Soup Is Not A Finger Food

FML (the "The Sky Is Falling" edition)

See this?

 

Know what that is? Let me back it up for you:

 

If you guessed "dead, hollowed-out tree trunk", congratulate yourself on being correct!

 

On Easter Sunday, shortly after this -

 

--a wicked thunderstorm ripped through and did this:

 

Yes, Mother Nature, that capricious bitch, must have thought we were becoming a little to optimistic, six weeks after the fire. We've been closely watching the trees in our back yard - where the fire spent most of its time - with interest, wondering whether their leaves would emerge or not. Things don't look promising. Many of the trees where leaves were beginning to come out looked a little, well, droopy. Wilted. Tired. (Just like me.) We suspected that the fire damaged the trees to the point where they might not all survive. We'll know more after a "tree guy" comes to check them out later this week. But if that's what's going on inside the trees we thought were going to survive?

FML.

Mama N and her straight-line wind couldn't just drop that weakened tree any old place; no, she she sent it crashing into our dear neighbor's Brand New Fence. The one he just put up because the other one had BURNED DOWN.

ACES!

And that's not to mention the other huge branch that plummeted to the ground during the same storm. Oh sure, it only took out three of our fence rails in the front of the house, but STILL. Are we done yet? Our house still isn't finished, and now the sky is falling.

If you need me, I'll be over here in the corner, hiding.

It's been three days since that happened, and while we haven't yet begun clean-up, we had pretty much resolved ourselves to the task ahead. We had A Plan. And then guess what happened? Tonight, more rain, a little more wind, and BAM -

 
A branch fell and knocked our mailbox all cockeyed!

More clean-up, more work to do, more money to spend.

FML.

But you know what, it will all be fine. Our house is almost done inside - we have new French doors and carpeting. The floors in the family room and kitchen will be done this weekend, the windows will go in next week, the new shed should be up soon. The siding is on out back and just needs to be painted. The dumpster is gone! The new sofa is ready and we're getting a new TV, too - both of which should be delivered within the next couple of weeks. The fence (our fence) is up and looks really good, and I have big plans for planting a bunch of things to make it look pretty outside...

...Right after we fire up the chainsaws and clean up that big-ass tree.

 
 Firewood, anyone?

 

Escape

THINGS ARE PROCEEDING APACE here at Casa de Soup. Yesterday, the insurance adjuster came to see things. It sounds like he's willing to coordinate with the estimates provided by the restoration / repair company. Meanwhile, I have to prepare a list of contents we lost and the replacement value of each. So, I've been Googling bikes and lawn mowers and string trimmers and basketball backboards and Little Tykes sliding board and hammocks and all kinds of stuff I'd forgotten we had stored in our shed.

Today's circus includes the "duct suckers" (air duct cleaners, who just arrived), and carpet cleaners, scheduled to be here soon. Meanwhile, I have a guy from DirecTV outside who seems to be very busy reinstalling our satellite dish. Things didn't start out so well this morning between me and Parfait (that's his first name and I'm not even making this up):

HIM: I can't bury your cable.

ME: Of course you can. The last guy did it.

HIM: But I will have to charge you.

ME: Yes, that's fine, whatever it takes.

HIM: But the ground is probably frozen.

ME: Well, we can try it first and see, can't we?

HIM: I don't have a shovel.

ME: You can use ours!

HIM: OK, I'll have to charge you $100. How do you want to pay me?

ME: Can I write you a check?

HIM: I would prefer cash.

ME:

HIM: I'll give you a receipt.

ME: I don't have cash on me.

HIM: Well, when you take your son to school [which he knew was about to happen], you can stop and get some cash.

ME: Um, no, I have a lot of stuff going on today, due to the fact that my house almost burned to the ground, and I don't have time to stop. It will be easier for me to write you a check. Can you cash a check?

HIM: Oh. It's okay.

Every time I call them, DirecTV thanks me for being a loyal customer since 2004. Let me assure you, it isn't because of their stellar installation contractors, because the last time we had a guy come out we had much the same go-round. No, we have them mostly because they are the lesser of two evils, because Comcast/XFinity is operated by Satan himself. We can't get Verizon Fios where we live, otherwise we'd switch in a heartbeat.

So I have Parfait digging in the back yard and Ozzie sucking gunk out of my ducts, and who knocks on my front door but two Jehovah's Witnesses, offering me copies of the Watchtower! Fortunately they saw the work trucks in the driveway and didn't ask for time to talk. I thanked them for the copies and away they went.

Fortunately, Calgon is going to take me away from the madness, albeit briefly. In 25 hours I will board a plane, destination Ft. Myers, Florida -

 

where the forecast includes sunshine, temperatures in the '80s, plenty of wine, a float on a boat, and probably no one under the age of 70. I'm going - solo! - to visit my mom and her husband at their new home.

For the record, this little jaunt was planned before my home almost burned down, but I need it a hundred times more now than I did when I booked it earlier this month.  Big thanks to Curt for making it possible for me to clear my head of smoke and soot and replacement value and contractors and snow and all the what-ifs circulating in my brain.

Now if you'll excuse me, it looks like Parfait is done and our TV is working again. Hallelujah! He has asked me to make the check payable to a company name, not him personally, so nice try on the "pay me in cash", friend, but let's keep this one above-board.

Snow Way

WHILE SOME SNOW STILL REMAINS on the ground from last week, it's pretty much all melted away. It's plenty cold enough for snow here today - it was 18 degrees (F) this morning in my carport - but snow is not in our forecast. I believe that is because the Weather Gods shot their wad last year during Snowpocalypse / Snowmageddon / [insert hyperbolic nickname here] and have nothing left to give us here in the Mid-Atlantic.

Do you remember? Do you want to? Of course you do. It's hip and trendy to recycle, and so I will do that here, first with a photo -

 
...and then with links to my posts with video clips about the blizzard's first weekend and my kid making snow smoothies (cute!) and the day before the third big snowfall of the week (it was getting old by then) and day four of being snowbound.

Just watching those videos and reading what I wrote, I can tell I'm not completely over the trauma of all that snow in such a short amount of time. Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

Boots

I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR BOOTS FOR MY KIDS since mid-January. The weather conditions didn't warrant them before, but we've had snow and ice and snow and general winter YUCK, and so now, they need...boots.

 
 
Even Payless didn't have anything like this in stock... though if you plan ahead, you can apparently mail order them.

 

A reasonably thorough search of the premises did not yield the pairs I thought we'd stashed away last year. So, I popped into [insert name of discount department store here - I've looked in all of them], thinking that on a 24-degree day, it should be easy to score some boy-boots in a kid size 12 or youth size 5.

Alas, there was nary a boot to be had. But, there were racks upon racks of FLIP FLOPS. On sale! Because that's what I really need to buy in mid-January, in the suburbs of Washington, DC, in the middle of our coldest snap this winter, with a snowstorm in the weather forecast.

*bangs head against wall*

Of course, there are those who will counter with yes, but hello, it's cruise season. It's the time when folks embark on a mid-winter getaway to destinations featuring warm sunshine and sand and fruity drinks garnished with umbrellas. And yes, this may be true. But to those people, I would reply, must be nice; I'm just trying to get through the next snow day. Besides, I don't think there are that many snowbirds flocking south that we need to replace racks of snow boots - in snow season! - with flip flops. And even if there were, chances are, they aren't shopping at [insert name of discount department store here].

Listen. It's January. It snows here in January.  It's cold. We're wearing socks now. Our feet are not pedicured. Would it kill you, oh Mid-Atlantic retailers, to wait until, say, Spring Break season, to remove the boots?  Or until after Presidents' Day Weekend, at least?

So if the flip flops are on display in January, I guess that means that I'll have to go looking for next winter's snow boots in... August? Anyone?

You see what a fast learner I am?

It's probably a good thing I don't work in the retail industry.

 

Outage

IT'S NOT A BIRTHDAY AROUND HERE unless there's a severe weather event. In February, Soup Husband Curt's birthday night was marked by the beginning of three blizzards that dumped three feet of snow on our area and caused me to be off work for a whole month week. And his 30th birthday party was squelched by a nasty ice storm (though those who came, stayed over, and we partied enough to make up for those who didn't).

And as a reminder, we live in the mid-Atlantic, not the Northwest Territories.

Me? The anniversary of my birth was punctuated Sunday afternoon by a severe summer storm that blew through mid-afternoon and took down our power. And that was kinda fun, because who doesn't love a good power outage? The kids have no choice but to unglue their eyeballs from the video games and interact with each other for a few hours. My kids go straight to the board games - it's the only time they'll ever willingly play board games, but it's like they're lobotomized when the lights go out.

I have threatened to throw the power main one night a month, just to force this kind of happiness.

We ensured a modest level of safety and happiness, then left Seth in charge and ventured out for a fantastic birthday dinner at The Comus Inn.  When we returned home? Still no power. With help from my future arsonists boys of a certain age, we lit candles and procured flashlights. More board games ensued. So did early bedtimes.

Birthday aside: The blog comments and all the Facebook birthday wishes absolutely made my day! Growing up with a July birthday, It was easy to be jealous of the kids with school-year birthdays. No one remembers the summer birthday kids - back then, it was out of sight, out of mind. Well, except for my 16th birthday, when my mom engineered a total surprise party for me. I'll write about that soon. Anyway - it was really nice to be remembered. Thanks!

Monday morning came. Still no power. Curt headed out to work and I began the following diary:

5:10 a.m. Received emergency alert email stating power company has 170,000 customers without power in the county and anticipates a "multi-day restoration process." (!)

5:40. Emailed work to call off for the day. Learned work server was down anyway. Off the hook!

6:00. Local news radio running story about food safety, stating that most refrigerated food is good for only four hours in a non-running fridge. After that, it turns into poison and will kill your family.

6:10. Begin mentally composing grocery shopping list.

6:12. Fell back asleep. Dreamed about my upcoming 25th high school reunion. Awoke in cold sweat.

7:00. Heard neighbor's (LOUD) generator turn on. Interpreted this as aggressive taunting. Had unkind thoughts.

7:30. Gave the finger to mandatory water restrictions and took a shower. Shaved legs in the dark. Allowed hair to air-dry into hideous frizz.

8:00 a.m. Lovely morning on the patio. Fashioned a makeshift camp stove out of canned camp heat and a cookie rack. Boiled water for tea. Feeling very Laura Ingalls.

8:15. Peezer's daycare center is also without power. The planets have aligned for an at-home day with mom.

9:00. Now 18 hours since outage began. Discarded most of refrigerator contents. It needed to be purged anyway.

9:20. Peezer woke up. Wants to play computer. Settled for playing Legos with me on the patio.

9:30. Neighbor's generator went off. Aaaah - quiet.

9:40. Salvaged a refrigerated pizza dough and some cheese from the fridge. Opened can of tomato sauce. Assembled pizza and cooked it on the gas grill. Breakfast of champions.

10:00. Ambulance pulled into generator-neighbor's driveway, causing me to feel extreme remorse for earlier unkind thoughts. [Editor's note - learned today, the wife broke her leg above her artifical knee. Needs surgery but should be OK.]

10:15. The Boss awoke. Playing Legos on patio with Peezer. Peace and contentment reigns. Began reading the Washington Post.

10:45. Having grown tired of the Legos, the boys started making a "bonfire" out of used matchsticks.

...and that was the gist of the day without electricity. Neighbor boys came over, I heated three cans of cheese ravioli in a pan on the grill's side burner for lunch, then the boys played mostly quiet games which allowed me the chance to take a nap. Then we all went to the pool for a few hours!

The power was still out when we returned.

Now more than 24 hours into the outage, I started losing my patience. It was shades of the blizzard week at home, except that I couldn't cook or bake or do laundry or run the dishwasher, and the kitchen sink stopped draining because I hadn't been able to run the garbage disposal. The kids were playing nicely, but leaving messes in their wake.

And it was getting dark.

We'd heard it might be Thursday till everyone's power was restored, and there was no way to know where we were in the queue. Curt headed to the next town over to buy ice and some milk. After another night of intergenerational board games, I was starting to get grouchy, as one might when things are completely out of one's control for going on two days. I tucked into bed around 11:00 with plans to purge the freezers the next day.

At 2:53 a.m., I awoke to notice the hall light had been left on. My immediate reaction was to go wake the kids up, demand they admit who left it on, and make my point that THEY HAVE TO TURN OFF THE LIGHTS WHEN THEY GO TO BED AFTER US. But then I was all,

Oh! The lights are on!

Of course, that made me realize that I had to check the food in the freezer immediately, lest it refreeze into FROZEN POISON, leaving us with no possible way to determine whether any of it was salvageable. Some appeared to be saveable. I moved some items into the fridge to continue defrosting.

Then I went back to bed. But I couldn't sleep. So I took a book and my pillow out to one of the sofas and laid there and read until 4:30, at which point the the power WENT OUT AGAIN.

Again!! AAAARGH!

So, I retreated to bed and tossed and turned some more. Curt said the power was back on when he awoke around 5:30, and it's been on here all day... though there are still many in the area who are waiting for theirs to be restored.

Seriously, Pepco. This is the year 2010, and we live within a short drive of the capital of the most powerful nation in the whole world. And it takes 36 (or more) hours to restore power after a strong summer storm?

Of course, the big irony is that our property backs to the power line right-of-way. We couldn't be closer to the power, yet we lose it often enough that our civic association has a committee that's trying to work with Pepco on reliability issues.

My sister messaged me on Facebook, "You need a generator! Drop $1,000 on one of those and you're guaranteed never to lose power again!" To which I replied, our generator-neighbors lost power. But then, they were prepared. So I guess it works either way.

All in all, though, despite the inconvenience and the lost work time and spoiled food and the total lack of control, yesterday was a day to slow down. The kids found ways to amuse themselves, most of which did not involve open flames. And they didn't whine or complain much at all. In fact, they seemed to rather enjoy playing the board games. And it was obvious they had fun at the pool.

The silver lining? Our old air conditioning unit was running nonstop during last week's heat wave. So I figure, the $238 I just spent on new groceries is probably offset by the $238 worth of air conditioning we didn't use. At least that is my hope.