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...  ©

The Power Outage Refugee

I survived the Great Ice Storm of 2019 without becoming a weather related statistic. 268,000 people in Michigan lost our electricity this past week starting on Wednesday and most of us got ours back on Sunday afternoon minus 1,368 rural residents still waiting for power on Monday. My county was ground zero and thick ice was covering every surface, taking trees and power lines down. Temperatures outside got down in the low teens at night and in the 20s during the day. Add high winds to the mix and it was dangerous for the linemen who were working 12 hour shifts around the clock. One school a mile from me had a sewage line freeze and burst and a hallway filled up with raw sewage. And here I thought having a water pipe freeze would be a nightmare.

The first day of the outage I was spared but the following morning I woke up to no heat or lights. Even though the house was 50 degrees inside I thought I could tough it out. I’d been camping in cold weather but I’d forgotten how nice it was to warm up with hot coffee, a campfire and going inside a tent rated for use in Alaska. I became obsessed with wanting a cup of coffee. It wasn’t until the second morning I was without power that it dawned on me that I could bypass the electric igniter on my gas stove by using a match. Last month I had almost thrown out an old box of instant coffee during a purging session and as I heated up water I smugly told Marie Kondo, “See, this is why we keep stuff!” 

Tidy Girl Kondo’s name came up a few times during the outage.“Marie, I wish I’d kept that propane heater that my husband used at disability deer hunting camp!” “Marie, I’m glad I didn’t throw out my drawer full manuals because you said they’re all online. You can’t google without Wi-Fi!” If I had done that I wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to get my garage door open during the outrage---not that I’d drive with all the ice, but I envied neighbors using their cars to get warm or charge devices. But I couldn’t reach the power override cord and I doubted I could have lifted the oversized door if I could have and I wasn't about to fill up the garage with carbon monoxide. I also had an old cassette tape player that I couldn’t figure out how to open without its manual. I’d kept the player because I have cassette tapes of an interview I did of my dad back in the ‘80s. But I bitched at Marie Kondo for guilting me into donating a bunch books on tape. I only kept two. 

The first night after dark I laid under a mountain of blankets listening to A Knight in Shining Armor, wishing I had one. Late afternoon the second day the house was down to 42 and I wasn’t looking forward to the other book, The Grapes of Wrath which is about the hardships of the Dust Bowl, hardly something a woman fearing that she might not wake up in the morning wanted to hear and at one point I thought about Scarlett O’Hara at Tara saying, “When this war is over I’ll never go hungry again!” I couldn’t even make a peanut butter sandwich because I keep my bread in the freezer and you can only eat so many sardines and crackers before you start speaking with a Norwegian accent. By then I was wishing I could google ‘chilblains’ to see if I had them. I was getting the shivers that started deep under my ribs and I was so sleepy that I knew I should do something but I didn’t know what. My phone only had 10% battery life left, even my emergency dialer needed charging. I turned them both off so I’d have some power if I had a true emergency requiring 911. And that decision probably saved me a world of hurt. 

One of my Gathering Girls pals knew I was without power and when she tried to text me and it wouldn’t go through she got worried and sent her son-in-law over to check on me. He turned out to be my Knight in Shining Armor. He introduced himself and offered to help me turn off my water and drain my pipes and talked me into coming back to M.J.’s house where she had already taken in five other power outage refugees and a dog. Her son-in-law could have literally saved my life because I know I would have just politely refused an offer to come over if it had been sent in a text. When help was standing in my living room it was too tempting to refuse. I was so cold and there was no hiding it, as bundled up as I was. 

M.J. is the only one of my Gathering Girls pals who is a Trump supporter. On the second morning I was at her house, she got a phone call and one of the first things she said was, “We have the same thing here. We’re avoiding watching CNN and FOX.” The conversation went on for ten minutes about the “witch hunt.” When she got off the phone I told her it’s fascinating that two likeable ladies like us with similar upbringings and life experiences could view the world so differently and that I blame that on having so many cable channels with too many “news commentary” shows. She agreed. Then she did a monologue about how Trump doesn’t get enough credit for undoing all the “bad things that Obama did" and he was getting the world to respect us again after Obama’s disastrous presidency. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I sat there listening without speaking and when she finished I said, “We should probably change the subject but first I want to say that it’s amazing to me that all the words you use to describe Obama are the same words I use to describe Trump.” It was all very civil, like two friends trying to figure out the answer to a calculus equation.

When I got back home I was telling my niece about the conversation and she said words to the effect that the big take-away was that we (meaning everyone) need to quit judging each other along party lines and start judging each other by the humanity we show each other because dividing our country is exactly what the Russian disinformation campaign was/still is all about and we can't let that happen. In my case, a Trump supporter took me in at a time of need. We played a few board games, had a great time and she doted on Levi to the point she became his “aunt M.” By the time her son-in-law was able to take me back home my Gathering Girl pal and I had deepened our friendship and I wish I could figure out a way to thank her. I was truly touched by her kindness and generosity. ©

Bones, Bacteria and Boogers

Hungarian Puli

Monday we had our first school closings of the season due to the weather. I didn’t have to go anywhere that day so being snowed in didn’t ruin any of my plans but I was keeping a close eye on the storm all same because I needed good roads the following day to get to an appointment at the infusion center and my niece was stuck at the Chicago airport, sleeping on a cot while all the planes were grounded---she was on her way home from spending the holiday in Texas. My other niece who had been up north at her favorite vacation destination in Traverse City was also keeping an eye on the storm and was able to leave in time to beat it before it hit southeastern Michigan and it’s a good thing she did. The storm brought them 6-7 inches of wet, heavy snow where she lives causing electrical outrages and backup generators were put into service.

Trust me, I won’t be getting my yearly bone infusion treatment in 2019 because I’m skipping next fall’s scheduling and picking it up again the following spring of 2020. This 2018 appointment was booked early last September at my biannual with my internist and this was the first opening the infusion center had available, and scheduling wait times are only going to get longer and longer as more baby boomers start getting Reclast for their bones. I’ve had super good results with the Reclast and hate the idea of letting a 5-6 month lapse without it but I hate the stress even more of worrying about winter storms colliding with important appointments you can’t cancel without it costing you a lot of money, more wait time and a repeat of your pre-infusion blood tests.

The day of my appointment I had allotted an hour to get across town. The side roads were wickedly icy but the biggest problem I had was all the street signs were covered with snow and unreadable otherwise the main roads were good plus I got all the green lights and I got there in twenty minutes. I always have my trusty notebook and pen with me so the extra time was put to good use while I waited out in my car. I also had my Kindle with a new book loaded on it. The infusion itself (an IV line in your arm) took an hour this time when the same infusion last year took half that time. It seems I’ve reached that “magic age,” the nurse said, when IV drips get slowed down because our veins are old and might spring a leak like an old garden hose. Right or wrong, that’s my translation for the medical explanation I was given for the change. I was lucky to get through the infusion without having to pee. The more water you drink in the two days before the procedure the better it goes and I was hydrated so much my veins were plumped up and eager to carry the Reclast where it needed to go.

The room I was in had sixteen white La-Z-Boys full of patients covered in white warming blankets and 6-7 nurses tending to our needs, checking our lines and beeping machines and working at desks inside a glass cage. Two chairs away the only black person in the place, a bored girl in her late twenties, sat down shortly after I got there. They handed her a bag that at first I thought was a barf bag that she breathed in for a good 15 minutes but it turned out to be a collection bag for bacteria. She had the IV portal in her arm but there was no line of liquids hooked up the entire time I was there. They were waiting for whatever it is they do with bags full of bacteria in the lab before starting her IV. I was glad she wasn’t right next to me because: 1) I didn’t want Bacteria Girl to breathe her bacteria in my direction, and 2) I was fascinated with her dreadlocks and I was afraid I’d be one of those rude white people who’d ask if I could touch it. It reached down past the middle of her back and she was constantly petting it as if she had one of those Hungarian Puli dogs attached to her head.

In between me and Bacteria Girl was a woman who’d been there with an IV in her arm for five hours and when I expressed shock at that the nurse told me they have a few patients who spend eight hours parked in their La-Z-Boys. Aside from that, there was very little conversation going on between patients this time or the other times I’ve been there. Most people, I assume, are there for far more serious treatments than I was and conversations seems intrusive---lots of bald-headed women, a few bloated up men and a surprising number of young women who obviously come there often enough to be well known to the nurses.

Most of my hour was spent pretending to read on my Kindle while surreptitiously people watching. I was afraid to use my notebook to write about what I was seeing out of fear I’d drop the book on the floor where I couldn’t reach it and someone else would pick it up and see the sentences I wrote about a guy with a booger hanging from his nose. I don’t know why a nurse didn’t hand him a tissue. I'm guessing they’re so focused on looking at IV lines that they don’t look at faces as they cruise around the room. Whatever the reason, Booger Man strengthen my resolve not to use the bathroom while I was hooked up to the IV. You have to drag the IV pole with you and all I could think about is how many germs were on those poles. Places like that always bring out the germaphobic me. ©