I can't take too much of this excitement

First of all, Penny was indeed spayed yesterday, and she came through it like a champ. She also had her upper puppy canines pulled, because the adult teeth were coming in, and the baby teeth were getting impacted. The vet kept them for us, and they're in a little bottle which the vet techs labled "Penny - Tooth Fairy". I suppose I should get some more gravy bones to put underneath her pillow! She's feeling pretty good... she has pain meds to take once a day with food (which I translated this morning as "with a can of chicken"), and she's relaxing and snoozing for the most part. She occasionally rouses to investigate whatever paper I may have accidentally left on the coffee table, but she goes back to the sofa soon afterward for a nap.

But, you may have heard that we've had a little bit of bad weather here in the Atlanta area. That's like saying Hitler was a little bit of an unpleasant person. Rain. Buckets of rain. Over a 48 hour period, I heard that our area had an estimated 15 inches of rain, and we weren't even one of the hardest hit areas.

It stormed all night Sunday night and into Monday morning. Got up and took Penny to her appointment at the vet, then went home to monitor the weather. Got a call that Penny was ok... and I was making plans to go get her shortly after 3. Except I looked out my window shortly before 1 and saw this:
Well, that's not exactly true. I saw water creeping up the street from the lake. The street that you can't see in this picture, which was taken from my across-the-street neighbor's porch. The street sign is in my next-door neighbor's yard. The bench you sort of see sticking out of the water in the distance, next to the sign that's just about submerged, is in the park where Penny goes to sniff and run around on a regular basis. The lake's regular banks are well beyond the trees...

Now, my Hummer can drive through 2 feet of water. Problem is, I had no clue how deep the water was. And it was rising.

Called the vet, because I was worried that we wouldn't be able to get there to bring Penny home. They said she could stay there. As you know, I love my vet and her office, but there was going to be nobody there between 7 PM and 7 AM. I knew we had to get our girl home to look after her in case there were post-surgical complications.

Emailed this pic to Richard. He planned to leave work, buy a crate (which my mom generously offered to fund), head to the vet, come home, park as close as he could, then walk through people's yards avoiding flood waters if at all possible. Unfortunately, this plan got complicated, because roads were flooding all over the place, and he had to make detours. When he got close, we decided to forego the crate in favor of speed, since conditions were rapidly deteriorating.

But... when he got to the exit where the vet's office was... it was flooded. He had to get back on the interstate. We tried to find alternate routes, but we decided the best move was for me to get the Hummer and try to head on back roads that might not be closed to get to the vet. Richard headed home... and I think the police were right behind him closing the interstate as he was dodging the flooding on the roadway.

The neighborhood flooding had receded some, so I was able to drive out and take the long way around to get to the office and get our girl. About 2 1/2 hours had passed since we first hatched the plan to get her. She was still very groggy, but I think she was happy to see me. Drove carefully home with our precious cargo and made it without much problem. Thank goodness I was driving south; northbound traffic out of the Atlanta area was a nightmare.

I hope the folks at the vet's office got home ok. Many of them were worried that they wouldn't be able to get home last night because of the road closures. I read one report that said the "express" bus from Downtown Atlanta to Woodstock (where my office is and where the vet is), a 30 mile trip, took 4 1/2 hours.

Too much excitement for my taste!

Richard said we undertook a small "Penny rescue" of our own. That minimizes the horrible damage that people have had here. People have died. Babies were swept away from their parents and killed. Schoolkids weren't able to get home and had to spend the night at their school due to the flooding. An entire small town north of my hometown was flooded and evacuated. People have lost everything, because they were told they weren't in a flood plain and didn't need insurance. Folks who were at work haven't been able to get home to check on their pets.

A friend lives in a heavily flooded area. Her house was ok, but the two houses across the street were flooded and the residents had to evacuate. She woke up at 3 this morning to the sound of scumbags looting the houses that had been evacuated. She called the police, but they were busy trying to save the idiots that insisted on driving around barricades into the floodwaters. I pray there's a special circle of Hell for predators who would take advantage of people like that.

We're blessed, because we were all able to go to bed in our own house, in our own bed, safe and dry. We're not having to boil our water before we use it. Things could have been much, much worse. We were inconvenienced, but everything turned out ok for us. Please keep the people who weren't so fortunate in your prayers as their long road to recovery begins.