An update and a request.

Hello all you wonderful internet friends. Please know I value each and everyone of you and I wish I could spend time with you. I have some good news and some bad news. I also have a request for information.

First we got power back yesterday about the time it got dark. And I have to give the workers credit. The situation was that a couple trees were over the lines and the pole was leaning so far over so no worker could climb it safely to fix the broken wires off the transformer. The first truck that showed up was different than most bucket trucks I have seen before. It has a solid base bed and it was designed with a telescoping boom that went way out straight and even extended as it was over a mobile home the truck itself never even wiggled or wobbled. They cut the trees. Then they backed up and left and our hopes were dashed. Then a couple other bucket trucks showed up with a few pick ups with bags of gravel and a lot of workers. James went out to talk to them as the sky was darkening and one of the workers said they were going to get us power if it killed them. They need to get access into the church behind us, which James informed them there was a family staying in the back school area of the church because they had lost their home. Those people opened the gates and moved their car so they could get one of the big bucket trucks into the yard behind the pole. They used two Bucket trucks, one to push and one to pull and got the pole back upright. They packed gravel around it and then went up and hooked up the transformer. As they started all this it began to rain really hard and I thought they would quit, but they kept working in the driving rain. They called Ron and James out because legally they are not allowed to turn on the main breaker at the meter. Yea! We had power.

Then when Ron went to turn on the hot water heater he realized we had lost what bad running water we had. But they got that turned on about midnight, seems they busted a main line some where.

So we are trying to get back to normal. This mid morning I had the first hot water shower I have had in over two weeks. I tried taking a cold shower a couple times but unlike when I was forced to do it in my childhood I only did it the first time, after that nope. I and Ron have heated a pot of water on the hot plate powered by the generator and did a sponge bath to keep from being too stinky. Since the first time in a cold shower I had no way to wash my very long hair. And I needed to do so. So it felt grand to get a hot shower.

The generator has been a dogs that love gravy blessing that made life semi livable during the last two weeks. We couldn’t have made it without that. But it did take about $500 a week to run it, and FEMA may reimburse us depending on the receipts we kept.

Ron and James have worked hard all morning to get the tarps we have over the still bad parts of the roof covered and we have one more coming from Randy which after I wrote that Ron told me it arrived and is grand, again thank dogs that love gravy. The tarps may save the walls and interior of our home and there was simply no way to get them locally. I did order two large ones from Amazon but the delivery got delayed and we were losing hope, but then they came days before the delay so that was great. Today the sky is darkening and it is to rain hard. Randy hearing of my fears rushed to the rescue as he often does, and got us a large tarp that is due to be delivered today or tomorrow. As the guys finished putting the first tarp over the most damaged and needed to be protected area it poured. They came in soaked and water logged.

So last night after power came on James started moving furniture around the living room. We have a open concept living room kitchen. James took the table and he started setting up my computer system. I objected as that would mean no one else had a place to eat and would only have TV trays for their stuff. He looked at me and replied “ Not trying to be mean but you are so much easier to live with when you have your computers set up”. Well OK then. So he really did a great job. He had been able to save the computers and monitors when the roof ripped off but he couldn’t save much else. He did grab the multiple keyboard and mouse which is great. I lost a lot but the main systems are still working. I lost all the speaker systems and the camera and other stuff. But as I am in the main room of the house and backed up to the wall of James bedroom I am going to have to wear headphones anyways. So he set it up and wouldn’t let Ron or I help. He told me he did not want to pick me up off the floor and told Ron it would take more time to tell him what to hook where than doing it him self so last night James got all my remaining systems set up on the big kitchen table, my monitors, the few accessories left, and then he got my rolling stand with my TV / x-Boxes / and chargers / remotes and cleaned them and tested them and set them next to the table. So I have everything I need … except I have no internet. So I am still using my phone and tablet. I used the auto online feature to tell our ISP that we are still out and the bot gave me the raspberry. So what is next? I don’t know what is next. But the $500 a week extra for the generator fuel is over for now. It cost us over a grand for the time we ran it.

Now to be honest that hurts. We went through more than our home budget for a month in two weeks. But as I have always said before and recently Nan reminded me, others have it worse. First we have savings. Not a lot, and the house will take more than we have to repair, but we wont go hungry today or not pay our bills. We also have James who is family and is stepping up to share expenses. We are hurting, but there are people who have no where to live, and are maybe living in their cars or something. Think of the homeless that went hopefully to shelters (because the ones that didn’t died, this storm was that deadly) and have nothing left and no ability to move forward.

Now for my request. I got used to handling WordPress from the Chrome browser and struggled to adapt when things on that changed too much. I spent over an hour this morning trying to figure out how to make a post either through Chrome or with the WordPress app I have been using for comments and other things. It is really limited and there doesn’t seem to be any way to do a post from it. So all I can do is email posting only. Everything I do is via an email. Very frustrating and very limited. Does anyone know how to post from the app or even through a browser on a tablet. Thanks to everyone, a hot shower makes makes the world seem a better place, even in a hard driving rain. Hugs

Ps. Using the iPad is different in that it changes the words you type and I don’t notice. I am going back and correcting the most glaring issues/ errors now. But if something doesn’t make sense in what you read, I blame it all on apple.

Sent from my iPad,
Best wishes and Hugs,
Scottie