A Dragon's Breath

Oh, this retirement is turning out to be an eye-opening disappointment.  It is surely not how I planned on spending my retirement.  But putting that aside, yesterday I was trapped at home.  Now, I am not the kind of person to go run the roads, or go window shopping, or just go for no reason.  I feel that’s a waste of time, a waste of gas.  And so, unless I have an errand to run, I stay home.  And that means my car stays in the garage.  When I was teaching I drove my car 30 minutes one way to work, 5 days a week.  Now that I’m retired, I might drive it one day a week but only for a 10-min trip.  So my car doesn’t get used much, and it doesn’t charge up the battery like it should, and sure enough.  Yesterday, my car wouldn’t start.  Between the low driving and the extreme cold, the battery died.  And so there I was — stuck.

I really didn’t have anything to do.  My plan had been just to take my car out for a ride, to try to charge up the battery some.  But that battery out-smarted me.  It died.  And I couldn’t go anywhere.  And suddenly, I felt trapped.  My car is 9 years old, and already has some problems with it.  I had told my husband that when it died, that was it.  We wouldn’t replace it.  I was retired, what would I need with a new car?  The few times I needed a car, I could just drive hubby to work and use his truck.  But here I was, feeling trapped at my house just because the battery is dead.  I’m so used to being independent.  I must not be ready to give that up yet.

But to the point.  I had a dead battery and everyone’s at work, including my hubby and son.  And so I had to sit around and play in graphics programs to wait for hubby to come home from work so we could go get another battery.

So he changes his after-school plans to go visit his mom in the nursing home and comes straight home so he can help me out.  After spending a whole day working, he changes his clothes and immediately starts removing the dead battery.  He ironically comments that I didn’t know where it was, but there is a battery charger in the garage.  Actually, I had thought he had one, but it wouldn’t have done me any good since I don’t know how to use it either.

So I jokingly tell him, “I think you sabotaged my car, killed the battery, so that I couldn’t go dancing with my boyfriend.”  And he just laughs!    He’s so sure that I love and adore him, that he doesn’t even feel threatened by me suggesting that.

And why should I love him?

It’s not like he dropped his plans without a word to come help me.

It’s not like he has picked up extra chores around the house — like washing dishes and laundry — because I have trouble bending over.

It’s not like he has to dress me — put my socks on because my back won’t let me touch my feet now.  (I can put on my own shoes because I fixed the laces so that they are loose enough to just slip my feet in.)

It’s not like he has to continue working for a while, because I had to retire earlier than planned.

He does all those things, and more for me, and does it all without complaint.

But that’s not why I love him.

I love him, because he’s cute and sexy! 8-) 

Those darn firebreathing ants!  I have a ring of fire around my ankle that burns like crazy!

Sunday my husband and I decided that the back yard was dried out enough for us to clean up the shredded branches and leaves.  My husband stuck me to raking, he didn’t want me bending over constantly and hurting my back.  He even bought a plastic rake so that it would be lighter than the metal ones we had.  I don’t know about being lighter; it seemed the same weight to me.  But the plastic one was easier to use.  Leaves get pierced by the metal fronds of the metal rakes, and you spend more time clearing the leaves off the rake than raking.

So I raked the leaves away from the fence, to allow more water to drain out of the yard.  The center of the yard where our river forms was still slushy.  At one point, I was going to rake “faster”.  Everything is a snail’s pace with me.  And so I brushed those leaves back and they covered my foot.  Next thing I knew I had those darn firebreathing red ants crawling on my left ankle.  And of course that’s my bad side.  I can’t even reach down and touch that foot anymore.  I had to wait for Tommy to come brush the ants off me.  By then it was too late.  They had eaten their lunch all around my ankle.

This is three days later, and the ant bites are still itchy.  Normally, I’m not bothered by ant bites, but I guess because there was so many, they bother me.  Something about more in numbers, eh?  If I can keep my ankle from rubbing against anything — like socks or my blankets at night — it doesn’t itch.  So I’m barefoot most of the time.

But I’m useless.  I can’t even brush ants off of me.

Last week I decided to make homemade lasagna.  So I had to stand at the stove to make the meat sauce and boil the noodles, and then stack the lasagna in the pan.  By the time I finished with that, my back was killing me.  It was like jelly when I propped my back up in a chair, and could not do anything the rest of the night.   I’m missing the homecooked meals.

Useless!

I’m reading a series of books by Terry Brooks.  I know I have the next 3 in the series.  I found two.  I cannot find the 3rd one.  We had a metal bookshelf collapse, and my hubby “helped” me by putting the books back on the shelf.  He stacked them, and not so that you can see the titles on the binding.  So I’ve rummaged through 3 shelves, and cannot find my book.  There is one more shelf, but it’s the one on the floor, below my knees.  I would have to remain bent over to search that shelf, which is a big no-no for my back.  Of course, I tried anyway, and I could only check out a half of a stack of books.  My hubby said he will look for me, but I have to wait for when he’s not busy from school.    I can’t even do my hobbies.

Useless!

I long for the old days, when I used to get up and go in the morning, and not stop until at night.  I think back to those times, and look at what I’m doing now, and I feel like a slacker.  I’m only 46 and I cannot work and I cannot take care of myself.

Useless!

Darn! Darn! Darn!  My hubby is home from work again!  Yesterday he “made” me cook him a big lunch.  What am I going to do?  He’s home until Tuesday now.  lol

Well, Isaac is gone out of the area.  It’s a nice sunny day this morning, and the humidity is climbing.  We’re going to return to those hot, humid days!

My house and yard received no damage.  All that’s left to do is to pick up shredded branches and leaves.  I’m not sure if we’ll be able to start on that today.  Our back yard is still mushy.

My backyard after Hurricane Isaac

We were lucky, but nearby neighborhoods and communities were not so lucky.  There is still plenty of flooding in Plaquemine Parish and LaPlace.  Both sides of I-10 is closed at LaPlace because of water topping the Interstate since late Tuesday.  They are planning to breach a levee in Plaquemines Parish to allow the flood waters to leave.  These flood waters had over-topped the levee, and now has no where to go.  In one of the communities, an alligator was seen swimming down the flooded road — so residents not only have to deal with high water, but also encroaching wildlife that may be dangerous, like alligators and snakes.  Trees and power lines are down in Baton Rouge, with still about 550,000 without power in the state.  In fact, our neighbors across the street have lost power because a transformer down the street blew yesterday.  Fortunately for us, we are not on the same line.  Some communities are on a Boil Water order, because their water systems may be contaminated.

We heard some more bad news.  Our favorite camping grounds (Percy Quinn, MS) is in danger of flooding because the dam there is threatening to breach.  They have opened the gates to release some water, but they may have to do a controlled breach to keep the dam from failing.  We had been planning to return to Gulf Shores at Thanksgiving, but now that plan has been changed, too, due to all the flooding on the coast.

My son did ok in his first hurricane away from home.  Yay, Ty!  My daughter who was out of the area, and originally unaffected, experienced some rain and wind yesterday when Tropical Storm Isaac reached northern Louisiana.  They got no damage.

We are out of the rain, and back into sunshine again.  It’s nice to see the sunshine, but for those without power, it’s a mixed blessing.  Temps are rising into the 90′s, and it’s very humid.

Oh! and in spite of all this, I now receive a Jury summons!  Yay, me. 

Good morning, it’s about 4 am here, Thursday morning.  Yesterday we lost power about 1 pm.  Of course we were ready for this.  Gustav taught us to be ready.  We were ready thing, but Gustav took our power for 13 days.  So this time, we made sure to be ready for the long haul, making sure we would be able to cook, be safe in the dark with lights and such, and have amenities such as Internet, air conditioning, to keep us occupied.  But we were fortunate that Entergy got its act together.  We got our power back within about 8 hours.  And Isaac is no longer a hurricane.  It is still packing rain, and moving very slowly about 5 mph.  It arrived near Baton Rouge yesterday afternoon, but it (the eye) is still in our area.  It is too dark right now for me to see outside.  Yesterday my back yard had started growing a river, and by supper time, it looked like it might be forming a lake.  It didn’t even form a lake during Gustav 4 years ago, so this would be a concern.  We’ll have to check better for damage, but I don’t believe we lost even one shingle from the roof this time.  This speaks for the great handiwork of our roofing crew that replaced our roof during Gustav.

Now to be fair, I don’t want you to think that I’m some unreasonable, stressed out maniac who is impatient with Entergy.  In the time of Gustav, there were LOTS of trees down, including 5 in my backyard.  These took out power all over town, and southeastern Louisiana.  Everywhere you looked, trees and branches/limbs on everything.  We knew power restoration would take a long time.  Our neighbors across the street from us got their power back within 2 days.  Our side of the street took 13– because we were forgotten!  That was THE word from the foreman that showed up on the 12th day with his crew.  Up until then  we had not seen one Entergy truck in our neighborhood.  AT&T came twice to try to fix their phone lines, and we saw COX cable a few times, but they couldn’t do anything until the power was restored.  AT&T and COX, and a passing fire truck, made reports to Entergy for us, but we were forgotten!  Finally they showed up on the 12th day, a Friday, about 3 pm.  And here’s a picture of them:

In the first picture you see part of the crew standing around our back fences.  The second picture is some of the crew around our side fence where one of their poles had fallen in the next yard.  You don’t see them doing much of anything, because they didn’t!  Basically for an hour they just stood around.  In the second picture, the guy in the yellow vest is the foreman that told us we had been forgotten and apologized.  We could accept the being forgotten.  There were alot of trees down, and much work for them to do.  But then he told us:  We’re sorry but it’s going to be one more day.  It’s too late in the day to be climbing poles.

Too late!  It was only about 4 pm.  Maybe they couldn’t climb poles, but they could start clearing the debris.  We had started the clearing for them.  We had already hired tree cutters to cut our 5 trees and move the parts to the front.  They just were not allowed to touch the parts of the branches that had wires tangled in them, which was outside my fence anyway, in Entergy’s right-of-way.  So Entergy could have started cutting out their wires and removing that debris to prepare for “tomorrow”, but they didn’t.  They just left.

And I have you know that about 7 pm the same night our across-the-street neighbors lost power again because a branch fell across their lines.  And SOMEONE climbed the pole at 7 pm to flip the transformer BACK ON!

So this is why we have a grudge against the LAZY workers of Entergy.  Maybe these people don’t work for them anymore.  But that’s what we experienced during Gustav.

On Saturday morning, they didn’t even return.  Instead they sent some visiting company from out-of-state to do all the work.  It was this company that restored our power –Sumter Utilities.  I believe this group said they were from Tennessee.  Here’s a pic of their crew working.  I don’t have a pic of them standing around, because they didn’t

So, we are very thankful to Sumter Utilities for coming into Louisiana to help during Gustav!

Now, this year during Isaac, Entergy got us our power back within 8 hours, which means that it wasn’t a big mess like Gustav that took down our power.  We’re thankful to Entergy for doing it, just wish they weren’t afraid of the hard stuff.

4 years ago, we didn’t have access to the Internet while our power was down.  But now we do.  We bought a mobile Internet device for camping, and it came in really handy while the power was out.  That was how I was able to post updates, and let my friends know I was ok.

The inevitable has happened.  We lost power around 1 pm.  Not long after the mayor announced a warning that the bad part was arriving in BR, so hunker down.  The rain is harder in spurts, but it has not stopped raining since this morning.  The winds are stronger.  My back yard has even more shredded branches from the sycamore tree.  At least no big limbs have fallen, or trees.  During Gustav we lost 5 trees back there.  Hopefully, these make it, but we are expecting this rain and wind to stay through tomorrow.  Right now the eye is located about 30 miles SSE of us.

We are waiting to turn on the generator.  It is not safe to place a running generator in a garage or near doors and windows.  With this weather, though, it would not be safe out in the open either.  So we are waiting and using up batteries.  We have battery-powered lanterns, battery-powered radio, and battery-powered fans.  So we are not suffering too badly.  Later when we need to cook, we have propane burners and skillet, plus bbq grills.  So we’ll eat fine.

People are getting stir crazy, though.  Within the last couple hours,  I have seen about 5 vehicles on my neighborhood street.  When there was none all morning long.  Hubby is getting on my nerves a little bit.  He can sleep through anything, including a hurricane!  But the moment I pick up a book to read, he starts talking to me.  lol  Can a hurricane be used as a legitimate reason for going mad and strangling your husband?

It’s about 4:30 am, Wednesday morning.  Originally, we in BR were supposed to be seeing Hurricane Isaac this morning, but after landfall its eye bounced back out on the Gulf.  We’re waiting for another landfall.  Isaac just seems to be sitting there, and all predictions are now saying that BR won’t see the eye until about Thursday morning, 1 am.  So it will be another day of waiting out the storm.

We are getting effects of the winds.   They are gusting to about 33 mph.   It’s too dark to see outside, but I can hear things scraping across the porch.  I’m hoping that table stays put.  It didn’t budge during Hurricane Gustav.  I awoke to the sounds of “someone” trying to open the front door.  It actually was the gusting winds messing with the door.

I don’t know yet if we even started to get rain.  All I hear is the wind.

At least we are still in power, and not one of the 5000 in BR that has already lost theirs.

Of all the hurricanes I have sat through.  This one is the most stressful.  Wait. Wait. Wait.

We got power back after about 1 hour.  I guess it was a taste of what to come.  The neighbors were upset.  They were not planning on turning on their generator this early, burn up gas.  We didn’t turn on ours.  We waited to see if Entergy would fix it.

At 7 pm we have landfall near SW Pass of Mississippi River in Plaquemine’s Parish.  However, some of the eye is still over Barataria Bay and we could end up with another landfall.

Here in Baton Rouge, we are expecting the weather to begin about 6 am tomorrow morning, and getting really bad between noon and 6 pm.  That is, if Isaac doesn’t change his mind again.

About 5 pm here.  Weather is still the same, only wind is stronger, just a stronger breeze.  Isaac was formerly declared a hurricane around 11:30 this morning.  We in BR were not expecting the real effects of the storm until tomorrow.  Just heavy winds and maybe some squalls later tonight.  However, at about 4:30 pm we lost power.  It’s sunny, and we have no power.  Entergy says they’re going to fix it. We’ll see.  After Gustav, we don’t have much faith in them.

Well,  I’m still around.  Isaac is like a typical male — can’t make up his mind.  We are expecting to start feeling tropical storm winds after lunch today.   But it looks like the hurricane won’t arrive until tomorrow afternoon or later.  This lolligagging over the Gulf just means it is going to be full of rain.  We are expecting 8 inches of rain within these 3 days, and more over the weekend.  New Orleans is expecting 10 – 20 inches.  They are predicting power outages to start late this evening around Baton Rouge, so we will see.

I don’t like these nighttime hurricanes.  I lived through one — Hurricane Rita.  It’s scarier than a daytime one.  You hear all these noises that sound so loud, and your imaginations go wild.  Rita had made it sound like it was tearing our roof off.  In a way it had; it had torn off some of the tin strips.  So a nighttime one is not one I’m looking forward to.

EBR finally announced that they were closing their schools in the late afternoon.  All of the other school systems had made their announcement before lunch.  They closed schools for Tuesday and Wednesday.  But if the storm keeps creeping and stalling, hubby might be home on Thursday, too.

We spent yesterday afternoon emptying the yard of anything that could become a projectile.  All my dragon chimes have been placed in the garage, along with my Hibiscus plant that I wanted to save.  Tommy mowed the grass.  This was to help with water drainoff.  Hopefully, it doesn’t get so bad that the water knocks down some more trees.  They wouldn’t fall on the house, but what’s a yard without trees?

I’ll check in periodically.