Yeah, that thing that was off in the distance? Man, oh man, what a doozy! And I think I may have jinxed us, because I had been noting how the storms kept hitting all around us. On Tuesday, August 11th, Pierogi the cat woke me up around 4 a.m. It is not unusual for her to do that and I will sometimes try to ignore her and go back to sleep. When I heard her, I cracked open an eye and saw the lightning and figured I would get up to watch it. She is normally scared of lightning and storms, so the fact that she wasn't freaking out, and even jumped in the window to watch the skies with me, made me feel comfortable that this would just be a typical thunderstorm for us. That's a big nope.
***Please do not copy, share, or use in any way any of my photos or videos from any of my posts***
I started by watching the storm inside, but I wanted the more organic nature of it. The humidity, the smells, the sounds....and Pierogi the Cat kept meowing for attention during my videos, lol. At this point in the storm, the worst of it was South of us.
So I moved outside, my back against the front door, under the upper deck.
When the lightning would flash, you could finally see the cloud structures.
And the lightning would create a split-screen effect.
The lightning was literally non-stop. I have amazing videos that I can't load because it exceeds the file allowed here. I might try and go back and shorten them and see if that would enable me to load them here. But I will load what it will allow.
It really rained, I mean, it poured. The area where we could use a downspout was its own little waterfall and for the first time in a long time, the patio flooded, but it goes down within an hour.The vegetation really helped to keep it all under control. It was mostly the low/uneven spots that caught the water.
I am watching the radar and realize that was the front part of the storm, and the storm also did a little hook and swirl dance. It got super still out. I stepped outside and listened for insects and birds, and did hear some doves. The radar indicates that we will take a direct hit, and it was coming in fast.
Then the sirens went off, and I ran to all of the windows that I have in every direction. If the tornado is behind us, I will stay to the front part of the house. If it is in front of us, I will stay to the back. That was my reasoning at least. I wanted to know where it was. I only have one view of the North, out the back door in the kitchen. I have only one view to the East from a side bedroom window, but trees block the sky. I have only one view West from an upstairs window, but that view is mostly blocked from the neighbors trees and I wasn't going upstairs during the storm. So that just left the South, and that view of the storm was intense enough. Pardon the cussing at the end! The winds got even stronger than this, but I needed to cut it off, told my son to get to his basement and I grabbed the cat and went to the stairs.
The part of the patio without vegetation flooded like it hasn't in a long time. The good thing about having such sandy soil is that it goes down really quickly. I did check the workshops to make sure there was no seepage, and all was good!
I went about my day while checking in on everyone. My son ended up going into his basement, though likely not all of the way down and probably stood on the stairs. Hey, it all worked out, and he was able to see that he's got a bit of water seepage still happening in one spot. So I told him I was proud of him, to get his foundation work back on his to-do list, and to stay in touch. (of course, I did the whole mom line of reminders as well: don't open your fridge or freezer unless it's necessary, is it's pee let it be, if it's brown flush it down, etc. It is hard to turn that mom thing off, even when they are adults.) Turns out that his workplace 20 minutes away also lost power and so he was called off of work for a couple of days. There was so much tree damage and so many lines down in towns West of us, so much damage to the electricity infrastructure, this was going to take awhile. Woodchuck and I went out to the land to check it out and you can't tell anything like the storm we had blew through, plus we still had power out there. We charged our devices in the barn and walked around. There was absolutely no damage at all. I said that we should take the generator and gas cans home with us. The gas stations in the town we lived in were without power, but some between the land and home were still up. All of the gas stations West of us were being inundated by people coming from storm damaged towns West and North and South. He said no, that the generator wouldn't fit in my car and even if we could get it in there, it would tear my car apart. It was so hard to leave that place and come back here.
The next day, Wednesday August 12th, still without power, my son and I (Woodchuck was still going back and forth to work every day) drove 10 minutes West to a Dollar General to get some bagged ice, batteries, supplies, etc. You couldn't tell that any storm had gone through and it was just like any other day there, but the gas stations? THAT was another story. I had 3/4 of a tank of gas in my car, but wanted to top off, wanted to fill a small gas can, but the lines were backed up all of the way to the highway. I wouldn't have minded sitting in a line, but backed up as they were onto the highway was too dangerous for me to take the chance. Way too many accident happening on that highway as it is. I had also put a couple of buckets in my car and stopped at the local cemetery to use the pitcher pump. At least we would be able to flush our toilets. Unfortunately, there was another storm cell headed our way that was nearly identical to the one from the day before. It was unbelievably muggy and I was frantically trying to get everything done and ready for when that storm came in. It looked like it was going to hit sooner than expected. I was starting to get buried under the pressure, dealing with a horrendous headache and the weight of the world on my shoulders, having to think for others and be in constant disaster preparation mode. I didn't have a/c most of the time once I was a teenager and it's no wonder that between that and hormones and a dysfunctional home life, I got nasty headaches and was not always in the best mood.
One our way back through town, we saw downed trees and limbs, hanging lines, but our county garage really did the best job of getting right out there and cleaning up! The even ended up cutting down the branch from my sons Redbud tree! He said he walked out there and it was gone. It's the last tree left that he has and he's fond of it, but it is not healthy at all. I told him to leave it then until it gets completely taken out by a storm and then he can plant another.
We stopped at the post office to get our mail from days previous to the storm, and saw that an elderly lady that lives next to it was out in the heat picking up small tree debris. You have to understand that this gal, and her sister who was my neighbor before she passed away, are EXTREMELY independent. Their yards are/were perfect, they never stopped, and what they couldn't do for themselves, they had a local handyman available to help. My son got really upset when he saw her out in the heat picking that stuff up, and we saw her sit on the edge of her deck and kind of huff and puff a bit. He said she shouldn't be out there doing that, and I told him that he couldn't stop her with a freight train! Many of us have tried over the years to help her and her sister, and they were having none of that...except for ONE time when Woodchuck was mowing our lawn and went over to mow hers too. She made sure after that that he never got the chance again, lol. I told him that she wouldn't be out there in the rain that was starting, and we needed to get back to our homes and get the ice put away, but that once the rain had stopped he could go over and help her if he wanted to. I don't know how that panned out, but sadly she passed away the following week in her adorable little cottage of a home that was so well kept. I was told that she had been sick for a few days following seeing her outside, and she refused to go to the doctor like her family had asked her to do. The morning she passed away, she called them early in the morning to tell them she wasn't feeling well and needed to go to the hospital. By the time they got there to pick her up, she had passed. I let my son know and he was so upset, but I told him that she had been sick, and that she was very elderly though very active, and that he can't blame himself if he didn't make it over there to help her pick up the tree stuff. She wasn't doing anything insanely intense like cutting up trees or anything like that, but that the heat and stuff can take its toll on elderly people, especially if they have some health stuff going on. It was really quite sad though.
I paced the floors, fretted over the food in the freezers and fridge, watched the radar, and tried to break the habit of hitting a light switch every time I walked into a room. I had a bucket of water for flushing, bottled water for brushing teeth and washing hands, spray hand sanitizer, sanitizing hand wipes, body wipes, etc. I was as stocked up and prepared as I could be while the power was out. Luckily, we have a gas stove, and growing up poor and thrifty, I was ready to start getting creative in using up as much food as we could. Woodchuck said he would grill, but never did. Said he didn't want to deal with standing out in the heat. Because I never opened the windows, I didn't let any residual cool air out and didn't let any of the humidity in. It got stuffy in here for sure, and that only added to the pressure in my head. I walked around holding it, the pressure was so immense.
I paced some more, and passed the time with lots of reading, and decided it was the perfect time to get some nail hole spackling done in the living room! In the efforts to not miss any once I start touching up paint, I cut up post it notes into small tabs and place one by each hole.
Once Woodchuck got home from work on the second day without power and reports stating that NIPSCO might have it on for another week or more, he said we were taking his car to the land and picking up the generator. People were having to drive HOURS away to find any for sale, as our local stores were selling out of them and gas cans and extension cords. As I walked outside to great him, I saw this mantis on the living room window screen. I wondered if maybe it got blown in on the storm, but either way, it looked very healthy and not hurt.
Although we have the same make and model of car, his is older and his door openings are slightly wider than mine. Plus, his is a work car with over 318,000 miles on it and is being held together with duct tape in certain spots. He wasn't going to care one bit if the car got a bit chewed up by trying to shove a generator in the back seat. He did take a heavy duty canvas tarp though to put on the back seat. I would have felt really bad about ripping up the leather. While he got the tractor out and went to get the generator, I haunted around the woods and was rewarded with lots of different mushies and fungi!
Hard to believe it has been so incredibly stormy and now the sunset is so clear and beautiful.
I don't know if I was witnessing a mating thing or territory thing, but it was neat to watch how they interact!
Starting to lose daylight and I'm dripping sweat just from being outside. The turkey vultures are circling overhead.
After using the tractor with its forklifts and a pallet that the generator was sitting on to get it as high and close to the door as we could, we wrestled the generator into the backseat. I needed something to keep it level and from tipping forward in the seat, so I grabbed the extra trail cam straps and strapped it to the headrests. He had filled the gas tank up before we lifted it, so that it would reduce what was in the gas can for when we stopped to fill them up.
It's time to head home and get this thing hooked up! I'm grateful to be getting out of the humidity, but sad to be leaving the land again.
The sunset on the way home was like being on another planet!
Sigh The weather is just all over the place, and it's keeping me in high alert mode.
As grateful as I am to have the generator, I find that I can't handle that noise long-term. And since it's not just us running a generator, I'm listening to four right around my house. That also contributes to the headache. I go out each morning and still give thanks for each day, light my incense, and smile.
It is there that I see the Orb Weaver has chosen us for its temporary home.
It is also there that I see a cicada has taken shelter on our sidewalk under the awning. There is room here for us all.
I continue to fret, to workout, to read, to work on LEGO by flashlight. I finally decided that it's time to pass them on to our youngest son. He said twice that he didn't want them, but changed his mind. He will likely have an easier time putting the kits together and tracking down missing parts than what I was having. It was so cathartic for me to have these things in my hands again, and I hope it brings him a bit of peace and healing as well.
I decide to do scheduled black-outs during the day when it is just me here. While the generator is helping to keep the freezers and fridge cold, I feel like I can do half a day with everything off. So I plan on shutting it down every day at 10 a.m. to let it cool down. Then once Woodchuck gets home from work, he can show me how to check the oil, we will put gas in the tank, and start it back up for showers and dinner and to run a fan and CPAP overnight. But things didn't go quite as planned. On the first planned stoppage, I was going to shut it off for a couple of hours in the morning and start it back up in a couple of hours for our oldest son to come over and shower before work, eat a hot meal, etc. But I didn't stop to think about it being a pull cord. I mean, why would that be an issue if I can start a lawnmower? It turns out it was a big issue for me. I wrenched both of my shoulders numerous times trying to start it and never could get it going. I was worried about flooding the engine, was that even a possibility for this? I didn't know.
My headache grew worse and worse in the heat and pressure. My patience was wearing thin, but also, I felt so raw emotionally. Down times such as this are usually big revelation and epiphany times for me. The perfect time to go within, to receive signals. And this day was where it started. So much truth to face for such a tiny person, so much healing to gain and give. By the time that Woodchuck got home, I was a raw, emotional nerve made even more intense by the realization of what I was not capable of. Without him, I would have been S.O.L. I had nobody else to rely on, and that makes me so incredibly sad. I've been through a lot on my own, I've been stranded in an apartment building during a snowstorm so large that the National Guard was called in to save people, their tanks driving down municipal roads. I wasn't saved. I stayed in my apartment as all of my neighbors left to go to other homes with family and friends. I had nobody. I did it all alone, while I was single mother. My ex-husband, who lived in a neighborhood less than five minutes from me, came and picked up our son. But I was so much younger then. I keep trying to make myself feel better by telling myself that the things I need to put in place are pretty standard for anyone of any age and capability.
When Woodchuck got home and he looked over the generator to make sure I didn't bump any setting and knobs and flood it (I didn't, it was all good!). He showed me how to check the oil, and he filled the gas, and promptly started it. I am not ashamed to say that I bawled. He held me while I gut sobbed. For everything I was once capable of, for everything I was never truly capable of and had to push through, for everything now that I am not, for everything that we are all going through and the isolation of many of us.
Pierogi is having her own crisis. Why are all of these "snakes" in the house? She has hardly eaten anything, and I know she has to be hot. Even before we lost power, on the hot days, I would catch her sitting in front of a floor register for a couple of moments to catch some cooler air.
I put my rechargeable neck light on at night and tried to do some stitching in between reading. Seeing the black thread in low light was misery. It is not done yet, nor attached to the frame yet. I have a stash of antique frames and out of all of them, I remembered this one and thought it might be too small. It fits perfectly, and is just the right color.
After 4.5 days, our power came on. I jumped out of bed to turn some things on, and some things off. I was terrified to shut off the generator because I had been reading posts of people having their power come on, only to have to go back off again for hours and days. Once I shut the generator off, I wasn't going to be able to start it. I did shut it down, and plug things back into the house, but I left the extensions cords accessible where they were at incase we needed to use them once Woodchuck got home. Friends, there are still people without power 11+ days after the storm. Some are being told they won't have power until September. I can't even imagine. I mean, I had to apologize to Woodchuck because I finally gave into the headache and became a feral goblin Friday evening after he plugged too much into the generator, things that he said were for me that I didn't even want plugged in, and it shut everything down. If I had just been able to keep my mouth shut for one.more.night. But I am only human, and can't expect perfection from myself, especially during a natural disaster (the whole state was declared one). But please, don't make me go that long in the heat again.
Please pray for our state of Indiana. Up here in Northwest Indiana, there is the storm damage and power outages. Many were still trying to recover from the previous storm when this one hit. Central and Southern Indiana are dealing with massive flooding. It is so incredibly sad to see. Local officials aren't doing too much, but it's the citizens trying to help each other. Making food to hand out, offering their homes for a shower and charging devices, those that don't need their generators anymore offering to loan them out to others who need them.What is the Universe trying to tell us? Is it showing us that we must come together? We must stop being so complacent? We have gotten so comfortable and so used to everything instantly being available to us. I know even I was unprepared for the 4.5 days without power. And there is so much residual damage to homes now too. Mold growth being a big one. This all has really made us take notes for our next house! Speaking of, I am hoping to have some updates for you NEXT WEEK! Stay tuned! *Please note that I had tried again to load videos here, and while they loaded into the draft, when I posted it, they were not there.
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