The Light at the End

Inspirational song: Castles Made of Sand (Jimi Hendrix)

I've been walking a fine line emotionally lately. I think I'm holding it together, and then I get swamped with something, like a wave of insecurity over today's fitness progress measurements (that thankfully didn't happen), or the prospect of going through all the fall holidays from my birthday to New Years without the man at home, or the worst one, feeling like I am on deathwatch. The old man cat is wasting away in front of me, and it is really hard to watch. He still tries to eat when things smell good to him, like when he gets chicken or eggs from my plate, but he has absolutely no interest in dry cat food that is available all the time. I don't think he is getting nearly enough calories. He is hauntingly thin. His face looks empty to me, like it isn't the one I have known for fifteen years. Every time he curls up next to me, I pet him very gently and tell him it is okay if he is ready to go. I am not going to stress him out with a trip to the vet, for a vain struggle against the natural and inevitable end. But when he puts himself across my collarbone, in the position he has insisted on since the week we adopted him, I often feel the kitten he was, and wonder whether he knows and whether he is scared. This is absolutely the worst thing I can imagine, watching someone you care about vanish before your eyes and knowing that it is wrong to stop it. This could go on for weeks or months, and I can only try to make things comfortable for him while we both wait.

I am having trouble compartmentalizing my emotions, between the separation anxiety over the old man, and the joy of having a baby in the house who has so many of the old man's personality traits. She is ready to be his successor as leader of the pack, and I feel guilty over him seeing her in action. I took her to the shelter today, for the same old reason, and this time there was light at the end of the tunnel. The foster program leader has taken to actually showing me the test kits (which I appreciate), and she showed where the culture did not turn red in the presence of the fungus, although it will be a few days before we will be absolutely certain the result is a true negative. The kitten is a chunky four pounds now, double the weight minimum for getting spayed. Once she is cleared for surgery, I can officially adopt her and stop torturing her with the car rides too.

I had so many photos yesterday from the trip to the plantation, that I didn't put up the couple I took here. Every time I think the weather is turning perfect for me to get back outside, I see more of the orb-weavers who scare the bejeezus out of me and keep me inside. My lawn looked like I had already decorated for Halloween yesterday morning, between black cats in the windows, a broken and bloody chair on the porch, and a yard full of giant white spiderwebs. At least October starts in an hour. I'm not too early to decorate.

Festive

Inspirational song: My Hometown (Charlie Robison)

Today was a play day. My friend (whose job also keeps her geographically separated from her husband, so she totally gets me) took me to a festival down at one of the plantation houses. This was one of those where all the restaurants come in and have a limited menu of small items, and you pay way too much for a tiny amount of food, but it is still so delicious and wonderful you just don't care. We wandered around, looked at all the vendor booths (Southern Living was the primary sponsor), and baked in the autumn sun. We had a blast. My hair still smells like barbecue smoke, which probably explains my threatening migraine. There was a band playing a nice mix of country and rock songs, including Johnny Cash, Guns & Roses, and at least two songs by Charlie Robison by the time we left. (I had only half listened to them until we were in line for a pulled pork sandwich for my friend, when I realized they were singing "My Hometown," and it was done so well I snaked through the crowd to verify that it wasn't Charlie himself.) And of course, since this was Taste of Charleston, I paid four bucks for a single scoop of Americone Dream. Stephen's hometown, you know.

The festival was at Boone Hall plantation, where a lot of the exterior shots for the movie The Notebook were filmed. The grounds are so amazingly beautiful. On the way out, we wandered through the maze of gardens. I must have taken a hundred pictures. I have enough to make up for the lack of beauty shots for the last several weeks. I will choose my favorite dozen or so and put them up for your entertainment. And then I will lie back and ice my shin and wait for tomorrow when I can try to gather the courage to ask a doc to inspect it. Today's slow walk really irritated it.

Don't you wish your yard looked like this?

Punctured

Inspirational song: Poker Face (Lady Gaga)

A tetanus shot is good for ten years, right?

This has not been my day. I had promised my training taskmaster that I would start the day at water aerobics, and since I hadn't made it there in over two weeks, on its face it seemed like a reasonable deal to make. It doesn't take into account that I always stay up until around one o'clock every morning so I can email the man, and that I have a houseful of animals who insist on breakfast every single day. I rushed as much as I could at home and on the road, and pulled in to the Y about five minutes after class started. But I went in anyway, and slipped into an open space in the back. I was a little rusty, but got back into the rhythm, or so I thought. When it was time to work with the styrofoam dumbbells, I took the doubles. Some lady who was easily ten or fifteen years older than me asked me if I was sure, since they are harder. I smiled and said yes, instead of giving her the "what do you take me for" angry look I wanted to give. I thought I was keeping up nicely, showing how much my muscles had developed. At one point we did a fly move that was a little awkward after the difficult shoulder work yesterday, and my movement was a little ungraceful. I readjusted so my shoulders didn't pinch. It was that moment the instructor looked at me and asked whether I needed smaller dumbbells. Again, I tried not to make angry face and just said no.

The little things around the house are testing me as well. Saturdays are supposed to be "steak day" on the training diet. I bought the steak two days ago, when I finally stocked up after the trip. I think if I had waited just until supper tonight, it would have been too far. It was just on the edge of going bad at midday. I listened to the football game on the Internet, and I'm glad I only had to hear it rather than watch. It was awful. Last year's Buffaloes made a reappearance. As the game was finally winding down, I surfed Pinterest, and saw some exercises that substitute for squats by lying against a wall with the feet in the air. (Squats are still out from an injury to my shin from weeks ago. Hurt badly today.) I hadn't finished unfurling the yoga mat before the kitten was clawing and chewing it up. Why did I imagine that I could do any floor exercises in the animal house? I was swarmed by six furry bodies.

Last night I promised friends who commented on Facebook that I would go outside and take photos while it was still daylight, since I've had so few from around the Park in the last couple months. I took the iPad while the phone was on the charger, and with that large device, I needed to squat down to line up a picture of the big red Judy coleus. (See above for why squats aren't my friend right now.) For balance I settled right on the edge of the adirondack chair I made from the old picket fence, barely putting weight on it. It was just enough to collapse the left side of it, where the supporting leg screws were stripped out months ago (I forgot). It collapsed from under me, and I slammed my hand into one of the freshly exposed screws. Now my front porch is covered in blood, and I lost interest in taking pictures for now. I even had to admit to the man that he was right, we need to redesign the chairs to make them more solid.

The summer between high school and college, my mom worked at a first aid clinic. She told me to come in to her office one day, and had me get a tetanus shot. She told me that it was a perfect time to get it, because I would remember easily that my last tetanus shot was right before I left for college. That was great when I was in my teens and twenties, but it makes it a whole lot more difficult to remember any shot since then. I think I got one ten years ago while I was getting immunotherapy? Maybe one since then, while I was having surgery after surgery? I seriously do not know. I hope they last a while.

Okay, here it is, the one picture I took today. I hope it's worth it.

Transparency

Inspirational song: Mr Cellophane (Chicago)

I feel like I have painted myself into a corner. There is a fine balance between wanting to maintain some semblance of anonymity on the Internet and wanting to be a total exhibitionist, or as I more candidly describe it, an attention whore. I want to be able to say anything, open up as much as possible, to paint an interesting picture so people will want to read my story.  But sometimes I have to keep secrets. I don't want to use real names. I don't want to put up pictures of human faces. And I don't want to give up the privacy of my friends and family, whose stories I sometimes borrow from, even when I am prevented from telling all. At some point in the future, I may revisit my own rules. But for now, I am exceedingly frustrated. There are exciting things all around me, but for some or all of the above reasons, I can't share any of it. Most importantly, the biggest of all of these is such a long shot, and could affect my life so significantly, I am terrified to jinx it if I blab.

And so I find myself stuck. I didn't take any new pictures today. I'm still avoiding the outside, because of a myriad of reasons, like the billions of spiders that won't go away until it gets really cold, and how tired I am from throwing myself bodily back into the crazy biggest-loser style workout. So I have no pretty flowers to show off. I haven't painted anything in weeks other than my nails (and who needs yet another photo with my goofy toes in it?). I haven't picked up any new cats or dogs, thankfully, and it mostly left the ones I have alone. Now it's late and the light isn't good, and they're all just lying around, giving me the stink eye for not turning off the tv and going to bed already.

Every part of me hurts. We have been working out like the week off never happened. If I keep sitting here, struggling to write while I'm distracted by DVRed singing competitions, I will miss my opportunity to soak in some Epsom salts before bed. I have to decide what is the priority. And some warm, clear water sounds like the best way to drown my sorrows.

The Fighter

Inspirational song: The Boxer (Simon & Garfunkel)

After a few delays, my fitness buddy and I made it back for a tough workout today. I was afraid I had lost a lot of ground, dealing with the aftermath of the flood. I had been challenged not to coast on my fitness routine too much while I was gone. It was "suggested" that I do three sets of fifteen squats every day while I was in Colorado, at the very least. Yeah, that happened. I think I did three total sets over the entire seven days I was there. I felt rotten for the first few days I was home, so I had to wade through a bit of inertia to get myself out and moving. I did it. I pushed through stiffness and lingering pain on my left shin (that refuses to die already). My little power-lifting cheerleader refused to let me back off on any of the weights, and even dared me to go higher. I did. I may have cursed her good name once or twice while trying not to cry during reps fourteen and fifteen, but I fought through and picked up right where we left off. It feels good to be this tired and sore.

When I was a younger woman, I had a hair trigger on my temper. (My entire family just rolled their eyes and nodded in unison at that statement.) It took a lot of growing up, and a lot of letting go to get to the point where the explosions are few and minor now. But it apparently takes a sentence and a half on the phone with my daughter to escalate to that crazy point. It amazes me how we can both argue the same side in a debate, and yet it still sounds like we violently disagree. We had one of those conversations again today where I wonder who taught her English, because she and her dad and I all speak a different version of it. I hope I live long enough to see her lose interest in fighting over every word. If it's taken me this long to get this far, maybe in thirty years she'll be ready.

For most of the trip to Colorado, I worried about the old man cat. My kitty-caretaker sent me pictures of everyone, since I was missing them so badly. The one she sent of the old man looked like she had just woken him up (likely true, since he would not have been able to hear her come in the house). His cheeks looked sunken in, and his eyes were gooey from the head cold he can't seem to kick. I was convinced he would not still be here when I returned. But apparently he's scrappier than I gave him credit for. He's thinner and more frail than ever, but he looks like he might have finally gotten the upper hand on the rhinovirus he has fought for months. I have some time yet with the old guy.

The Challenge

Inspirational song: We Are Family (Sister Sledge)

Many years ago, I followed my brother to Colorado. He had gone out years earlier, and when I chose a university to attend, I decided that I wanted to be far away from Oklahoma, but close enough to someone I knew well, so that I didn't feel alone. For the first few years I was there, I spent a lot of time at his apartment in Denver, every time I needed a break from school. The longer I was there, the more I built up my own circle of friends, and started my life together with my man and our kids, the less time I spent with my brother. There was no decision that we wouldn't see each other often, but it eventually happened that way. Then I started moving around the country, and he started moving around the country, and we started going years in between visits. Last week was the most time we've spent in each other's company in decades, I think. It was very interesting, reconnecting and falling back into a sibling relationship we hadn't used in years. I thought I had lost that ability. Apparently not.

I remember clearly the day I knew for certain that I wanted to be a real writer someday. In sixth grade, we had a writing assignment, and I took it very seriously. I wrote a pretend newspaper article about an accident at a nuclear power plant on the California-Mexico border, sarcastically referred to as the Baja Ha-ha. (I repeat, this was SIXTH GRADE. I thought that was hilarious when I was eleven.) I was so proud of my story, and I spent hours writing it out carefully to look like it came off of a typewriter. I knew this was my special skill, putting words down so other people could read them. By the time I was in eighth grade, I was already trying to expand my stories, and sharing them with friends. Halfway through my life, however, I have yet to complete a single long-format piece. But I still have hope.

My brother called today, to check in to see whether there was anything I needed him to handle with the condo cleanup, while he's still out there. At some point, we started talking about my blog, and he told me he really liked the things I've been writing. It meant a lot to me, since I've been trying to impress him my whole life. (It's not an unusual thing for a little sister to admit, is it?) He said he was jealous, that I was out there doing it, when he has always wanted to write too. I told him, practically begged him, to start writing too. Our styles would be entirely different, but I know he is every bit as smart as I am, and as skilled in verbal expression. I sense a competition on the horizon. It would be terrific. What better to propel us to step up our game than trying to best our big brother/little sister? Game on, bro. Game on.

(No particular reason for today's photo. It was just who I was looking at as I finished writing.)

Seems Like Old Times

Inspirational song: Tumbling Dice (The Rolling Stones)

It was better than I expected, getting back to the club that consumed all of my time and thoughts last board year. I was able to go to a social event tonight, and relax and just play. I didn't have to network or make decisions. I got to roll dice and drink 7&7s and gossip. What a joy that was. It was fantastic not to worry about politics. So different than last year. Unfortunately, I now have a new concern: if my condos are uninhabitable for four to six months, and I can't collect rent for all that time, I'm not sure I will have the disposable income to do a lot of the best activities that the club does in the fall. (Fall tends to be more social, with most of the big philanthropic works coming around Christmas and early spring.)  It's to my benefit not to go out to lunch with them for a while, to all the glorious, fattening restaurants we frequent, while I'm working with the trainer and trying to get fit again. But I will be sad to miss out on those delicious lunches. Perhaps my income will stabilize right around the time that my dress size does too.

I delayed one more day getting back in the gym. I was nearly recovered from the stomach upset, but still moving just slowly enough that I wasn't ready to really our myself into a workout. I can't let this vacation go on any longer. I need to jump back in with both feet tomorrow.

I did not go to a flooring showroom to evaluate my options for the condos yet. The project manager told us not to drag out feet on making the choices. This is not the thing to say to a girl like me. I've taken waffling on choices to an art form. I think I know what I want, but I could easily end up hating it when I see it in person. It would help if I had a better idea what our per square foot allowance is. This is my best chance to do the right thing for the long term value of these places. I believe that the property values for all of us will end up rising, since everyone will have updated floors, fresh paint, plus new cabinets and appliances in many units. I'm still sad to lose my tenants. I hope they were able to secure new apartments. The kids haven't told me whether the FEMA money has come in yet. Any day now.

I didn't take pictures today. The kitten spent the whole day prancing around, doing a lot of "mommy, look at me" type moves. But I watched rather than filmed. So I have nothing to share but memories. 

Crisis Hangover

Inspirational song: Coconut (Harry Nilsson)

I still have a crisis hangover today. I had a hard time coming back to the silence of my house. There was no sound of construction (or demolition phase thereof), no problem finding a comfortable place to sit, and no sense that I should be doing something more than I was. It feels wrong. I will pick up the pace tomorrow, but I'm glad I took a day to recover. I have had a sharp bellyache all day, reminiscent of the problem that landed me in the hospital and stole the first four months of this year from me. One day of stillness is well and good, but I don't have the luxury of time right now. There is too much to do to get the condos repaired. I took a two hour nap on the couch--no, let's be honest, it took me--and when I woke, I had no idea where I was. But at least the pain has faded to a tolerable level. I choose to believe I will win this round over it.

Today was supposed to be the day the project manager evaluated our cabinets, to let us know whether the condos can be lived in at all during the rebuild. If they came by, they did it while my daughter and brother were asleep. I haven't gotten a phone message or email with a report as of bedtime tonight. This is the biggest detail I'm waiting for, and I'm stressed over waiting this long for an answer. Now that I'm back to reality, I need to find a dealer of real linoleum, so that I can see it in person, and touch it to be sure that it is what I want to put down in place of carpeting. It's a very green product, and it's softer and warmer than tile. The chance that cats or dogs could ruin it they way they do wall to wall carpeting is less. I'm not sure what I will choose if not linoleum. Maybe cork. I would have liked bamboo, which might be okay with the moisture risk in a garden level condo, but I don't feel like poisoning my children or tenants with formaldehyde off-gassing. I also need to think about paint colors. I told my daughter to select calmer, less saturated colors, something that can be a uniform base coat throughout with a few accent walls of deeper colors. You would think I told her she had to wear only a drab jumpsuit for the rest of her life. She presented me the paint chips she selected, and she and her fiancé have been upset with me ever since I said no to the lot.

The club I was so deeply involved with last year started activities back up last week while I was gone. Tomorrow is the first event I will attend, and it is going to be a serious gearshift to go back to that world after the one I just left. I'm going to try, but it's going to be weird. 

Wrung Out

Inspirational song: Comfortably Numb (Pink Floyd)

Would anyone hold it against me if I said I needed a night to recover? It has been a hell of a week. I did as much as I could put together in the week I was in Boulder. I asked the stupid questions, and made the smart decisions. I did things that were helpful, and I made choices that were unpopular. Today was all about getting back to the real world. I flew home, and slept nearly the entire trip. My head is still fuzzy. I feel like I'm floating around in a circle, like the blimp I could see over the Panthers game from the Charlotte airport. There is no more of substance between my ears right now than there was filling that dirigible. I used up everything I had trying to pretend I wasn't terrified while I watched my current income wash away, and my retirement security show vulnerability. Now it is time to reconnect with the ones I left at home. I just want to lie around under a pile of kitties and dogs, and watch the Emmys, and maybe go to bed early. I promise, tomorrow I will be functional again. For now I will accept the cuddling that the kitten and the big boy are most desperate to give, but everyone is lining up for.

God, I'm glad to be home. I just wish the man was here for me to come home to.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

Inspirational song: Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Monty Python)

So, the other shoe dropped today. And it must have fallen from way up high, for the crater it made. I had been afraid to believe how good our luck was, when the cleanup crew was so wonderful, and our insurance policy was so comprehensive. I was right to have reservations. It's great to have all the flooring replaced, and to lose the hideous countertop in my younger daughter's condo (I finally got a photo to show) because the base cabinets have to come out. It's super lucky that the kitchen flooring is covered in my older girl's place because it lit the moisture meter up like a Christmas tree while my brother and I watched it today. But it sucks to learn that with the kitchens and bathrooms removed (or even just one of them), the places become legally uninhabitable, and now the kids have to find alternate lodging for three to six months. Let me expand on that: the kids and their assembled six cats and one dog have to find a short-term rental in a disaster area where many of the short-term rentals have already been taken, and only the predatory landlords remain. And did I mention that my older daughter killed the engines in both her car and the beater truck her daddy stores in Boulder to take up in the mountains, over the course of the summer? So going into the nearby communities like Superior or Louisville becomes problematic. We lost the tenants in both units because of this disaster too. Both roommates have to find alternate situations as well. In short, this blows.

The restoration crew spent the entire day at the younger daughter's place, cutting out all the drywall along the bottom two feet, and all the baseboards, door moldings and doors have been removed. It is so weird to walk through there now. We laughed at how there is zero privacy in the bathroom now that you can see in from everywhere, especially from the spare bedroom closet. One of the men said it was like someone took the concept of public bathroom stalls to the extreme. We heard glass break a couple times while the crew was there, but no one ever came to us and said they knocked something over. When we inspected, we couldn't figure out what it might have been. I keep telling my daughter not to stress over the few furnishings and items she lost, compared to all the people two buildings over. One of them even had two pianos float away.

My brother and I caught the attention of the crew leader (who we would all love to take out for a thank-you drink), and asked her to moisture test our garage, so we could declare it dry and fill it all the way. We also had her double-check a few spots in the less-damaged unit, and I'm rather crushed by what she found. She has to send her people back in to take the spare bedroom wall, and while it's great she found so much water that the cheap vinyl in the kitchen will be replaced on insurance's dime, not ours, learning that the cabinets there were doomed just pulled the rug out from under me. I had been counting on one of the units being livable. Ever since then, I have been in shock.

I took my brother out for one last dinner, to a Mexican restaurant near the complex. He has promised me that he will be there to help the girls, and in his mind, he has already moved back to the front range. It's just a matter of getting all of his belongings out as well. As we were leaving, and he was once again marveling at the sight of the mountain view from our little valley, he pointed out the gorgeous sunset. It was a nice way to say goodbye for now, and a reminder that tomorrow will be a whole new day. I'll think about it all tomorrow.

Maybe Things Will Get a Little Better in the Mornin'

Inspirational song: Boney Fingers (Hoyt Axton)

Today was not the easiest day of this crisis. Tensions are starting to run high, and living in all the disarray is frying everyone's nerves. We are starting to pick fights and get tired of everyone else's shit, to be perfectly frank. We focused mostly on emptying the units, so the most amazing restoration crew in town can get inside and start cutting out the drywall in the more flooded unit. That means packing up box after box of manga books (Japanese graphic novel series, for those who don't know), and trying to play three-dimensional Tetris in the one single car garage we have available for both units. The boxes my younger daughter bought for the books are the medium moving variety, far too large for book boxes, unless one has the lifting prowess of Lou Ferrigno in his prime. The cleaning crew focused on the back corner unit of our building, where I understand flood water was over a foot deep. I think it might explain why the damage was worst in our two spare bedrooms, one on either side of their unit, where we had common walls. Their front door faced the flooded culvert, where ours faced away. The sad part is, when the floods first started, the girls all went back there to help clear the patio drain, like they had to do on their own, and they thought they had totally saved the day, until the big surge came.

I walked with my older daughter and her dog, and got a clearer look at the lower units, where she had run off to answer screams for help after clearing the drains up here. The waterline on some of the exterior walls I could see was between three and four feet up, and there was another building even farther down the hill where it was worse. It was in that worse building where she had been among a crew trying to save a woman trapped in her apartment. The water was almost four feet deep outside, and when they managed to pry open the door, water came out from a foot or more higher, in a big wall. This woman handed out her dog first, and refused to come out without her other dog. The people had to physically remove the woman, and my girl restrained her from going back in after the dog and risking more lives. All of them then ran up to an upper unit balcony, where they were later rescued by a ladder truck that was parked on the main street, with the ladder horizontal across the berm. (I watched this rescue on the Internet, and my brother saw it on national news, neither of us knowing that my daughter was in that group.) One of the women I saw on the rescue truck was favoring her right hand, and I learned later she had it slammed into the door when the water pushed it against her. It was that moment that the group refused to let the woman stall further wanting her dog to be rescued. When we found out on Tuesday that the dog did not die, my older daughter was so relieved. He had been found the next day, in the bedroom, floating on a mattress, confused but unharmed.

Tonight we are dealing with another hand injury. My future son in law went to work tonight, and ended up having two of his fingers smashed. So instead of coming right back with the cleaning supplies I'd requested, my younger daughter took him to the ER to get an X-ray. He has a hairline fracture in his middle finger that should heal well enough, provided he doesn't lift heavy boxes or put a lot of torque on the injured digit. So that will make the next few days interesting. I'm glad my brother is sticking around a few days after I leave, to make sure the packing out is concluded appropriately.

I read something I missed at the meeting last night: if the base cabinets in the kitchens or bathrooms come out, that makes the unit legally uninhabitable. That would push us back into the six months of evacuation category, which would cause a lot of logistical nightmares.

I think this will be the last set of damage pictures, starting with the scene of the crime, as it were, the grate over the culvert where all the debris collected, causing our local flood.