Hurricane Ian 2022

Talk of a hurricane heading our way started early. I broached the topic over the weekend, hoping to jump on top of things early instead of last minute. I don't know why I bother.

Tom: "I'm not worried."

Me: "I understand that. You're never worried. But don't you think we should at least be prepared? Do we have wood?"

Tom: "No. But get food if you want."

Darcy came for a couple of days since she had work in our area. She tried to get Tom on the bandwagon too. It went over as well as my attempt.

Every day brought more worse news. Schools closed. I purchased food provisions. The Tampa area was going to get hit. Tuesday morning Tom work me up on his way to work.

Tom: "You should pack up things and drive to Indiana."

Me: "WHAT? Drive to Indiana? Why are you telling me this the day before the hurricane? Drive? What about the dog? I tried to get you to deal with this over the weekend. I could've flown out of here!"

This went on and on with Darcy joining the fray. She got on him about his lack of attention until the last minute as always. 

Darcy: "You do this every time! Why would you tell her that now? Why not three days ago? We're stuck here now. And you need to board the house!"

Tom: "I can't do everything! I have to go to work."

He left. Darcy got up Madison and began telling us what to do before she headed off for her job.

Darcy: "Madison, call Lowe's and ask if they have wood. Mom, go down and see the neighbors and ask for their truck. I'm going to work. I'll come back when I'm done but I've got to get to my house and take care of things there too."

Lowe's had wood but it was going fast. Maddy and I walked down to the neighbors and asked if they could help. The wife volunteered her husband, told us to get the wood, text her, and she'd send him down.

We dressed and left for Lowe's. Darcy joined us when her job got cancelled. We were in line for sheets of wood that ran out to the people in front of us. We moved on to other sheets, but the Lowe's guy talked those people out of the heavier wood, and we got it. We loaded it, purchased it with other supplies, and went outside to wait for the neighbor. The Lowe's guys working outside were impressed three women were handling this job.

Them: "Are you going to put it up too?"

Madison: "We are."

Them: "Do you know how to do it?"

Madison: "We're going to YouTube it!"

They helped my neighbor load it into his truck, and his son came down and unloaded it at my house. Then, Maddy and I took a break. Darcy headed to her house to batten down the hatches there. After some food and coffee, we measured our windows. Everyone in the hood was boarding up. My neighbor across the street had just finished doing his, and he came over and offered his electric saw and his muscle. We took both. It took us the rest of the day to board six windows. The three of us were pooped at the end.

Me: "And FYI, you did not help us when this story is related to Tom."

Neighbor: "Got it!"

When Tom came home, he was quite impressed. H wanted to know how we got the boards transported from Lowe's to our house. We told him on the roof of my car. He wanted to know how we got the boards up. We told him YouTube. Eventually, we told the truth. He was still impressed.

Darcy and her roommate got their apartment taken care of and got their food. We all sat down to wait for the storm to blow apart our lives.

It turned.

Thank you, Ian. We spent the day with our front door open watching the storm. It poured. We had a lot of wind. Usually, we lose power, and this time we didn't even lose that. We did lose Internet. My neighbors across the street lost power. Ian trimmed our oak tree, but that was it.

Not so for the neighbors south of us where Ian came ashore and hit. I belong to a writer's group there, and most everyone there lost a house or a vehicle or power or water. It was horrible. We felt guilty for escaping yet again.

We gave the neighbors our generator when theirs failed to work, and then had them over for dinner the next night, so we were able to give back to them. While we ate, their power came back on. 

I later heard this story about an Indian tribe in our area. They burial grounds are along the water from north to south in our county, and they blessed this sacred space, thus saving the area from storms. I like it. I'll take it.

But it is good to know if I had to do it again, I could manage--with my neighbor's help. We had them over for dinner the next night since they had no power. 

Maddy: "Because we can't do everything!"

Yep, that's our new slogan until at least the end of the year.

 

Roger Federer G.O.A.T.

 

What a great send-off to the legend! I cried as much as he did. But what a way to go out--on his own terms! Well done as always. True G.O.A.T. on and off the court!

I will miss him. 

Grammy is 92

 We celebrated Grammy all week with parties and luncheons and brunch! Happy Birthday, Mary Anne!

First family wedding

The first next-generation wedding on my husband's side of the family happened this past weekend in Chicago. The five of us, and Grammy, flew there, spending five days of hilarity, love, and togetherness. Of course, chaos reigned. How could it not when you have twenty-one people family members together in one place?

• We left early in the morning. My SIL told us to get Grammy a wheelchair. FYI - the wheelchair kiosk isn't staffed that early. We had to simply take one, hoping the wheelchair stamp on Grammy's ticket would get us out of an arrest. 

• Ohare is a HUGE airport. I feel we walked the entire place looking for the car rental. With all of our baggage, plus Grammy in the wheelchair, half of us took elevators while the other half took the escalators. Eventually, a nice airport worker assisted us with minimal eye rolling. We had to hop a tram that drove us miles to another section of the airport. We hiked through the cold garages and secured our van.
• Nancy whipped up a gourmet salmon meal. Grammy had legs cramps (she insisted it was from all the sitting) and she drank pickle juice. I almost vomited watching her drink it. We then turned her over to her other son and his husband for the next several days as we were staying in different locations.
• My nephew had a soccer game that night. He's the goalie. Several people went off to watch that.  
• There were several scheduled events starting the next day. The first was a ladies only outdoor bridal luncheon. Before the men dropped us off for that, my nephew broke his wrist at his Saturday soccer practice, and we had to chase down his father so he could meet him at the urgent care.
• At the luncheon, I was at the table with Grammy, who got stung by a bee. Having watched General Hospital all these years, I was able to save her. I went to the kitchen and asked the chef for a bowl of baking soda, mixed it with water, and pasted it on Grammy's finger. The other guests, including the doctor bride-to-be and her doctor bridal party, were none the wiser that a medical situation was taking place.

• Earlier in the week, we had a discussion on people thinking Maddy and Darcy are twins. Madison told us that ever since her UNC days when she was mistaken constantly for a red headed girl on campus, she got in the habit of pretending she knew people. At the luncheon while people were arriving, this woman walked in and immediately went to Madison, exclaiming loudly how great it was to see her. Maddy played along, and Darcy and I, forgetting her earlier comments, tried desperately to place this woman. Right as they went to hug each other, the woman realized she didn't know Madison. Turns out, it was my SIL's good friend. She thought Maddy was Olivia, Maddy's red haired cousin.
• The second activity that day was the rehearsal dinner. We volunteered to decorate and with the amount of people, had it done in ten minutes. There were tons of people indoors and outdoors and the waitresses had a hard time getting people to take the appetizers, so they would bring them to me because I sat in a corner far away from germs. The cousins all came to me for food. Later, we had a rousing game of cornhole. My team won.
• Somehow, we managed to dress ten people with only three bathrooms and get out the door in time for the wedding. It went off without a hitch. Mark and Em are now married! Darcy made us all line up to take photos outside for our Christmas card. If you're on the list, you'll see those come December.

• The reception was tons of fun. I changed into sneakers. Best thing I did! The dance floor was never empty. Grammy found a piano and people thought she was part of the entertainment during the appetizer portion of the reception. She danced with the groom. We ate filet mignon that was as big as my fist. Cocktails flowed. After we left, well after midnight, Tom ran through a McDonalds because the youngsters were hungry! How???

• The next day there was a pizza luncheon. We were late to that. No one was very motivated to get moving for pizza after Big Mac's at one o'clock. I just wanted to watch the start of Sunday football. But we made it, crammed into tables with strangers, ate pizza, salad, and pasta, and took photos afterward.

• The next day we lounged, enjoyed breakfast, and then accepted Grammy again and headed to Ohare. Grammy refused a wheelchair this time and walked. She did not have leg cramps that evening. The flight back was uneventful. We all agreed it was a fabulous weekend!

Congrats to Mark and Emily! May you have a wonderful new life as a couple!

A typical Saturday morning

I had several family items to discuss this morning, and since the main two were available, we sat in the living room to begin. We ticked off items one, two, and three, but got hung up on item number four which required information from a password-protected account.

Tom: "I don't have that password."

Me: "You do."

Tom: "I don't know where."

Me: "Okay, I'll go get it."

I went to my messy desk and dug through some papers on top of my file manager. As I did, my back scratcher--an essential utensil in my life--fell behind the desk. Now, my desk is huge and heavy and isn't moveable. Since I needed to keep the family focused, I opted not to climb under the desk to retrieve my back-scratcher. 

Instead, I woke my computer to retrieve the password in a file. Out of two monitors, only one obeyed. The main screen was dark. 

I gave up.

Me: "Forget it. My monitor isn't working, and the file thingy is on that screen, and I don't know how to move it to the other screen. Why are things always so difficult?"

Tom: "Is the light on?"

Me: "No. That's the first thing I checked. I turned it on and off. No light."

Tom: "Is it plugged in?"

Me: "Why wouldn't it be plugged in? I just used the damn thing yesterday. How would it come unplugged?"

Tom: "Things happen."

However, he got up and came into the office to assess the situation. Madison, seeing her chance, disappeared. 

Me: "Before we start, I know my desk is a mess, so don't start in on that."

Tom: "I didn't do that."

Me: "No, but you always do that, so I'm nipping it in the bud first."

He messed around with the cord, unplugging from the screen and plugging it back in. He got down on his knees and tried to find the cable behind the desk. There is only one portal in which you can get behind the desk. I have that blocked with a paper shredder, which he didn't move. He assumed he had no access, and annoyed, he got back up and leaned over the desk to peer behind it.

Tom: "I can't even get to the power strip."

Me: "That's because you didn't move the shredder. Let me go under the desk to get it. I have to get my back-scratcher that fell there too."

Tom: "This desk is a mess."

Me: "I told you not to start with that."

Tom: "I'm just getting it out of the way. Plus, I have to move all this shit to so that I can work."

We stopped to yip and yap at one another about desk cleanliness. That ended when I threatened to go into his desk to point out his issues. He went back to working on getting the cord, and I started cleaning. 

Me: "What happened to that grabber thing of my mom's? I used to use that in situations like this, but you did something with it. Did you throw it away?"

Tom: "It's in the garage somewhere."

Another time out as we went back and forth until Tom located the grabber by his desk. He unplugged the monitor, took it off my desk and carried it to Madison's desk.

Tom: "The next thing is to plug it into another outlet. But I can't do that here because this desk is a mess! All these desks are full of shit."

He said this while spinning in a circle between the three desks, monitor in both hands. I may or may not have chuckled.

Eventually, he succeeded with his plan, and the monitor came on.

Tom: "See that light? That's the light I was talking about."

Me: "Yes, I knew what light you meant. It didn't come on."

Tom: "It's on now."

Me: "I see that. But it wasn't on when you tried it either while sitting on my desk."

Tom: "Is the power strip on?"

Me: "Why would it be off? You saw how hard it is to get to it. How would it turn off? You think the back-scratcher did that on its way to the ground when it fell?"

Yup, folks. That is precisely what happened! And I could not stop laughing.

But I did, and then Tom discovered he had the password all along--in his phone. But that wasn't until after we broke into email accounts to okay the usage of the password manager to even find the password we wanted.

Which he had the entire time.

And my friend wonders why I can't leave the house on time!

Call the dog

Since the pandemic, Elliot has had people in the house. Now while we're down to the two of us, he likes to know where I am twenty-four-seven. If he doesn't, he goes into my bedroom and cries until I call for him.

Yesterday, he came into the office and alerted me that it was dinner time. Typically, I save my work for the day, feed him, and begin prepping the family dinner. This time, I didn't. I fed him and returned to work. 

With his head stuffed into his dog bowl, he didn't see this, and when he finished, he went searching for me. I'm sure he checked the kitchen first because he knows the routine. Who knows where he went next, but it wasn't the office.

Suddenly, I hear this noise. I stop and listen. It's Elliot howling like his life has ended--in my bedroom. That's clear on the other side of the house.

So, I did what all parents and dog owners do when they know their children/pets won't hear us shouting.  

I picked up my cell phone to call him and alert him to my location.

Yep. I did.

Lesson learned? Elliott needs a cell phone.