A quiet week, after a nearby tornado.

It was very quiet, at our home last week. No tv blaring, no air conditioner blasting, no microwave buzzing and dinging, no toaster shooting bread in the air (we have a very energetic toaster), no internet, no lights, no shower.  Okay, there were drawbacks too.

Early Tuesday, our area was hit by a tornado.  Irritating little Chihuahua and I were home alone and the wind blew and limbs were horizontal and the sheet of rain was so dense you could not see through it.  It came up fairly quick and I watched the window, with one eye, while I got her harness on (she can be really slippery) and I moved a few things away from the window, and was ready to head downstairs. 

Once, when I was a child, a tornado went over our house.  It was one of my few pre-school memories but I remember the sound like a train was roaring overhead.  I was also in one in Gettysberg, PA, while on vacation.  That time was like this, except we did not have golf ball size hail. 

Other than several trees down, and one very large limb on our roof, we were pretty lucky.  We didn’t even lose a lot of food.  Our cheap, little freezer from WalMart, was pretty packed and I put everything I could in there from the fridge freezer and it held.   The neighbor lost half their roof as a huge tree crashed through it.  The roads were closed with hot wires and trees.  We had a level 2, stay off the road order and a water boil order.

By Thursday, the weather was heating up and husband needed airconditioning or I was going to suffocate him myself as his breathing, or attempt to, really gets loud when he has trouble.  So, we were off to Indy for the cheap seats and air conditioning.  Us, and the two boys watched two movies and ended up eating two, not so cheap, meals.   The lights came back on Friday evening. 

The things you really miss without electricity: showers and ice and an oven or microwave.  I told them, if it happens again, we should just break out the tent and camp in the yard.

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He says he’s never going to the doctor again!

Husband has decided he is never going to the doctor again. 

 

He went to his GP yesterday morning so that he could get his ten medications renewed for the year and he walked out with fourteen prescriptions and pneumonia.   I told on him, that his cough was worse than normal and after listening to his chest, the doctor told him why—pneumonia.

 

Then, we picked up mom and took both of them to the Ophthalmologist.  (is that spelled right?  That’s what Word and WordPress says it is.)  Husband has lost his reading glasses, for good this time, and needed to get a new script as one eye is different from the other and WalMart does not carry reading glasses with each eye different. 

 

He, husband—not the doctor, developed a swelling on the back of his eye years ago.  When the swelling went down, the ‘cones’ did not sink right and so he has a blurred spot; that’s what he had been told in the past.  Now, the spot is changing and there is a broken vessel.  The doctor asked what husband had done for a living.  Since he had been a millright and around welding, the doctor thought that might have damaged his eye, however, that was years before.

 

New story but they will tie in at the end.  EMT has been drooling over the S10 truck for some time but it does not work.  He has a friend, through the volunteer fire department who has an S10 in his back yard and loves to work on cars, so this morning he was to drive it over to the guys house and they were going to work on it.  

 

I went out to be in the Voyager to jump the battery on the S10.   Having owned only one new car in my life, I am well versed in jumping car batteries.  However, I have never been in the charger car before when the door locks automatically locked and the speedometer went crazy when the dead battery car tried to start.  It never did start, but I had an epiphany.

 

Third and final story:  Husband’s energy level is very low so when husband and I were rehabbing our house for sale, he would get up early, while he had a little energy and work.  I have to say that rehabbing a house like this takes forever, no one week flip for us.  I usually wake up at the same time every morning, but this one morning I slept a bit late.  I got up, dressed and went out to get the mail.  I came back in and heard a faint cry, “Sheryl.” 

 

It came from the crawl space, and under my feet.   “Sheryl, shut off the electricity.”

 

Yup, husband had crawled into a very wet dirt crawl space and hooked himself up to the electricity and I’m thinking that maybe it acted like a lightning strike on his eye.  I don’t know if that did it but it was shortly after that when he noticed the blurred spot for the first time.

 

He’s still griping about going to the doctor.

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Hell in a hand basket!

I have been avoiding a discussion of politics here for some time.  I have my opinion and you have yours and never the twain shall meet. I know this from eMail discussions with my friend in Massachusetts. Everyone bellieves what they believe.

What I believe right now, is that I can’t afford to buy decent loaf of bread (as opposed to the 99 cent sponge loaf) or gasoline.  We had to get JRockGuitarMan a pair of boots and pants. $55.63 later, we “thought” about buying a tank of gas.

We are on a fixed income. My husband has been disabled for eighteen years and will die disabled. He is 56 going on 90. He is bent and gray and mostly holding his chest when he tries to breathe and he will tell you that this staying home and getting paid thing sucks.  And, by the way, he only smoked for like a month in his whole life.

For years, every social security raise we got was eaten, in full, by an increase in medicare cost–to the penny. This January 1st, we will get a 2.5% increase.  Whoppeee!!! I think I shall travel to Hawaii on it, or buy some wheat flour to make bread; which we do often.

I worked for years and brought in extra income that allowed us to hold our heads above water but right now I can’t work. Right now, my job is to get health.  This is my job, so that I can take care of other people; mom, my husband and these boys.

This was part of why I was self-employed; so that I could take the day off to take someone to the doctor, or when mom ended up in the ER in the middle of the night (which happens often) or fight the system in other ways.  Right now I am working on a hearing to get the boys reinstated for insurance. Since “someone” in the system cancelled them, basing our income on a family of two, rather than a family of four.  Odd, did they think the boys were on their own or did they think we just made kids up to get insurance and say, “What idiots they are, har har.”  We would have qualified even as a family of three. And, for this, we will have to drive to Indianapolis, rather than providing proof of income here. Explain that one.

In the meantime, the sounds bites for today are that we have a sound economy.  What world does McCain live in?  ‘Cause it sure isn’t the one I inhabit.

Gas in Bloomington, Indiana is $4.25 a gallon. The whole midwest has the highest gas prices in the country. Take a look at the map of the whole US, showing prices, at Indiana Gas Prices.  Where Ike struck, prices are in the $3.74 area, but Bloomington, Indiana and surrounding areas are $4.25. 

I could not tell you about our Brown County gas prices, as Nashville did not have electricity yesterday. The boys went to school, from first period on, in the dark, all day.  Just like McCain.

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It is going to rain in Indiana – AGAIN!

I have always loved the rain. Once, we were on vacation, staying in a relative’s house, and the rain drummed down all night on their tin roof. I was just a kid but I thought it was the coolest sound in the world.

 

Rain on camping canvas is awesome. Other than the safety issue, I love rain when I am driving. And, when I am walking, I truly walk in the rain. I do not run.

 

This morning I woke up to lightening. Then it was clear and now, at 8 am it is dark, lightening and ready to fulfil its promise of rain. I may stand outside in it for a while (when the lightening is not near) but there are certain problems with rain in our County.

 

When it rains in Indiana, and it does often:

1. The electricity goes on and off all day

3. The phone lines buzz and we get a party line on our phone, and since the repairman doesn’t come out for five days, it’s dry and gone by then and AT&T charges you $51 for the privilege of having a party line.

4. You can’t get on the internet because your phone lines buzz.

5. We don’t need terrorists in Indiana; our infrastructure is disintegrating all on its own.

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Logical oldest boy in my home: grandson/son/Gaffer

Oldest son is a very logical person. At two, he insisted there was (spoiler here) no Santa Clause, because it was impossible for, well, all of it was impossible according to oldest boy. I, being a very sappy holiday person, tried everything to encourage the mythology of Christmas. He just would not buy that the shoe prints, in the flour on the floor, were Santa’s. “But why couldn’t they be?” I foolishly asked. “Because it’s not possible.”

 

I have found that this same quality makes oldest boy have a very difficult time with life in academia.

 

I discovered how seriously the logic problem was during the first Parent’s Teachers conference in high school. I was given a depressing listing of his grades in the hall and then entered the cafeteria, where all the teachers sat, with their laptops, at lunch tables. We sat down at the fist table, introduced ourselves and were told by the teacher, “You do know that Joshua is a genius.”

 

Open mouthed, I looked down at grades and stammered. It sounded something like “hell, escuse is.” The teacher explained that the reason for the dismal grades I was looking at, was that Joshua had not turned in one single page of homework. This was repeated to us three more times during that conference.

 

When we got home, where Josh was ensconced with his PS2, the conversation went like this:

US: “What’s the deal? Why didn’t you do your homework? You said you were.”

Answer: “I did do all my homework.”

Question: “Well if you kept the papers we have to take them to the teachers for the grades to be credited. How did they miss all those grades?”

Answer: “I have it. It’s in my backpack.”

Whereupon, Joshua got his backpack and pulled out a full semester of finished homework   -—– pause for effect here –-without any grades. He hadn’t turned it in. Nada. None of it. No grades. Not one.

 

EXPLANATION: “Well, they knew I could do the work. I got A’s on all the tests and the homework covers the same thing as is on the tests that I aced. So, it’s stupid to do it, when they should know I can do it already.”

 

Okay, perhaps this is a warped logic, but it is logical and he had me going.

 

While we were living in Wyoming, oldest boy had one of the best teachers I have ever seen, Lance Madzey. He is the film teacher at Natrona High School in Casper, Wyoming. The man is a jewel and I rue the day I moved Joshua across country from his Media teacher.

 

The first, and last time, Joshua, oldest boy, came home from school excited over a subject, was the first day of the film class. Madzey had everyone line up at the door and enter a darkened classroom. He stood at a podium with special lighting and show them how lighting can create atmosphere. The kids started learning without even realizing they were doing that dreaded of all things, for a school child; learning.

 

He inspired Joshua to pursue Film as a career. For some time Joshua wanted to be a cinematographer and when we moved to Indiana, and I had my studio set up, Joshua would go out there and make major improvements in my displays. I had arranged things by animal type, for pottery. He, on the other hand went abra cadabra, presto and had, in minutes, a display that was exciting and lead the customer around to all the work.

 

It’s odd to have a seventeen year old step back and tell you, who have studied color and its affects, how this color offsets that color in a display. I was not applying my own knowledge onto Marketing. For Mr. Logic, it was natural.

 

We have since, many, many times since, explained to Joshua that “that’s life, kid”. It doesn’t have to be logical. It can be stupid as all get out and probably will be, but you still have to do it. You have to do whatever the stupid boss tells you too. You don’t have to like it, you just do it and you turn it in, or you get a pink slip.

 

Someday, Mr. Logic is going to understand the real world, or maybe not. He still loves the making of movies and is spending his time in Santa Fe, NM, working as a Gaffer on student productions. They have a Hollywood sound stage. He is no longer a student there however as those dratted teachers wanted homework turned in too and he is not budging from his beliefs.

 

He plans on doing this for one more year, the work on sets part (the other thing he will do all his life) as he gets another part of his Gaffer license and then he plans on attending Full Sail University in Florida for their program. Thank god, they do not have regular homework. We favor the Film College of LA, but it’s his logical life and he has to live it his way.

 

Someday you can look for his name in the credits and say, “I’ve heard of that gaffer. It’s that dumb logical kid.” By the way: A Gaffer is the head of the electrical department. Josh just loves it. Electricity is apparently logical enough for him.

 

 

 

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