said, her party had walked down there from the MCV area, so no one lost a car. On the TV, I told her, it looked like kids played with Matchboxes in the dust, then turned the hose on them. In person, she replied, it was scary to see enormous SUVs sail past. The water rose fast in the street and sounded like rapids.

I guess it's time to go put the news on to see if they reopened the Powhite, 360 at the Chickahominy Swamp, and other points of interest. I think the official rain total was around 11.5 inches. The noon news showed the wetbound side of 360 looking like a muddy river. They also reported that the RBraves will play two at the Diamond tomorrow -- for free!

Oh, and the man scheduled to look at my locust tree came on time and reported that the University of Richmond had a tornado touch down.