Power Outages and Standing up for Truth

I hate power outages. I especially hate them at night in the wintertime but we had one the day the House of Representatives voted to impeach the president. Again. It started at twilight giving me just enough time to gather the six solar lights that normally line up along the walk to my front door and I staged them to light up a path from my master bath through the bedroom and living room to the kitchen. This time of the year they don’t get enough sun to keep them lit more than a couple of hours after dark but those couple of hours saved me using up the battery on my camping lantern. A half hour into the outage I got a voice mail and text on my cell phone and robocall on my landline from the power company estimating how long the outage would last. Three hours they said, but that turned out not to be true. It lasted five. Apparently after the last outage I went into over-killed signing up for these alerts. I ended up getting a total of twelve updates which is more action than my phones have seen since Christmas.

I didn’t have an unread books downloaded on my Kindle so I spent most of the outage reading a book I’ve read twice before. It’s a good book, so I didn’t mind. In fact, knowing how it was going to end seemed comforting, given the political climate we’re in---a counter balance to that feeling of waiting for the other shoe to fall and not knowing if anyone will be there to catch it and return it or if that person will use it as a weapon. A poor analogy for the chaos of the January 6^th insurrection and holding my breath hoping we don’t see a repeat on the 20^th but no one ever accused me of being the sharpest pencil sitting in the coffee cup.

Two hours into the outage it was getting cool in the house so I managed to wrestle a sweater on to the dog. He hates wearing stuff, and apparently it wasn’t quite cold enough inside for him to appreciate the garment because he alternated between asking to go outside the front door and the back door. I didn’t dare take a chance that he didn’t have a bowel or bladder issue so I’d roll up the sweater to protect it from getting christened with pee, let him out and in. Finally, I got the hint that he didn’t really need anything other than to cool off, so I wrestled the sweater back off him and he settled down.

The day after the outage I found a message on my phone that came during the outage from the son-I-wish-I-had. He started the message out, “I’m calling from a Democrat run concentration camp, but I don’t want to talk about politics. I want to know if you want to start working on some things that needs doing to get your house ready to list.” It saddens me and makes me feel like I’ll be walking on eggs where Tim’s concerned for the first time in the 50 years we've known each other. I hate that he's been indoctrinated into Trumpism and far-right spin.

Since the insurrection at the Capital Tim's been Facebook posting like crazy which, in itself is out of character. His posts have all been focused on the evils of Socialism and social media censoring the president, and “there needs to be an investigation on why that 'poor woman' was shot through a locked door.” He got a lot of 'likes' and amen like-comments from his posts and no push back…until I came along. About the woman I wrote: “Did you see the video leading up to the shooting at the Capital? The woman was shot while climbing through the window in of the door to the Speaker's Lobby after the mob had broken through the glass. Totally justified.” And then I added a link to the graphic video. 

On one of his censorship posts I pointed out that the 1^st amendment only protects free speech from the government making laws against it and he posted back, “Are you okay with that?” So I replied: “My opinion doesn't matter. PRIVATE companies have a right to apply any rules they want about the content they allow or not allow. For example, I was a monitor on a large stroke support site for nearly five years and we had a rule that people couldn't post about wanting to commit suicide. It was my job to remove those posts and contact their local police department for a wellness check if I thought they were serious. We had a five step procedure to make that judgement call. If we had let those suicide posts stand others could come along and encourage them to do it and that would have made the site legally liable. What Facebook and others sites are doing is no different. Again the constitution only protects us against the GOVERNMENT restricting free speech. The president has a fully staffed press room near the Oval Office where reporters are waiting 24/7/365 and he can get on all the networks within a few minutes if he wants to.”

No one gave either of my comments a ‘like’ or replied in any way which I consider progress since no one called me brain-washed, stupid or delusional either. My comments effectively ended the threads. Tim lives in a Red Bubble of friends, neighbors, church members and family and all his recent political posts are re-posts from far-right conspiracy websites. I don’t want to lose his friendship over Trump (and I don’t think I will) but if there was ever a time when we need to have the courage to stand up for facts and the Truth, it’s now! Our silence gives Thump's supporters fuel to keep spreading misinformation and those lies are like a cancer that is killing our Democracy. ©

After the Storm….

Last year after we lost power for days on end in the middle of winter it scared the bejesus out of me to the point I finally got serious about lining up another place to live where I’ll not be so isolated. Thus I ended up with the down payment on a continuing care campus that won’t be ready to move into until early 2021. That means I have this winter and next to get through before I’ll be in an independent living unit where there will be backup power and someone whose job it is to do a daily wellness call and a maintenance department to fix any woes that come up including changing light bulbs. I’m hoping the maintenance man will look like Brad Pitt but I’m guessing he’ll be more like Ed Norton from the Honeymooners. I’d break stuff to get a close-up look at dimples like Mr. Pitts’. Ohmygod, I need to get out of the house more, I’m starting to sound like my teenage-self. Can’t help it, I’ve always been a sucker for dimples. My husband didn’t have them so I’ve been dimple starved since my very first, serious crush at fifteen.

Like all people who learn from their mishaps, mistakes and life experiences when I got back home after last year’s power outage that drove me to accept shelter at a friend’s house I got to work getting myself better prepared should I be without power for five days ever again. The house inside got down to 50 degrees but the worst was my cell phone ran out of power, my emergency dialer did too and it was too icy to go next door to a neighbors should I have a true, life or death issue that would have caused me to leave a blood trail across the snow. I tried charging my phone in my car but learned I needed the motor running to do that. However, I couldn’t get the garage door open to have proper ventilation to do that. I longed to sit in the car to get warm and charge my phone like I saw neighbors doing up and down the street. I was envious because I was sure as they sat in their driveways they were listening to a someone-did-me-wrong country song that made them feel better as they sang along. Misery does like company.

Since that storm I’ve had a solar powered phone charger and solar portable radio sitting in my windowsill. Not sure if they work long term and I hope never to find out. And thanks to my niece I now have a long handled tool that will reach the garage door latch that over-rides the electric garage door opener. It’s a large, heavy door that takes the strength of Hercules to lift which is another reason why I shouldn't have sent my exercise equipment to Goodwill. I also bought an Energizer flashlight that plugs in an outlet and comes on if the power goes off. I already had a couple of camping lanterns and this week I got them out when I saw the high winds and ice storm predictions and I put fresh batteries in them. Everything chargeable was put on chargers and I boiled some eggs, did the laundry, ran my dishwasher, took a shower and got out the emergency “Go Bag” I put together after last year’s storm. After checking what was inside I added a few things like medications, snacks for three days and a book. 

Then I packed a Go Bag for the dog with three days of supplies---food, treats, leash, plastic bags, dishes and water---but I couldn’t find his sweater. He’s a nudist and doesn’t like wearing a sweater for normal trips outside but during last year’s power outage I made him wear it around the clock. Where the heck did it go? I don’t usually lose things. A month or so ago I downsized his box of belongings and gave stuff to a dog rescue group including a few sweaters that no longer fit and I feared in one of my dyslexia moment I put his keeper sweater in the donation box. So off I went to buy him another before the storm hit. While I was at the pet store another woman was buying the same thing for the same reason which made me feel better not to be the only dog mama who lost a sweater. I was glad we weren't looking for the same size because I didn't want to make the nightly news for fighting over the last fricking size large in the store.

When I got back home, I pulled in the garage and before I even got the motor turned off I remembered he wore his sweater to the groomers since I donated to the rescue group and it was taken off when I dropped Levi off and the sweater was on the front seat of the car after that. I turned my motor off, leaned over to feel around between the passenger seat and the door and sure enough, the sweater had found its way down there. Apparently, when I put my purse on the seat it got pushed off….just like the set of keys got pushed off the table when I was doing the Big Paper Shredding Project last month. Now I'm wondering if maintenance men help you look for lost things because I seem to nursing a habit of carelessness in my old age. Or is it just that our brains slow down too much as we grow older? Maybe at forty, fifty even sixty we remember quicker where we last saw what we’re looking for so it only takes a few seconds to find missing stuff, hardly enough time expelled to remember the search. What's the timeline when looking for lost things registers enough to make us question our sanity? For me it seems to be after 15-20 minutes when I quit looking and it materializes like the punchline of a bad joke. Hey, lady, your brain just farted!

Sunday, the morning after our milder-than-predicted storm passed the sun was on the other side of the tree row behind my house and the ice on its branches sparkled like the diamond cliché everyone uses to describe such natural beauty. It wasn’t thick ice that took our trees and our power lines down and for that I am grateful. But I’m leaving the Go Bags packed...  ©