Weekly Wandering April 3rd

It's been a week. I feel like I have crammed a month's worth of "stuff" into the last week or so. So today, I rest. I took a five mile walk and listened to podcasts and a book. I always have to try out a few podcasts or books before I settle in to what I need to hear on any particular day. Today I finally settled on Jay Shetty's "Think Like A Monk". As a side note, I would highly recommend it!

But back to my week.....On March 25th, the rain started. Mike and Alicia were visiting. We were able to get some fun activities in around the rain and managed to have a great time. They had visited me at the Batman building where I was working on Thursday and got the tour. Then they walked around Broadway and all of it's insanity and made it home before the bad weather. I, on the other hand was not so lucky. My boss and I were meeting a potential new hire at the brand new Hyatt in downtown Nashville. Parking is always an issue in the downtown area so we both parked in spots that were "close enough" and walked. Luckily, we manage enough buildings in the downtown area, we can normally park fairly close to any meetings we have. After our meeting, he asked if I had a few minutes to stay and talk about things going on in our department. We talked for a while and I kept noticing he was looking past me and out the window as he was talking. Finally, he said "I think we should start walking". I didn't think anything of it and just agreed. When we got outside and started walking to our cars, I could feel something in the air. It was not calm. I got to my car and said goodbye. I looked at the sky. The downtown area sky was black. I called Jim and told him I was staying off the highways in case I had to pull over but I was on my way home. I made it 2 blocks from where I was parked and it started raining. While I was stopped at a red light, the hail came. BIG hail. I was about 3 blocks from the Batman building where I could get in an underground parking garage. But the hail was horrible. I was honestly scared. I thought the hail was going to break through the windshield. I can't remember the last time I was that scared. The sound was so loud and the rain and hail were coming so hard I could barely see anything. The light turned green and I slowly (but quickly) drove to the garage and pulled in. The manager of our parking company for the building came up and asked if I was okay. We looked at the Subaru but didn't see any damage. I was convinced there would be massive damage. There wasn't. Talking to my brother the next day, he said "Of course there wasn't damage, it's a Subaru!". I stayed for about 10 minutes and then headed home. Everything was shut down. Highways, side roads. I am certain I drove through an area that was hit by a tornado. Trees were down everywhere. Finally, after an hour and a half, I made it home. Luckily, the storm did not hit Mt. Juliet as hard as it had hit downtown. Scary. We went out for dinner and had a great night. No more bad weather!

Friday morning I planned to go in a little late so I could see Mike and Alicia before they left. I thought I could sleep in a little and enjoy the morning. I still woke up early but was just laying there relaxing. Until Jim said, "I think the cement truck is outside". We were having an additional driveway added to the side of our house with a sidewalk that leads to the back yard. But surely they wouldn't show up at 7:00 am. I was wrong. They did. So we all got up and watched a team of about 6 people pour our additional driveway and sidewalk. Never a dull moment.

Saturday was quiet. More rain so not much we could do. I worked some. We cleaned. Nice day. Then Sunday came and all the flooding started. Jim had a cave trip planned so we were up early. He looked at Facebook and realized that our neighborhood was pretty much flooded in. Our neighborhood Facebook page is a plethora of information that has helped us through many events. Apparently, the beautiful little creek that runs along our neighborhood had turned into a massive river that was rushing through the area and flooding everything. Although none of the houses in our neighborhood we damaged, we did have massive flooding on some of the streets. By the time Jim had to leave, the water had receded enough for Jim to leave. We drove down to the edge of our neighborhood together and looked at the water rushing by. And the trees floating by. It was insane. He brought me back home and then he took off.

Later that morning, my boss sent an email asking that the leadership team drive around and check on properties. So I spent two hours on Sunday driving around some of my properties that we manage and making sure everything was ok. I only ran into one situation that was bad, but there was no building damage. Again, another creek was way out of it's banks and roaring down the way. Unfortunately, this creek did cause quite a bit of damage to an industrial park we manage farther downstream. We had 4 buildings in the park destroyed by the water. The power of the water blew the back walls out and sent all the inventory that was stored in the warehouse downstream. There was about 6 million dollars in damage.

Monday, I found out that Shelby does have lymphoma. She is now taking chemo pills to help. I freaked out a little about this but honestly, she seems fine. Jim and I are both keeping an eye on her but she seems to have no side effects whatsoever. She takes two little pills every two weeks. Our little trooper.......

Wednesday I got to tour one of our new properties that we manage. It is still under construction but I had so much fun visiting the site. Although I had to wear a hard hat, a safety vest and protective eye glasses. I LOVE real estate. Being in Nashville where construction is booming and real estate is ever changing, I realize how thankful I am to be here. What a blast!

Friday night, we went out on our second "night out" since Covid. We met some friends at a Mexican restaurant near us and had a fantastic evening! The food was great and the company was amazing. With the vaccinations becoming more readily available, I feel that things are getting a little bit better and I am so happy!

Today, I took a five mile walk. The weather is beautiful. I've been outside most of the day with the cats. I ran to Lowe's and bought some plants. And now it's time for quiet.

Peace and love to all!