Government money is funding an outreach flood recovery psychological support group, the members of which are hell-bent on counseling us pore flood victims. They are going door-to-door in town handing out brochures telling the non-victims how to deal with any flood victims they might meet. They have contacted 11,000 non-victims aka 'secondary contacts' and only 5,100 victims aka 'survivors.' If they would go door-to-door where the actual flooding was, maybe they'd meet more of the people who might be having mental problems as a result of experiencing the flood first-hand.

According to them, we will go through these phases:

Heroic: from impact after disaster strikes

Honeymoon: Sense of community, pulling together, media attention

Disillusionment: Can last from about one month to years. The media attention is gone, things take longer, glitches in the system become apparent or the system fails and questions go unanswered. Stress becomes apparent as people begin to take stock of losses. Rumors, frustration, fear and short tempers may appear.

Reconstruction: This stage can include the realization of what has been experienced and what each person and/or community can do to restore the community at large. This can also last from months to years.

Speaking for myself, and from what I see in the people I talk to, we skipped from heroic to disillusionment, no honeymoon phase.

The outreach people come to all the flood recovery meetings, and if they get a chance, they'll corner us, look us in the eye and ask "how are you doing? The other day at a county meeting about the impact of the flood damage on our property taxes, I was trying to have a serious discussion with a neighbor, and one of these pests butted in and wouldn't leave us alone. She wanted to know how we are doing, and if we have men in our lives, are they cranky as a result of the flood. Then she's yammering on about some funny website for men that is supposed to relieve either the mens' stress or maybe our stress over having to live with them, I'm not sure which. No, I don't remember what it is because I was so irritated at the time.

When we first heard about this group, many of us said if there's big government money begging for a place to be spent, we'd rather have a dump truck load of fill dirt than someone pestering us about our feelings.

These outreach people probably think if we don't let them counsel us now, five years on we'll be flipping out, blasting at strangers driving by on the highway with our shotguns.

Anyway, here's some pictures I took today. There is about a foot of snow on the ground.

The yard between my two houses. That sawhorse on its side marks a pipe that carries the satellite TV cable from the Brown Palace next door over to my house. This is because there's no place by my house where the dish would pick up the signal. I marked it so when we start smoothing out the flood damage in the yard we won't break it.



This is where I park my truck, over by the red cabin. The Jazz Mama is a cute little cottage where I store my sewing fabric and other treasures. It didn't get at all wet during the flood.



Every year I say I'd like to hang Christmas lights on the Jazz cabin and when it snows take a Christmas card picture.

This is the road from my truck to the bridge (at the far end and turn left). It's not very smooth under the snow, so I have to be careful what I bring home - nothing too heavy. When the snow isn't so deep, I can haul things in a wheelbarrow, but right now it would be too hard.



If I was desperate, I could drive the truck down there, closer to the house, but I don't want to get stuck in the snow. It's a four-wheel drive truck, and I use that feature in these conditions, but being alone, I don't want to take any chances of sliding off the road into a big hole that I can't get out of.

Snow covers a lot of problems, and we're getting more of it tonight and tomorrow. If enough falls, I can pretend the flood never happened.