Recovery Week - Plus A Mouse Bit Me!
Last Sunday after Sarah talked to Adrian we all went out to Chris and Barb's place to help them do... something. Anything really. First of all though Sarah baked quite an amazing Frittata, no mean feat given that the only place to cook it was on the BBQ, we still had no power of course. We packed up the Frittata, all our gloves, spades, brooms etc and headed over to Chris and Barbs.
Just driving there was so ominous, driving along Pakowhai road was so familiar but so different. Dust everywhere, huge puddles of mud on the sides of the road. Cars parked everywhere on both sides of the road, people with so many shoves, spades, buckets. Everyone wearing gumboots. We turned the corner where the GAS shop is. Well, was. It was pretty knackered by the looks. It was a slow drive down Brookfields road, more cars, people, recovery. We got to Chris and Barb's place and instantly you just sense how ruined it was. For starters to road outside their house was just mud, so much mud. Trying to walk into the property was just navigating squelchy horrid mud. I was expecting to see their house ruined etc, but I was not expecting just so much silty mud. Everything was covered in it. It was everywhere. Sarah and the kids went off to help with the house, I helped Adrian and the massive team of workers he'd assembled to clean out the sheds. Basically all we did all day was one guy waterblasted the mud of the sheds, the rest of us then tried out best to remove that mud from the sheds by scraping it away, scrubbing it out the doors etc. We also moved lots of old broken water logged things out into a big rubbish pile. It was such horrid work, just seeing the odd photograph from a book bog around in a pile of mud, random coins on the ground. I found a set of keys. The two classic cars were both poked, but they got a waterblast and a clean up anyway, maybe bits of them can be salvaged. The engine etc I guess is still good? I wasn't even really sure what, exactly, we were achieving but it seemed like we were doing something. Chris M was there the whole time getting stuck in, seemingly not too bothered by it all. I mean of course he would be, but he put on a very good brave face.
I didn't really see too much of Barbs, her and all the ladies did a bit of sorting of various items that people had managed to find and salvage.
What was quite amazing was the amount of random strangers who came in off the road and offered things. Food, drinks. One guy dropped off $200 of grocery vouchers for Chris and Barbs. Another guy came in with sausages for everyone to eat. He didn't want to give his name so we could thank him, he was just glad he was helping. It was so lovely to see so many random people stop and want to help. After a while we had to turn people wanting to offer food and drinks away! We stopped for lunch, ate some of the sausages, all of Sarah's Frittata, drank some drinks.
I tell you what I was amazed with Joseph. All he did all day was help, and I don't mean little bits of helping, I mean he got STUCK IN. Finding a fence post removing device and getting himself filthy using it to pull out old fence posts. Not giving up once even though it was so hard with all the mud and the water and just the ugh of it all. It was pretty heartbreaking really, knowing how much he loved Wall and Maisy's farm, he was always out there helping out etc. He was really amazing, for a 10yo he acted with the courage and attitude of a 20yo.
We spent I guess 7 or so hours just cleaning up mud and getting the sheds looking clean and mud/water free. It was a losing battle in a lot of ways, especially as the wet mud (from all the waterblasting) would always find a crack or a way to slowly ooze back into various parts of the shed. But by the time we were finished about 5pm it was looking so much better than it had when I arrived in the morning. We all took 20 minutes to have a cold beer (someone had given us some ice, some other random person had dropped off a box of beers) and a chat just to decompress a bit. I drove home with Holly and Adrian and Chris (and JoJo) - Sarah and the kids had left earlier that morning. It wasn't really a place for the kids, it was just so muddy and stinky and horrid. I will never forget Theo sitting on the little swing under the tree, swinging on it and having a great time, laughing. Not really realising or understanding I guess the utter devastation all around him, just having a fun time playing on a swing.
Yea so we drove home along some of the side roads and everywhere we looked it was the same thing, everything just covered in a massive sea of mud, everything ruined. People everywhere dragging out ruined couches, cars, appliances. Lives, really. It was all pretty damn depressing I tell you.
The Mooneys dropped me off at home - I gave Chris a huge big hug as I left. What else can you do?
The power was back on, Sarah told me! Or at least, it had been. It was on for about 50 minutes she said before it went off again, so she was cooking dinner on the BBQ. But as she was cooking it, hooray, it turned back on again! I left it for a couple of hours before I started to plug everything back in. It was nice to have power again, nice to have water pressure, nice to be able to have a hot shower.
School was still closed on Monday and Tuesday, they knew some students houses still didn't have power, they had to check the school over fully as it'd be closed a week. When it did resume on Wednesday->Friday it started at 10am instead of 9, because of all the traffic. Because the Cyclone and all the water washed out so many bridges, there's only the main Napier-Hastings SH2 that's open. So everyone that needs to get to Hastings in the morning has take it - there's no other option. So traffic is banking up EVERYWHERE in the mornings now, it's insane. It's taking some people two hours to get from Napier to Hastings in the morning. That's insane, it's a ~20 minute trip, maybe 30 during peak. Not anymore. So yea, even getting to school in the car is a nightmare, it's almost quicker to walk at the moment. But at least it was nice for the kids to get back to school on the Wednesday, have a chance to talk to their friends, see what experiences they had etc.
Then, of fucking course, Friday had a major rain warning. Expecting another shittonne of rain. I came home early, packed up all the bags again just in case. But nothing came of it, it was just a shedload of rain. There was massive puddles and pooling around the property again, but nothing like when the rivers burst their banks two weeks earlier. I went up Friday night and filled up the gas bottle again, thankfully the mental queues for Petrol/Gas had gone away, I'd filled up the car with Petrol on the Monday night. I thought no one else will be filling up with gas on a raining Friday night but two other people soon rocked up behind me. We were all still on edge with the rain coming down.
Oh yes, so Thursday night/Friday morning Beth started screaming at 3am that something was in her closet. I couldn't hear/see anything so I went back up to bed. 10 minutes later, more screaming. So I went down and just pulled out the spare bed from under her bed and slept on it. I did a few noises though - a rodent! Friday night Beth and Theo had a sleepover in his room after he spotted the mouse! Saturday was a "normal" day apart fro all the rain, they went to swimming, came home and just took it easy for the day, tried to clean up the house and put away all the emergency lighting, gas etc. Saturday night they had another sleepover, Biscuit tried to catch the mouse as well! But alas. I put out a Rat trap, it was all I coud find.
Sunday we were going down to Danniverke to see Amy and her new baby Maddox. I saw a mess on the floor in the kitchen and it was the mouse caught in the rat trap, just a leg. I reached out and grabbed him and OUCH the little fucker BIT me. Of course he would though, he'd have been in pain from the trap. So I got a paper towel this time and put over him and took him out and let him go out the back of the property. Anyway, wild mouse bite, joy!
We drove down to Danniverke and the traffic was actually fine. The road were fine too, something that I wasn't expecting. We had lunch with Wendy, Rex and Amy, met baby Maddox as well. Then we went to see Joy for 30 minutes, before heading back home. I did the recycling as usual before realising that night that recycling still isn't going because all those facilities are still fucked from the Cyclone.
Work was an interesting week too, most normal work things were off. It was still just recovery mode for some people. Others just wanted to work from home to avoid the insane traffic in the morning (even Hastings->Napier is really mental for people). 3-4 customers came in to say thanks so much for the free Wifi/4G Vodafone coverage during the first few days of no comms. One dropped some mint fudge, one some easter eggs, another a Cheesecake.
I went to see the Dr today about the mouse bite. It's fine. He gave me some antibiotics just in case it does get infected. And it's an ACC claim so I didn't have to pay. Thanks, Mouse. After the Dr's I took Theo up to Karate on our bikes. It was wet coming back so we played a game of "I hate it when it's dry, I love getting wet!" which made the wet rain a bit more bearable.
Everyone is SO FUCKING SICK of the rain. It's worse than Winter here at the moment, it's just rain rain rain. That's all it does. It's so depressing. Outside feels like a bad place. I hope it changes, that this is just a really bad spell and it'll get better. But I'm starting to think it won't.
Tim