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Thoughts during Hurricane Ida and the aftermath…
This is going to be a flat copy and paste of the thoughts that I had while running from my laptop on battery. It’s sort of an organized jumble that was going on as I was dealing with life without the Internet with my mother, her husband and the animals here in Louisiana as we lived through Hurricane Ida and the aftermath…
Be prepared, it’s going to be a missive so skip over it if it’s too long and too rambling.
Entry 08/30/2021 12:05:18 PM – Mentat 1707
I’m taking a moment to come up for air while waiting for the power to be restored. Yeah, Hurricane Ida didn’t hit anywhere near to town, but we lost power about 2130 last night which at the time of this entry, we still don’t have any power. Currently doing the ghetto thing and charging my phone off of the battery on the laptop in spite of the fact that I shouldn’t be doing so, but it’s just something that I needed to do because I’ve been heavily relying on it and it’s causing a serious drain on the battery. Even with power saver mode on. I got the battery up to 35% on the mobile and I’m seeing about 5 hours of power on the laptop, and with that things are rather copacetic at the moment. My mother and her husband’s mobile carrier is still offline in the area — which I find odd given that it’s something that locals would be using more than Tracfone but my phone is not only connecting to the network, it’s also allowing for calls and SMS messages too and I’ve contacted Tracy to let her know that we survived even if there’s no power in the neighborhood.
We have water and we have gas so at least we can cook if we have to. Also get washed up too. Hopefully we’ll get power back in the next day or two or else we’re going to be needing to cook everything in the freezer and that’s not a fun thing to do.
Took a walk this morning down to Hwy 25 to see the condition of the road and when I get there at about 0730, not only were the tree cutting and collection trucks out there, but at least two electric trucks were checking/surveying the potential damage for the area. So hopefully sometime this evening we’ll be getting power back. Either that or tomorrow.
While the power was out, I also too advantage of clearing out and re-oiling the fans that usually make the most amount of noise when they’ve been running for long periods of time and then suddenly shut off. I also too advantage of swapping out the video card back to the 750 TI to see whether or not I did finally fix the fan so that it wouldn’t be sounding quite like a jalopy. I won’t be able to restart the machine until the temperature gets down to about 74 when the A/C kicks on — but I can take advantage of turning the UPS back on to getting the battery back to 100%.
I think the biggest problem I’m having at the moment is the fact that because the temperatures in the house are warmer than usual and we have higher than usual humidity — the ear wax it causing my tinnitus to be louder and more persistent than I wanted it to be. I began cleaning my left ear (which is currently louder than my right) and I’m hoping that with the double dosing I’ll be doing in the next couple of days I’ll be able to clear out that pain and annoyance. Then it’s the right ear to see whether I can get rid of that pain as well.
The neighborhood is pretty much keeping to themselves. While they are being friendly, it’s the sort of guarded friendly I prefer as I don’t need people getting into my face through the post-hurricane clean up.
Not too much else at the moment other than the fact that the dog is annoying as fuck because of all the noises going on outside which she has to bark at as warning because apparently we need protection. My cat doesn’t like the noises from outside the house so he’s hiding under the bed through most of the morning and day, and will only come out if I go looking for him. After playing with him for a little bit, he’s back under the bed minding his own business.
Not too much else other than it all being the waiting game. I’ll write more tomorrow if we have no power. Otherwise, until the next time.
Entry 08/31/2021 12:19:38 PM – Mentat 1708
News continues to be inconsistent when it comes to the aftermath. Through second-hand news we’ve been hearing anywhere from the end of the week to the end of the month. I’m going to go with the end of the week given that it’s more optimistic and it’s not the sort of thing we have to worry about when it comes to the worst case scenarios. Although I’m thinking that it’s high fucking time to start some sort of movement against the news in the fact that they tend to rush it out without any fact checking — or they make shit up until such a point that it’s panicking the locals all for the sake of ratings. However overall, this shit has to stop as it’s not helping anyone and it’s ending up with the sort of bullshit that causes more harm than good.
For example, we had news of where the Hurricane Ida was going to make landfall, but the local news was reporting it as “near category 5”. NOAA on the other hand was reporting it as Category 4. Seriously… Near Category 5?! What the fuck is the point of reporting it as such when… wait for it… the NOAA continued to report that when it made landfall it was still a category 4.
I was also able to confirm that the reason why the boot-up was taking so fucking long has to do with the fact that unlike the desktop which doesn’t start SysMain at the time of boot up — the laptop does. Although the difference between the desktop and the laptop was that the laptop has it set automatically to start, and the desktop had it running manually. Frankly, I see no reason to be running SysMain on the laptop seeing it has half the memory of the desktop and I really don’t need so much shit running at the beginning given this is supposed to be a combination one and done and being able to get up quickly to chat, write and what not instead of waiting for everything to load at the start only to have marginal speeds once SysMain has done all it’s necessary read-write.
Still, I’m noticing that the laptop still has insane amounts of battery and I continue to use the ghetto method of charging one battery with another (iPhone to laptop) so that I have some power for it even though I can’t get the thing to 100%.
Contacted the landlord with the pictures and telling her that the house survived along with us, so things are normal for that for the next couple of weeks.
Now it’s all a matter of waiting and seeing when things will get back to normal here. At least for the rest of the week. What we have to do after that remains to be seen.
Can’t connect to the Fitbit site, so that means that I can only wait for another two or three more days until that data goes to pot. Whatever. I’ll treat it as a “vacation” and will just keep trucking on in the hope that I can get power back before the end of the week.
That’s about it for the time being. I want to be able to charge the phone another day if it continues to be like this. Currently up to 36% and that’s 3% more than the day before. I’ll let the power get up to whatever while the laptop battery drains to 80% if only to be able to write a bit more come tomorrow or the next day. Which I’m sure I’ll have more to talk about.
Until the next time.
Entry 09/01/2021 08:11:11 AM – Mentat 1709
Let’s try this again as I’m running into a problem with it creating a new month on a new day and decided to crash when I saw that the information for the 29th, 30th and 31st was not populating in the calendar view.
My mother’s husband tells me that the local news has reported that the local electric company — Cleco — has made a public statement saying that they’re still “assessing the situation” and continued to say, “it will take some time for them to completely understand the situation. There are three problems with this. The first it’s coming from one of the local news stations that is well known for reporting the news on the impending hurricanes, tropical storms and tropical depressions showing that the weather map with the storm cutting straight through the New Orleans area whether or not the storm is actually heading in this goddamn direction. The second is that the PR report from Cleco is the most generic we can get post storm, in spite of the fact that the other day I saw the DPW was already out on Hwy 25 performing the usual tree cutting and tree clearance and had been done for this part of the road by mid-afternoon. The third is that I’m getting this second-hand, from a man well known for believing the bullshit news (AKA Fake News) from affiliates like Fox and CBS and thinking that they report what can be called “the truth”. More on this in a moment as I have more news for that.
The problem with this sensationalistic and often vague news is that it doesn’t calm the sheep and the easily panicked. In fact, it does the exact opposite as it prevents them from thinking clearly, sensibly and even beyond the end of their nose and will cause them to rush out in a panic and collect as much as they can grab before running either back to their house or evacuate to somewhere else with this hoard leaving those that either weren’t fast enough or strong enough to collect these things leaving them to suffer their own fates.
I don’t believe the news at all, because the assessment was done by someone trying to prove some sort of superiority with his panic. Something I have natural Yankee skepticism toward, particularly given that I’ve seen this sort of news in the past and am less likely to believe it when it’s reported because what they’re not saying is often more telling than what they are saying. This bullshit doesn’t remind me of Katrina either given I was living in Atlanta at the time and all I could do back then was look on with idle speculation. I had other issues at the time to be more concerned with — the least of which was me dealing the Rick and his bullshit tricks of making my life a living hell. No, this is reminding me of the various blizzards I’ve survived through in the north and Narragansett Electric (changed to another company I can’t be assed to remember their name) and the vague responses they were giving year after year when it came to what sort of damage was done, what sort of clean up needed to be done, and just how over-cautious the PR statements were in the hopes of avoiding various lawsuits in the process.
I’m still projecting that power should be restored to parts of Covington by the end of the week, and failing that, I told my mother that they should be looking into evacuation to somewhere there is power so that they can enjoy electricity more than here. Particularly when you consider that they’re 20+ years older than me and this sort of temperature is going to only rise the longer we go without electricity because summer is far from over here in the south. I also told her that in the next couple of days she should be looking into water conservation because if she’s an example of the waste that’s going on with water for the whole of the subdivision, we’re going to be dangerously low on the water sometime by then as well.
Which reminds me… She hasn’t been drinking water, but instead Ginger Ale, which I will have to fucking remind her Carbonated Water is not water. Yeah, she confirmed it — she hasn’t been drinking water since we don’t have ice. And of course she’s giving me the usual lip service of, “I can’t…” yeah, fuck you you can’t. I can, you can. Jesus fucking Christ and they wonder why I get easily pissed off. All this stubborn stupidity.
But the more on this… I was chatting with my mother’s husband about the mask mandate as he has to work somewhere which has it posted because of the Parish mandate and it became clear I had in my household the perfect example of the crazy fucks (AKA Keyboard Warriors) I deal with online. Even though I got the complete vaccine, the first thing out of his mouth was, “why do you fucking care? You’re vaccinated.”
Never mind the Delta and Lambda variants. Never mind the fact that the Delta variant seems to bypass the vaccination and there’s preliminary reports that it’s possible the vaccine is making people more susceptible to COVID. Never mind the thought that by wearing a mask, I continue to set an example for the sheep that think they’re immune or worse that it’s just a form of influenza virus and that the public thinks they fucking know better than PhDs, Doctors and Specialists in the field and will do the same bullshit people used to do when the Bubonic Plague was spearing and using bullshit remedies (like drinking piss, or rubbing shit on themselves to cure it), in this case using Ivermectin which will cure roundworm and the the invasive form of worms that cause Rosacea but has little to no effect on COVID because this isn’t a worm-like virus — no this is a bacterial virus.
I didn’t say any of this. I saw in his attitude and his eyes that this is fucking America and we don’t wear viruses. And Fuck You for thinking that we should. Wearing masks is perfectly acceptable for other countries like Thailand, China, Japan, etc. but for Americans — this is an affront to for the American Way.
You’d think after it was proven to us back during the Bush Administration that America was no longer isolated and independent from terrorism as it hit on American soil back on 9-11 that this fucking mindset Americans have we’re no longer an isolated country immune to the actions and activities going on in the world. That instead of doing the “we know better than the rest of the fucking world” we Americans would begin to incorporate a more world community mindset. And it’s not happening. Either through lack of proper education, or cliquishness stupidity, or even selfishness — it’s just not happening. And it’s making us such a fucking laughing stock both to the rest of the world, and to those here in the country that see this willful ignorance being what it is.
That’s it’s for the time being. Until the next time.
Entry 09/02/2021 11:34:39 AM – Mentat 1710
Day four without power and we’re currently somewhere between the hopeful and the annoyed stage. Milk has gone completely bad — but that was entirely expected. The frozen food has been completely defrosted and while it’s still cool in the freezer portion of the fridge, it’s only a matter of time before we’re either cooking it in the hopes of it lasting a couple of more days, or because my mother is a boomer and isn’t thinking things through, just throwing it out because “…it’s not fresh.” Seriously — this is what pisses me the hell off about her sometimes. She raised her children to think about saving and completely making sure it’s usable before throwing it out, but now that we’re out of the house she’s picked up her mother’s habit of throwing things out because she can. And of course when I question her on this, I get her usual bullshit response of, “get off my back” or “stop picking on me”, with her completely forgetting that I was raised with her attitudes of ensuring everything is saved and scrimped and used when it can no longer be usable.
Take for example this morning. She sent her husband out to pick up a couple of things, which he picked up some creamer, 2% milk (in 2, one-quart canisters) and half a pound of ham from the deli which was the only meat available at the store. What does she do? She says, “we’ll have grilled ham & cheese sandwiches tonight” completely forgetting that not half hour before she said to her husband that she would be making Pork Chops instead.
When I confronted her on this, she’s like, “I’ll make them tomorrow.” Excuse me, we don’t have any electricity and we can’t be sure that come tomorrow the we can’t even be sure about whether or not the pork chops will be good for tomorrow. It took her another half hour to forty-five minutes to reverse that “idea” of hers and she’s currently making Pork Chops & homemade Spanish Rice. Yeah, the ham was picked up today so it’s a good chance to last a couple of more days, but what’s left in the freezer will either have to be made or thrown out.
And that fucking annoys me also to no end because it’s not like we can make the hop over to the local supermarket as people are lining up outside of them around the building, because like everyone else in the area who have no power, can only take a little to get through the day with and hope that tomorrow we’ll get our powered restored. We’re going to have to deal with it as much as the rest of the locals have to, and that means a whole lot of waiting in line and whole lot of empty shelves while the supermarkets are selling out what they can while they wait for power to come back on and they can call for more deliveries.
Then there’s the husband who thinks he’s doing a bang-up job with the dog as Maggie only half listens to him (usually when it’s the most convenient for her) and like my mother are constantly countermanding whenever she looks toward me as the alpha of the house. She definitely doesn’t listen to anyone when she’s barking up a storm because of the noise she hears outside, and nothing he can do has brought her under control. But he definitely continues to talk to her like a fur-baby thinking that with consistency she’ll suddenly understand everything that’s being demanded of it.
Yeah, right. This is why he has to punch her in the hopes that she’ll stop what she’s doing and instead is the primary reason why the dog growls at anyone that tries to raise their hand or tries to discipline her. Me included.
Because of her constant barking, I’ve had to make sure my cat stays out from underneath the bed. Because he’s been hiding there constantly, he hasn’t been eating, he doesn’t drink from the faucet unless I’m always there and coddling him to ensure that he stays on the counter to drink from it, and definitely doesn’t drink from the bowl in spite of the fact that the water is still changed daily. So far, he’s definitely showing more life today and seems to have drank more water than he has in the last couple of days. He’s also been more vocal and purring with routine since he’s not hiding under the bed and that’s definitely better than he’s been the last two. I’ll check to see whether or not he’ll drink again later on when things start cooling down.
So the hopeful part. Through second hand information, my mother’s husband confirmed seeing buck trucks for Spectrum and AT&T and that’s usually a sign that they’re going to be behind the power company when it comes to fixing the wiring on the poles somewhere in the area. Whether it’s going to be completed or not for this neck of the woods by the weekend remains to be seen, but from what I remember from my days at Cox Business; power company has priority, then telephone and then cable. As there’s no central telephone anymore because of the Ma Bell Breakup coupled with the fact many of the baby bells have gone into the telephone/cable business, they’re somewhere between second and third place.
That’s about it. Tomorrow, I might have more thoughts that I didn’t share today. Until the next time.
Entry 09/04/2021 01:16:36 PM – Mentat 1711
Day six without power, although I can confirm that there are parts of Hwy 25 with power less than 2 miles away and when my mother and her husband went out this morning for some ice and food for lunch for them — they were able to confirm that there are Cleco trucks working on the downed power lines north of M P Planche heading toward Folsom. So it’s possible we might be getting power back either for Labor Day or the day after… Hopefully and god willing.
Power has been completely restored for Hwy 190 all the way up to Claiborne Plaza (with my mother’s husband works at the packie and cigarette shop, there are parts of 190 between the Bogue and Winn-Dixie which my mother and I typically shop at that are still without power. But I think it’s more a fixer-up for the wiring there because it seems odd that there’s no power at the car repair place where where they’re selling generators.
This is also why I didn’t work on an entry yesterday because I had been dealing with some thoughts yesterday from the previous entry that had me thinking carefully.
Sure I can identify the problems and the cancers that come from American Society — from the selfishness to the “me first” to even the bullshit attitude that comes from the stupid application of patriotism (e.g., This doesn’t happen to America or Americans) — how can I possibly address the issue in such a way that will slowly change that cancerous attitude that has crept into the woodwork when I’m one person in an isolated instance who tends to be more online and in real time? How can I possibly expect to be able to change all this anger that I encounter day in and day out — both within my own home and in the world immediately around me?
More often times than naught people don’t tend to listen to me even when I’m not being the snarky and sarcastic bastard that I can be, and go full on into denial mode thinking they know better than everyone around them. And no matter what I can say either intelligently, or in anger or even in the way that can cut a person straight to the bone — the try their best to only see what they’re saying for the sake of spouting bullshit for the sake of it.
It’s like a never-ending flood of hate and anger and no amount of turning the other cheek — let alone offering a compassionate hand — will stop let alone abate their anger. It’s like they don’t know how to shut it off within themselves to begin with.
And sometimes, as I see all the anger and the hate, I continually ask, “what’s the bloody point of even trying?”
I’ll keep working on this thought. I’m sure this was something my grandmother had to face on more than one occasion when it came to her Christian Faith. Yet for the longest time, I remember she kept trying.
And with that, I’ll try to conserve the battery a little bit more. Until the next time.
Entry 09/05/2021 01:07:51 PM – Mentat 1712
Day Seven without power and it might be a couple of more days before power is restored. More on that in a minute.
Slept like shit last night. Couldn’t tell what time it was and I kept drifting in and out of sleep through most of the night. This made it hell for me as I had to get up and walk around more than a few times through the night in order to shake whatever was going on within me. Once I did and I could see it turning daylight toward the eastern sky, I knew it was time to wake up.
Getting up this morning, my mother’s husband got me into full panic mode when he mentioned that everyone on Sylvia and River Park Drives got their power back and we were still without power. Tried to correct the fuck that everyone in the back area is still running on generators, but he was fucking determined to be right because god forbid he could be wrong, and his proof was that all the houses that were running on generators last night had lights on in their houses.
The full panic mode comes from the fact that if Joyce was out of power, it would be out of power for weeks as subdivisions and smaller sections of a neighborhood would have low priority to getting repaired. And that meant we would need to be worrying about getting my mother somewhere with air conditioning either at a motel, hotel or somewhere else other than this house given we have nothing but dry foods left that’s still edible — and of course my mother constantly does the fucking pushing everything off because it’s good at the moment and can last another day (no it can’t but that’s also in a moment).
In panic mode, I pushed off cleaning the fridge and went to take a shower, getting dressed and taking a quick perusal of the neighborhood. Long story, short is that the power from Catherine Street to River Park Drive remains off-the-grid and doesn’t have any power, either relying on battery backup or generators of some sort or another. And what the nit-fucking-wit was seeing when it came to the lights was from the generators that they were running last night.
Came home to tell him what I was able to confirm and the selfish fuck pulled a, “I don’t want to hear it” with the typical attitude of, “I’m right, and your wrong.” I blasted into him telling him that he sent me into full panic mode and if he’s going to kick the campfire he had better fucking listen to what I had to say when it came to the confirmation. I even told hi if he left the fucking house and looked around, he’d see what he thought he was inaccurate.
I was fucking livid not only because the information he gave me was grossly inaccurate. but was done based on looking out from the back porch of the house and not something done by mingling with the neighbors. Even got my mother to believe that cockamamie half-truth in the process.
Took me the better part of three hours to calm the fuck down because since the power’s been out, I’ve been slowly training the dog to understanding commands and so far, I got her to understand the following: Sit, Come, No, Down (for laying down), Up (for getting on the chair), and a modest amount of the command “Stay”, which for as long as I don’t get out of sight, or in a direction where she gets the impression I’m going outside — will in fact stay.
Does he use the commands any? Nope! Determined to speak to the dog like a fur-baby which she only half pays attention to what he says at any given time. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t imagining taking a hammer to his skull and beating in the commands that Maggie understands so far.
After a modest lunch of 2 slices of ham, a can of green beans and a cup of rice (AKA a Monk’s meal even if monks are mostly vegetarian), I set out to walk about to get a feel of the neighborhood and perhaps catch a little chat from some of the locals to get an idea on how long it’s going to take to get everything fixed.
Talked to a DEM officer that was testing the water for Chlorine and he’s telling me that the water’s good. Didn’t have much else information but did a little chit-chat explaining that I had been concerned about how St Tammany Parish had stopped the continued construction in the area, only to renegotiate it and the new construction is back on. While he confirmed it’s not an “old boy network” down here when it comes to building practices, he wasn’t able to give me an idea on who to talk to within the parish to confirm or deny the building being back on the go.
Walking around the block, I overheard one of the younger couples talking about the power grid and how we’re still without power and said something about how the power for the neighborhood is being split between Covington and Folsom and that the back end of the subdivision (AKA ours) is coming in from the north and that they’re still fixing wiring north on 25 as they were speaking.
About 30 minutes later — and about 1/2 mile up the road — I can confirm that CLECO is still laying wires out on the poles. While I wasn’t able to get closer to the workers as there was a lot of traffic and some bigger trucks blocking the way, I can only treat that information as hearsay at best, even if it seems to follow Occam’s Razor in the truth in simplicity.
Because of this I think the power’s going to be out another day or two because there’s some mileage between where the construction is going on and where Folsom is.
Coming home and cooling off (even though it seems to have rain coming in at the moment), I’m greeted with the selfish fuck trying to put cokes into the freezer where the ice is for the remaining food, with the smug answer that “there’s still room” which I ignored him controlling my want to taking my water bottle and beating him with it. The selfish fuck could’ve put my mother’s ginger ale in, but he completely fucking ignored the last bottle on the counter, only worried about his precious fucking cold cokes (never mind that he doesn’t remember there’s another one in the pan from yesterday).
At least during the morning when we were waiting for more ice, I was able to clean the fridge and freezer so they don’t stink of rotten food.
Tuesday I think I’ll be heading down to the library to see whether I can recharge my laptop, as well as see if I can’t find out a little about this region. Can’t do it tomorrow as it’s Labor Day after all. That’s about it. Until the next time.
Entry 09/06/2021 11:17:57 AM: Mentat 1713
Eighth day and power was restored for the remainder of the neighborhood at 19:09 last night. One hour into the eighth day of being without power. Amusingly we could hear the kids hooting and hollering when the power was restored in spite of all the background noise going on. While some people were still running their generators, I can tell you that when we confirmed that the central air conditioning kicked in, all the windows in this household were shut so that we could mute out that horrible noise. Took me more than two hours to realize the cooling was on and that the house was cooling, let alone hearing the intake running from the central hallway as my ears were still ringing from all the generators high pitched and regularly sounds going on from them.
Unfortunately for me though, I had a very difficult time trying to fall asleep, and an even worse time trying to maintain sleep last night. First off, I got myself a a fire ant bite walking yesterday when I went to check out the work still going on farther north on Hwy 25. While I tried to clean up the bite area, three hours later I could already see it all reddened more than from the bite area. This means that if the area gets warm, I end up with it being itchy and uncomfortable making it near impossible to sleep or get relaxed without it annoying the piss out of me. Then there was the problem where in the last week of dealing with incredible amounts of heat and humidity and now it’s cool and dryer than it has been which made it impossible to be comfortable either below any coverings — even sheets (making me feel too hot) — or on top of the covers and I was feeling too cold.
Entry 09/07/2021 12:41:05 PM: Mentat 1714
We’re two days with power now and I’ve had a ton of middling things I had to do now that we’re back to a “normal” we Yankees can understand. All of the ice we used to turn the freezer into a sort of cooler has finally been removed from the freezer. While the fridge and freezer’s still looking a little bare, at least it still has some things in it since going shopping this morning, it’s more like a college student or single man’s kitchen instead.
Sleep for me has been pretty damned miserable. Thanks to the fire ant bite I got on my left shin I run into the problem where I’m either too warm which causes me discomfort and a whole lot of itchiness, or too cold if I pull all the covers off of me. It turns out to be a never ending struggle between itching and being too cold for me to sleep. It’s a constant struggle to trying to get comfortable and trying to stay asleep for extended periods of time. Because of that, I often have to get up, get out of bed, stay up for a while before going back to sleep and trying again.
I know for a fact that I’m allergic to Fire Ant Venom, I learned this living in Atlanta and standing on a nest while at a bus stop back in 2003. I know that it takes something like 10 or more bites before I need to go to an ER for either an epinephrine shot or whole body immunotherapy(using the same stuff if it’s that severe). Otherwise it’s a few extra days of pain and torment more than usual for the venom to abate in my system.
This morning, I spent some time assessing when I will be mowing the lawn, and I think it’s going to be done in the next two days. It’s looking a bit on the scrubby side, but otherwise it’s not like the jungles I see from some of the other yards on the street. After doing that I needed to deodorize the trash bin because when we threw all the spoiled food from the freezer (and Fridge), some of the chicken blood from the packaging leaked into the bottom of the bin and if it wasn’t cleaned out, it was making the garage, my mother’s bedroom, the laundry room and even parts of the hallway that smell like a combination of an open sewer and a chicken slaughtering farm. Thanks to that, the garage is also smelling sort of like Fabuloso.
When the power came on two days ago, I didn’t mention that the mold and the Serratia that had formed in the bathtub, the toilet bowl and even on the toilet seat because of the heat and humidity that had been collecting in the room. Was pretty damned gnarly, and given it’s also on the shower curtain, I’m going to need to wash that as well.
I think the biggest news I didn’t mention has to do with my cat Moe. While I understood that he was annoyed and did the old man thing that didn’t want to deal with being touched. That was understandable, I mean when I’m hot and bothered I don’t want to be touched. The problem was that with all the windows being opened and us living on the first floor and Moe’s rather wacky logic that if he can be seen he can be touched, and he doesn’t like strangers touching or interacting with him. That freaks him out.
Then there’s the part that with all the loud noise from all the generators, all the kids making noise outside, the dog barking at every little thing and even my interacting with my family in the kitchen/common room areas, there’s just something about my mother’s husband that he just doesn’t like/trust and will not stay in the room when he’s around. Oh he’s done nothing to the cat, but the cat picks up some of the energies I do, and he just doesn’t like it.
So, Moe acted like a shut-in in my bedroom the entire time and it took about 3 days in for him to actually leave the room at night when everyone was in bed and the house was remarkably quiet. With the Air Conditioning back on, he’s coming out more from the room and will even with with me in the office when I’m sitting here. It took him two days but now he’s sitting in the office with me and will even ask to get up on my lap as I’m sitting watching something on YouTube (or Twitch), or playing a casual game. Unfortunately the other side effect I’m noticing is that when it comes to me going to the laundry room and out of the house through the garage he’ll move with speed to hide under the bed until I come home to collect him. Or he’ll follow me around the house when I’m doing my hourly 250 steps, and even will occasionally get my attention to follow him to ensure he can either get water from the bathroom and will even have me make sure he’s showing me he’s eating from his food bowl. At least the good news is that he’s no longer requiring me to sit/stand there while he’s eating (like he was doing sometimes prior to the hurricane). I guess he just wants to make sure he gets where he’s going without being molested by the dog.
And with that…. I’m off. Thursday it should dry enough for me to mow the yard (we had a freak downpour while I was writing this and it’s more than a little bit wet and will be around for a while). Until the next time.
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