What Now

BLOGGING IN THE DARK

April 30, 2011

Well, the electricity fairy didn't magically arrive in the middle of the night last night. Too bad. : ( Don't worry, we're still hanging in there. Steve and I have been incredibly lucky through all this, so I've begun to feel a little ashamed of myself for complaining about the lack of power. I mean, sure, it'd be nice to have the Internet for longer than a few minutes at a time, or the ability to watch television, but it's probably good for me to get away from some of that stuff for a while. There are so many people who have it worse.

We decided to go to Mr. Lee's house today and see if his gas water heater worked without electricity. It did! We both managed to get hot baths and we sort of looted his cabinets a bit. Steve says it's not looting if you know the person, but I still kind of felt bad. We will, of course, replace what we took. After leaving his place, we stopped by to check on one of my aunts who lives nearby and see if she needed anything. It's hard for me to believe that she is over 70 years old. All of my aunts, and my mom, are like perpetual teenagers to me. Aunt Peggy was fine and didn't need a thing, so we left her to check on my property. There is only one barn on the property, and it was fine. The only thing I saw was a couple of fence posts leaning askew. For all I know, they were like that before.

It was tough going out there, though. A lot of the roads were blocked, and National Guardsmen had checkpoints in many of the worst places.

The Military Branch of Men With Impressive Mustaches

This used to be woods.

I downloaded much clearer pictures from friends who actually went through the bad spots. Since they are on other computer at the moment, they will be uploaded later.

Even though we didn't drive through the worst of it, we still saw plenty. The landscape I knew so well has changed. Trees sheared off, houses obliterated, things just gone. It was heartbreaking. It was like going to see a friend in the hospital who's had a bad wreck and seeing them Scratched, scraped, cut, bruised, broken and hooked up to tubes. It made me so sad. I did find out that as of this writing, East Limestone hasn't been declared a disaster zone, but that is insane! More than half of it is gone! Hopefully, the homeless people in E.L. will qualify for some type of government funding to help them rebuild.

We had to completely empty both freezers and most of the fridge today, which sucked. There is no telling how much money went into the trash! I'm not even sure we should keep condiments, since I'm under the impression they have to be refrigerated for good reasons. At this point, we have mustard and a bottle of Godiva liqueur left in the fridge. The breakfast of champions! We were able to salvage a few things and put them on ice, but we won't be able to keep it all. I hate there will be so much waste, but we've had a couple of good meals out of it! We tried baking cookies on the grill.

They melded into one super-cookie, I guess.

It doesn't look like it, but they tasted good! We didn't even burn the bottoms! Woot!

It's been so nice outside lately. The humidity has been fairly low, so we've stayed outside more than usual. It would be nice if I could breathe, though. I've been sick since Sunday. I don't know of I have a cold, or if it's just my allergies. We usually have a special filter for allergens, but since the AC hasn't been running, it hasn't been doing me a bit of good. I've been snorting Afrin like it's got cocaine in it. I even tried wearing a medical mask outside, but Butler felt that he needed to lick it, so it didn't stay as clean as it should have. : )

We spent the rest of the evening sitting in the living room. Steve watched a movie on his iPod, and I listened to an audio novel while I crocheted. I have no idea what the stuff I crocheted looks like because our Coleman lantern isn't very strong. I guess I'll find out tomorrow! Also, I have a lot of scary audio novels, which aren't exactly great for listening to while I sit in the dark. Heehee!