Last night I went for a scooter ride for the first time this year. Finally felt up to it (yay!). I was planning to just zoom around the neighborhood a little, start off slow, but I ended up all the way over by East Park. The streets in the Oak Park neighborhood were open. I didn’t want to be yet another annoying gawker, but I really wanted to see how the house we fell in love with and tried to buy last month turned out. It had a red sign posted on the door, which means (according to the Globe Gazette):

Mason City architect Tom Hurd, a member of the Damage Assessment Team, said approximately a dozen houses throughout the city had red signs posted on them indicating they had major structural damage and may or may not be worth salvaging.

Ugh. Such a beautiful little neighborhood. It was terribly sad to see it in such a state of chaos. Enormous piles of ruined household items and furniture lined both sides of the street. The smell was overwhelming. We’ve had a little of the same smell in our house because of the basement, but nothing compared to that. Those poor, poor people.