During the September flood, when I realized rescue was going to come within the next day or so, I cleaned out my deep freezer and most of the stuff in my refrigerator. I knew I would not be able to get back to my house for several weeks, and there would be no electricity.

I threw most of the food in the raging river. There was some left that I planned to eat over the next days until the rescuers showed up. They came sooner than I expected, and they were in a big hurry because it had started to rain again, and nobody knew if that was going to trigger more road washouts and cut off our escape route.



I put all that food into a box and handed it to the fireman, and he thought I meant to bring it with me along with the cat, a suitcase, and two laptop computers. I told him 'No, go throw it in the river.' He didn't want to do that, so I took the box and threw the stuff too close to the riverbank. The river had gone at that time, and kept going down, so when I got back to the house 3 weeks later, my containers and all were down there. Some of them had come open from the impact, and the animals ate the food, but some of the Tupperwares are still sealed up with the food in them.



The bank is not stable, and I figured we'd just bury all that when we fix it. But today I noticed a piece of cloth down there, and it says "Wash Day" on it. Damn! That's one of my hand-embroidered dish towels, and I don't want to lose it. I have no idea how it got mixed up in that food. This changes everything.

Tomorrow I'm going to get our long pole that has a garden trowel duct taped to the end and see if I can snag that dish towel.