I am nearly finished with a job that has been hanging over my head for a long time. I'm finding that I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Didn't expect the feelings I'm having.
For the last 16 months, there has been a behemouth parked in my driveway. I haven't, in that entire length of time minus about 6 days, been able to park my own car in my own driveway. We share ownership of this behemouth with my son, but we haven't "shared" him in all this time. The weekend before Ivan, we picked him up from my son's house, and brought him home. Took him to Florida Caverns for a weekend, then parked him in the driveway. The rednecked rooster ( my husband, a GOOD redneck....yes, Virginia, there ARE good rednecks.) moved him to just in front of our bedroom window to protect it.(the window) When he did this, if I had known, I would have protested, I think. In retrospect, it's probably a very good thing I didn't get the chance. You just never know when two inches might make all the difference in the world. Just "aks" anybody who grew up in tornado country.
Ivan came and went while I was at work. I kept in touch with the rooster, heard the terror and grief in his voice as he informed me that he was "bugging out" to the next door neighbor's house, that the "roof was gone, water is coming in everywhere". He said it took him ten times as long to get next door as it should have, because of the winds. He was able to only get one cat and the dog, and only because they were the ones who came to him. The other two cats were nowhere to be found.
I had a chance to grieve over what I figured was the total loss of my house before I got home, because I didn't get to leave the hospital until the disaster level came back down, and they were sure they had enough staff. I took my time getting home, partly because I was dreading seeing my home in ruins, and because I was taking pictures on the way. When I got home, I first looked through the house....terrible, heartbreaking, but not as bad as I had expected. The rooster is a bit of a drama queen, but I suspect he thoroughly expected it to be completely gone when he got a chance to look again. We had lost 2/3 of our household goods, if the water coming down didn't get 'em, the water being soaked up from the carpet did. Porch half gone, wiring too dangerous to hook up even when the power comes back on, nasty smelling wet drywall everywhere, in everything.
But, the behemouth was there, seemingly untouched.
If you don't believe there is a higher power, watching over us when we are too frightened, too stressed or just too plain stupid to look out for ourselves, don't mention that to me. I know better. There was now our home, and a fairly comfortable one at that. We were familiar with it, knew where everything was in the cabinets, and it was already stocked with alot of things we might need, if we found ours didn't survive.
And to me, it proves the saying that if you don't bend, you will break. I suspect the reason he did survive was because he was on wheels and was able to rock with the winds. (Wouldn't it have been fun to be inside when THAT was going on?)
The redneck was just SURE he had killed our scaredy cat. When he came back to the house, our old black guy just moseyed out the door, looked at him and wandered off. No big deal for him, this wasn't his first rodeo. But he couldn't find our scaredy cat, and was feeling grief and guilt that he might be dead under some debris. For you see, it was his job to lay ON the roof , keep it intact while he held onto 4 terrified animals. He failed.
I had told him he was in the recliner. From a kitten that is where he went when he wanted to get away from all the monsters. The rooster said "he's not there, I looked"
I told him to look again. About 36 hours after things settled down, I had a chance to look, myself. I wandered through the house softly calling his name in my Momma voice, hoping he would come out. He didn't. I picked up the edges of what debris I could, and looked under it as far as I could, no scaredy cat. The rooster was out, doing what he could to the behemouth to get it ready to live in, for who knew how long? I looked up in the recliner finally, and there he was, up in it as far as he could go...problem? He was the same color as the recliner. I pulled him out, clawing the insides all the way, and took him out to the rooster. When he turned and saw what I had in my arms, we hugged him between us and cried. This was the last our two leggeds/ four leggeds to account for, and all were okay. We threw him in the behemouth, and he found another place to hide. By that night, the cats were settled down enough to be thrilled with all the new places to explore. When the rooster and I sat in the chairs with our legs propped up on the bench seats, scaredy did the dolphin thing, bouncing up and rubbing his back on the backs of our legs. UP, Dad's legs, DOWN.....UP, Mom's legs, DOWN. Fun time was had by all.
Three weeks with no power in the neighborhood, no water for about 5 days because the treatment plant had been hit hard. About 10 days in, we got a borrowed generator from the rooster's boss, he had power, and NOW we did. It ran EVERYTHING! The only thing we couldn't do was run the a/c and microwave at the same time. WAH!
We didn't have to stay anywhere else, we didn't have to wait on FEMA to assign us to one of their concentration camps, we could be in our own comfort (?) zone, keep an eye on our wounded home, and be right there to work on it.
When things started coming back, we were able to put them in our cropped living space. TV, phone, we went out and bought a web tv unit so we could have e-mail and the internet. We had our electrician hook us up so we could have power from the box at the side of the house, even tho we didn't have it TO the house. Our plumber had already, in the past, put us a pipe above the ground so our outflow was easily accessible. We just took the cap off and put our sewage hose in it. VOILA! "All" the comforts of home. We had from the very beginning. counted our blessings, but this had to be right up there, in the top 2.
Our only home for 4 1/2 months, then when we got a good roof, we moved a bed into the house. I slept in him during the day, when there was "progress" happening and I was working. Pretty soundproofed, too.
Haven't had to sleep in him for awhile, except when we had company over New Year's weekend. I didn't want them to have to keep the kids quiet to not wake Granny. The house is done to the point that the work left to be done is being done mostly while I'm off. If I need a place to sleep where it is quiet, I can wander over to Mom's.
So, I am cleaning out the last of the "living here" stuff, making sure the "playing here" stuff is in place, and "tall person" ( my son....grow them tall so they can get the stuff off the top shelf for you) will take it home with him to prepare for the next Talledega trip.They go twice a year and have already had the opportunity to find out that IS the way to go.
Figured I'd be SO glad to get my car back in the driveway, be able too look out the door at the road and stuff to the left on the house without walking to the end of my driveway to do it, be glad to be getting even more back to normal.
I'm having separation preparation anxiety.(Like that? I'm planning on filing for disability under that diagnosis!) He survived when everything else went to hell in a handbasket. Was there to shelter us when all our worldly goods were soggy, or completely ruined. My sense of security is being sorely tested. I KNOW it will be worse when he's gone. He's going to good hands, better than ours, because he's going so some repairs can be done. But...........
Xanax is a very good drug.
