My City Was Gone, But Not For Long

I got in the car to run some errands and go to the bank a couple of weeks ago, and – knowing I might be waiting in line a little while – I’d taken my MP3 player with me, which I don’t usually do if I’m just running the usual errands. My MP3 player pretty much stays on shuffle.

I plugged it in and started the car, and The Inmates’ 1981 version of The Standells’ “Dirty Water” started up. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I’d go to check the weather online and type in my zip code and the next thing I’d see, on the pages with the weather forecast – ads for water damage restoration experts.

My auto insurance company has finally stopped sending me e-mails asking me if I need to get my car checked out since there has been severe flood damage in my area. No, thank you. I’m just fine.

I know there are people right here in Shelby County, and nearby, and up yonder a little ways, in just as desperate straits as people in Nashville and Middle Tennessee – and in some cases, maybe more. But still, overall – as a whole – we got off easy, here in Memphis, this time. The tornado warnings here that same weekend were pretty scary, but the last time we had a really bad storm like that, I saw debris on the street and trees pushed over dotting the landscape on my little route from here to Kroger. This time, the following Monday, I think I counted only one house that had some limbs on the curb. The north part of the county got slammed, and there were spots of bad flooding even here in the central city – but still, overall and as a whole, the majority of us, we were fine.

But you know, as far as the cities go – in a lot of ways, I’ll always be more connected to Nashville and Murfreesboro and Middle Tennessee than I ever have been to Memphis, even though I was born here and have a long history here and strong connections here, including having had strong family connections here. And probably more than I ever will be to Knoxville. Don’t really have any to Chattanooga, other than a family member living there for a while who no longer does.

But I spent some pretty crucial years in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, as well as a pretty significant number of days throughout childhood and my teen years.  My phone number started with 615 (back in ancient times before there were more than two area codes) for a good portion of the Eighties. It’s almost as much home to me as Northwest Tennessee is.

What a month it’s been. The week after the flood, I was kinda just feeling shellshocked, although I hadn’t actually DONE anything but sit here at the computer catching up on all the news in between periods of working. I kind of drifted off to Facebook for an evening on the following Monday, I think, and got into digging thru old high school photos various friends had posted, after having spent about 15 hours straight reading flood-related updates on Twitter and the Web. Feeling guilty the whole time, because I could get away from it all for a little bit while so many people I know couldn’t. Because they were right there in the middle of it.

Then I was committed to something work-wise from that Tuesday onward, and it was really the end of the week before I really had a chance at all to truly even attempt to catch up on what all had transpired since Monday and the big day of the flood. Couple being completely and totally swamped (no pun intended) with work with the fact that the fourth of the Christian-Newsom trials started that same Monday in Knoxville, which I would have liked to have been able to keep up with throughout the week but there just wasn’t enough time in the days to do so; checking on updates of online acquaintances who have been been dealing with a nightmarish tragedy of the non-flood type; and scrambling to put Band-Aid fixes on what I guess is just going to keep being an ongoing calamity of sorts here on the home front – even if I’d had four or five clones of myself, I’m not sure there would have been enough for me to go around.

So, the flood…

For the benefit of what few of you here reading don’t already read everyone else’s oft-more-updated and finer blogs in Nashville and in Tennessee, the Nashville flood finally got some national attention, though I’m not sure it really would have much if not for all the Tweeting and blogging there was about it. MSNBC was one of the first to give it decent air time, here and with another mention from Keith Olbermann that I think, in particular, was much appreciated by the community at large.

My buddy Travis Harmon – certainly the most successful of the bunch from that wide circle of friends from old ‘Boro and college days – and his comedy partner put out probably the best edition of Red State Update ever, and made me laugh (and laugh and laugh and laugh) and cry at the same time. Many of my personal friends and acquaintances up there have been volunteering their asses off all month, and continue to. I’m so proud to know all of them.

My mom – back in one of the few sectors of West Tennessee that mostly escaped both wind and flood damage almost completely last week – usually gets her faculty a little gift for Nurses Week every year. This year, she made donations in their names to one of the community relief organizations that WKRN had listed on their website instead of gifts. She said it just seemed like the right thing to do this year. I’m very proud of her too.

So many of my friends wrote great truly stuff that week. This was one of the very best, as was this post that led me to it. This was another one that particularly touched me. This angry one from one of our own forced to watch it all unfold from thousands of miles away clear across the country, expressing all the frustration pretty much all of us who still had power and Internet access were feeling that day. And pretty much everything over here all week long, but especially this one. I wish I could list more, and there are more I probably haven’t gotten around to seeing yet as I’m still (always) catching up. But they all outdid themselves on the writing thing that week, especially those many that were smack dab in the middle of it all.

Most everyone I know was okay and while many had flooded basements and such, overall everyone I know made it through and, most importantly, alive and uninjured. I’m thankful for that. I know everyone up there, though, has continued to be almost all exhausted beyond belief, though, mentally and physically.

I still have a little bit of a nagging worry – because I have known SO many people throughout my life from all over and have been fortunate to have made many friends throughout – that news has yet to turn up that won’t be as good. I think I’ve now accounted for most everyone I “need to know about” – if not directly, I’ve seen them Tweet or someone else mention them on Facebook or Twitter or on the phone – and have racked my brain all month long trying to figure out who hasn’t crossed my mind that should have by now.

One friend who didn’t get too lucky was an old college friend and ex-boyfriend who arrived home after a week in Chicago to find thousands of dollars’ worth of musical instruments, studio equipment and gear swimming in his basement. He was prepared for it, as his neighbor had been able to reach him by phone and warn him, and luckily the water damage was limited to the basement only – by about a half inch below the upstairs door. It was a too-close call for the rest of the house, but things could have certainly turned out much worse.

Unfortunately he got hit by a double whammy, though, as he still owns and rents out his mom’s old house in Bellevue, and it was nearly completely submerged. Last we spoke, which has been a while now, he still didn’t know where his renters had fled to, but presumably by now they’re probably some of the folks out there having to sift through and throw away most of the entire contents of the house. I know he sure wasn’t looking forward to the expected hassle forthcoming with his insurance company and was already preparing himself to be SOL.

Lots of teary moments that week, often over the oddest of photos, of all the many horrific ones that were hitting the Internet out of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Lots of times just sitting there gaping, open-mouthed.

Highway 96 from Murfreesboro to Dickson was my usual route back and forth between college and home for me. Naturally, if I had five bucks for every time I was back and forth on I-24 between Murfreesboro and Nashville, whether going out downtown or going to work, I could have probably retired on that. I worked at Southern Hills, so you Middle Tennesseans know what my usual route to work was. To see that intersection in Franklin on 96, and those stretches of I-24, with cars and trucks nearly completely submerged – just surreal.

The (current) Opry House, which wasn’t very old when I attended a rock concert there in the garishly neon, New Wave, how-many-items-of-Esprit-clothing-do-you-have-in-your-closet days of 1983. My friends and I thought it would be a kick to get matching outfits made for the event, and – though they were each made of different colored material and design – we all showed up in matching camouflage miniskirts (with equally matching skinny ties) and just about every color of chunky neon jewelry you can imagine. I think we probably all looked like Catholic schoolgirls, except in camouflage instead of plaid – which I guess was unintentionally ironic, since we were from a small town in West Tennessee where dates on the weekend during duck and deer season ended at 8 pm, because your date had to go home and go to bed so they could get up at four in the morning and go shoot stuff.

So I was looking at the flood picture of the Opry stage that first week, and in my head seeing clearly what the stage looked like from the floor, standing in the third or fourth row in from the stage that night in 1983. Remembering that I was looking, basically, up – since I’m short anyway, but still, it was relatively high off the floor.

Realizing that that water I was looking at in the picture was quite a bit – a lot - higher than I am tall.

I wrote in a post that’s yet to be published that the Opryland Hotel’s what really did me in, sifting through pic after pic as I was early in the week. I know it’s silly, and I know they’ll repair it and build it back. It’s just seeing a place like that where you have a really strong, clear and special memory so devastated – that’s when it really hits home, when you’re having to watch like this from afar.

And speaking of home over here in West Tennessee… although I had heard and read about and seen some of the horrible devastation in Dyersburg, pictures that were forwarded to me of the flooding in Jackson struck it home even more.

Though things have progressed a great deal in many of the smaller towns, when you’re from Northwest Tennessee, Jackson’s a big hub – that’s where you go shopping for Christmas or your prom dress, that’s where you go to the orthodontist once a month, where people end up in the hospital when they have things more severe than the smaller ones can handle, where folks go to the doctor regularly – all those things. Many friends and old classmates live there. I lived there once briefly too, matter of fact.

The pictures from Jackson were as awful as the ones I’d been seeing out of Nashville and Middle Tennessee all week. A main stretch of road with vehicles as submerged as all those pics from I-24. A Sonic Drive-In with water up to the lighted menus, menus that are generally quite a bit higher than the bottom of your average car door’s window.

Virtually almost all of West Tennessee, as well as so much of Middle Tennessee, has now been declared a disaster area by the Federal government. Of my two little hometowns here in the West, one is in one of only maybe two or three counties in West Tennessee that were not. My other home county is.

I know a lot of people who were watching from other places on Twitter and Facebook and the like, and folks from other places reading Nashville and Tennessee bloggers’ blogs – and probably especially people who live in cities and areas that do experience such devastating flooding fairly often – maybe thought we’d all gone mad, overboard with it all.

But it just doesn’t happen here. Not like that.

Not but in a few pockets of the state (like up around Reelfoot Lake and off the Mississippi to the north), and certainly not like this. And absolutely not in this state’s largest cities.

Tornadoes – we know tornadoes, yep. We are all too familiar with tornadoes. Maybe not quite on the scale of, say, Kansas – but we know tornadoes.

Floods like the one earlier this month – they just don’t happen here. Not at all in Nashville since the 1970s – and bad though it was, that was really nothing compared to this one.

So yeah. Most of this state, except for those in the mountains in East Tennessee – we’re a little loopy right now, still. We’re better than we were, but things are still pretty bad for a lot of people down here. We’ll be okay, eventually.

But so much help is still needed, and will continue to be. It was heartbreaking a couple  of weeks or so ago to see one of my friends who’d gone out to volunteer and help Tweeting for more help, because apparently a lot of elderly people showed up at the location and she was only one of a few (if not the only) volunteer that showed up. I know a lot of major relief efforts went on all the following weekend after the flood, and I’m sure the larger ones have been more successful than that one was. I hope not too many of the smaller ones had problems like that one did.

It’ll be a long ongoing process for a long time, and daunting. In Nashville, the potential economic repercussions alone are a little bit terrifying. Not only are many of Nashville’s biggest landmarks and tourist attractions, and other large industries, going to be under repair for some time – some of the largest are out of commission for possibly the rest of the year at the very least, and literally thousands of people are about to be (or already are) without jobs.

And the same goes for other places in Tennessee, with varying degrees of what and how much those counties are going to be hit economically. In a state that has already been struggling with disastrous state budgetary issues, widespread unemployment, and general economic downturn statewide for some time now – it’s no wonder if everyone’s holding their breath to see where we go from here.

Some resources for those who want to help (many of these are also aggregating efforts for other Middle TN counties as well):

• The United Way of Metropolitan Nashville – you can also text RESTORE to UNITED (864833) to give $10 to help victims of the Nashville flood.
• Hands On Nashville – also in the process of major relief efforts for Nashville
• DonateNashville.org - a Craigslist-type resource recently put together by The United Way of Metro Nashville and Cool People Care to more efficiently organize directly what people need and what people have
• The Red Cross – you can also donate $10 to the Red Cross to help the flood victims by texting REDCROSS to 90999
• Cool People Care also has some great “We Are Nashville” t-shirts for sale with proceeds going to help flood victims

Speak to Power has put together some listings of resources for help, donations and more in several of the worst hit counties in West Tennessee also:

• Dyersburg – Dyer County Relief & Donation Resources
• Tipton County Relief & Donation Resources
• Shelby County – Millington Relief & Donation Resources
  

My hat’s truly off to Christy and Morgan (and anyone else helping behind the scenes that week) at The Nashvillest, who did an outstanding job of collecting, organizing and getting information out on the Web through this whole ordeal that week and just really became the central point of Internet communication regarding the Nashville flood and continue to be. I should point out, too, that the website is not their job – they have full-time jobs elsewhere – yet they still managed to kinda outshine the local print and television news media when it came to the WWW. The local media still did a good job and continues to, but in this situation, they kinda got pwned as far as getting critical information out on the Internet goes.

(Sadly The Tennesseean‘s website, though better than it was in the past, is kind of a great big cluttered mess and I really don’t know how anyone finds anything on there. Messy, messy, messy. I’m not a big fan of the Scripps template that The Commercial Appeal and the Knoxville News-Sentinel are using these days, but it’s 110% better than the garbled cluttered up mess I see every time I go to The Tennesseean looking for something. And while I know newspaper and television news sites pretty much MUST have ads on them these days, and that’s fine – it’d be nice if someone would come up with a solution for nearly all of the media sites nationwide where advertisements wouldn’t cause the page loading issues they do. There’s nothing more annoying than going to your local TV news station’s site when the tornado siren’s going off outdoors… only to see the page hanging FOREVER when it’s trying to load via some ad supplier’s domain.)

Anyway, so there. I would say that’s all, but yesterday the floods came back and a little too close to home for me – way too close to home for many of my friends.

Summer hasn’t even really begun in Tennessee and, this year, I don’t think winter can come too soon.

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On a final note – I’m going to make a valiant attempt to start posting again at least a few times a week, if not more. Even if it’s stupid. I’ve been so busy for so many months now and it really has been almost impossible to get here and post most of the time. But I feel better when I do, so I’m going to make an effort again and guess we’ll just see what happens. I’ve decided it wasn’t just because the week of the flood was so grim and critical – it just felt better, being on Twitter more, being here more. So there you go. It might get really dumb around here, but I guess that’s okay too.

If Tennessee Floated Away, Would The Other 49 States Notice? (Bizarro World Weather, Nashville Waterworld, and the Tennessee Complex)

We interrupt this (really mostly unplanned) posting moratorium ‘cos I just wanna say, WTF?

Having survived Hurricane Elvis, the Great Ice Storm of 1994, and – even more up close and personal than I like to think about very often – the 2003 tornado that tried to eradicate Jackson from the planet, there’s not much about natural disasters that comes as a surprise anymore. I’ve seen lots of crazy whacked out weather down here.

But this weekend was like Bizarro World Weather down here. In almost 22 years of living in the same house (and a hop, skip and jump from the same tornado siren at the fairgrounds), I am pretty certain I have never heard that thing go off five (at least five, it might have been six) times in a 24-hour period. And I’m absolutely certain I’ve never heard it blare for TWO HOURS (could have been three, definitely two). Having really only fairly recently gotten to where I’m not practically hyperventilating and paralyzed anymore when the thing goes off, it was better than it would have been a year or so ago, but still – decidedly on edge for a very long period of time.

At the time of that two or more hour siren, they were also evacuating the thousands of folks down at the Beale Street Music Festival (i.e., MudFest) on Saturday night. And then last night, people in the crowd were acting like jerks and booing when headliner Three Doors Down had to be canceled and couldn’t make it down here because they were having trouble getting from Nashville to Memphis, because of the flooded mess this state is right now. Nashvillians John Hiatt and Alison Krauss’ BSMF sets were also canceled due to the flood situation, as was a Dierks Bentley show in Knoxville on Sunday night, seeing as how Bentley was in his flooded basement with a bucket just like most everyone else in Nashville. (Why the Beale Street Music Festival hasn’t yet been moved to a different weekend in May after all these years is beyond me, since it almost always rains and storms that weekend, and either doesn’t rain at all or hardly rains the rest of the weekends in May. Seriously.)

And while things are fine right here where I am in the center of the city, they definitely are NOT around the whole region in general. It was kinda bad enough in Memphis and Arkansas and North Mississippi, with all the flooding (in places I’ve never seen flood before) and storm damages and, sadly, several deaths. The tornadoes that did come through (mostly hitting the more rural areas) were terrible with horrific damage – but the rain itself just gutted the entire Mid-South. It just kept on coming down, and coming back again and again, and it wouldn’t go away.

And Nashville, poor Nashville, is practically totally under water and now the Cumberland, which was 19 feet on Friday, has a flood stage of 40 feet, and was currently 55 feet last I looked at the news – the river’s on the verge of completely swallowing up downtown Nashville. I spent most of Sunday reading friends mentioning that co-workers had had to abandon their homes, neighbors had totally lost their homes, just about everyone I know up there has water in their basement (and rising in many places), and many of my friends discovered on Sunday that they now own lakefront property all of a sudden.

I saw a photo snapped not far from where an ex-BF used to live used to be (officially I never lived there but technically I did), and at first I thought well, we’d have been all right probably because the living space was actually on the second floor. Then I remembered how small the building was and how low those ceilings were. If this had happened 23 years ago, we’d have been like those other people clinging to their roofs or the top of their vehicles waiting to be rescued. (Consequently, that same ex moved back to Nashville a few years ago and texted me last night, lamenting the thousands of dollars in musical instruments, equipment and other gear currently swimming around his basement – according to his neighbor, that is. He was in Chicago this weekend, so he hasn’t yet seen it for himself.)

And it’s not just Nashville. One of my two little hometowns an hour to the west is being besieged by an overflowing Big Sandy River (and though I haven’t seen photos, I’m sure the Tennessee River is flooding the other end of county at the beach and beyond), and judging from the conditions in this photo that was sent to me in e-mail last night:

… if I was still in high school, I would have had to had a boat to get there on Monday morning. That building in the photo is NOT “out in the sticks” out in the county – it’s very much inside the city limits – and really isn’t all THAT close to the river in question, so presumably nearly every business on that side of town was fighting the same watery madness.

Most things south of Nashville in Middle Tennessee are apparently a wreck as well, including this house. She was supposed to leave for NYC in three weeks, they have no renter’s insurance, and they’ve lost everything.

Levees are leaking and breaking all over, sinkholes are developing everywhere (including still in West Tennessee as well as Middle Tennessee), people and animals are stranded, drowning. So many roads closed and it’s bad all over, but Nashville itself has kinda turned into one gigantic lake with thousands of little islands around.

I am old enough that I vaguely remember the major flood Nashville had in the 1970s, but that was nothing compared to this. There are places up there that have never been under water in my lifetime – or probably for hundreds of years, or ever. It’s just stunning.

All of this coupled with the fact that three members of my family were in Nashville on Saturday – and had already planned to stay in a hotel overnight (good thing) – but trying to get them out of there Sunday was a bit daunting, especially when – after hearing road after road after road was closed or closing, and downtown was closed in all kinds of places and flooding, and most especially when authorities up there were practically begging people not to drive, all of which I was texting with every new closure or warning I read about – after encouraging them to stay put, they left anyway. They couldn’t go what would be the usual route back on I-40 West (we already knew the main highway off the interstate was marked as flooded by the Highway Patrol, and knew most of the other alternatives were probably little better.)

It took them a while to get through downtown, but once they made it to I-65 North, things were okay to Clarksville and beyond. But I pretty much held my breath until I knew they’d gotten out of Nashville, and still until I knew they’d made it home.

And Nashville, poor Nashville – later Sunday morning, friends and others were Tweeting that the waters in their basement were starting to recede. And then around noonish – just like the weather and news folks had said it would – the rain and sirens and everything else started up again.

People are going to need serious help to put Nashville and Middle Tennessee back together again. It’s such a mess, but you probably heard that already.

Or maybe you didn’t – because apparently much of the national news has mostly ignored what’s happening in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, as well as the rest of the damage in West Tennessee and our neighboring states. Little blips here and there, but you know, it’s not like when some other cities have gotten decimated by Mother Nature and you can’t get away from it on the news and in your newspaper, no matter where you are.

And it’s kinda doubly puzzling because some of those cities I can think of that have had their disasters plastered on TV and other media for days at a time – the hurricanes and floods and such that have happened in those places, they happen fairly often. What’s happening in Nashville right now has never happened in my lifetime (and I’m getting kinda old, you know) – we have some rural flood zones with relatively small area dotting the state, but a national emergency-type flood of this proportion is just unheard of.

It’s kinda like the (cough) “straight line wind” storm dubbed Hurricane Elvis that paralyzed Memphis for weeks in 2003 – I recall one of our city officials commenting at the time that a hurricane that wound up not even materializing and hitting one coastal city got more national coverage than Hurricane Elvis did. People died, the city was in pieces (including parts of the city that had never or rarely seen such kinds of damage), the whole city was mostly without power in 90+ degree weather for weeks – yet unless you lived fairly close by, you probably had no idea what was going on down here.

What, do we (Tennessee in general) need to switch deodorants or something? At this point – and after this many crises that have gone mostly ignored – it’s enough to give an entire state a complex.

Aunt B. writes about the current situation and similarly puzzling lack of interest here and here, and the fine folks at The Nashvillest have done a stand-up job gathering and providing information during this awful time up there. Honestly, The Nashvillest and Twitter, as well as the Internet in general, have become invaluable resources for sure time and time again, and kept a lot of folks in the loop and informed that would have otherwise not been.

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And finally – yes, there was supposed to be an Alex Chilton post in March and no, you weren’t imagining things. As I kinda said the day I posted the last one (about Doug Fieger), the Alex post was nagging at me so much it was going to make me sick if I didn’t post it that day – and then I never posted it. Because I haven’t finished it. Because for some reason, I can’t. There’s a personal piece to that post that I’m struggling with – maybe it’s because I’ve told the story many times before, but this will probably be the last time I ever tell it. Maybe I’ll finish it and post it soon. Stay tuned.

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EDITED TO ADD: What a beautiful and horrific photo at the same time @brittneyg‘s place:

Nashville Submerged

I’m As Tired of This Woe Is Me Stuff As You Probably Are, But Bear With Me Another Sec

So one of the things I’d been meaning to write about this week was sort of a little clarification to what my situation is/has been. I know (especially after talking with KathyT this morning, and talking with her and Aunt B. and Kat Coble in recent weeks, though I can kind of tell from what Kathy said today that I probably don’t really understand the full scope of all this just yet) – anyway, I know there’s been some stuff going on on my behalf, more or less, and I really don’t have words to express the gratitude and appreciation I feel about that, no matter what Kathy is bringing to me Sunday. When it comes to things like that I pretty much just dissolve into tears and sniffles, I’m worthless that way.

Anyway, that said – even though I know anyone and everyone involved would probably insist I don’t owe anyone any explanations – I feel like I still need to sort of clarify some things and attempt to explain a little, or at least some of what I possibly can publicly, about how and why things got this bad. Unfortunately there’s not a whole lot I can really go into here on the blog, for several reasons.

As many of you will remember, things were already kind of bad and shaky prior to last fall, though looking back NOW, those struggles look like a piece of cake compared to what I’ve been dealing with the last many months.

The best way I really know how to explain what’s happened now is for those of you that have traditional jobs, or have had them up until recently, to imagine not getting paid since, say, October or November. Or imagine only getting paid enough every month to pay your rent or house payment.

That’s pretty much exactly what I’ve been dealing with, more or less. I can’t really say more publicly – not because of anything illegal, or anything of that sort – just out of respect for other people’s feelings due to the circumstances, I am choosing not to talk about it at length publicly. I have shared more of the details with a few, and if I know you, I’m happy to forward a copy of the e-mail I sent in those cases, or they can, or whatever, or we’ll talk about it over a meal sometime if I ever get to Nashville again or whatever. I don’t mind my friends knowing more about the situation, I’m just not going to blog about it on that public level.

But that’s pretty much what happened, and I’ve been scrambling ever since trying not to drown under what’s been a flood of never-ending stress and anxiety and I suppose terror, even, because of all the behind-ness that situation has wrought. All that behind-ness usually made even worse because, for a while there, every month would roll around and something still wouldn’t have been taken care of, so now there was an urgent need to get this paid or that paid – which has meant ongoing late fees and, on several occasions, overdraft fees trying to keep something or another from getting canceled or cut off. I’ve probably paid another year’s worth or more of car payments alone just in late fees all these months, but there was nothing else that could be done about it.

In all the cutting back and cutting out, somewhat fortunately I guess there were a few things that weren’t an issue when things grew so dire. I actually cut out cable a few years ago, when I still had a regular paycheck coming in, because I was spending so much more time online anyway and everything I watched much was available online, I just really couldn’t justify shelling out that kind of money every month anymore.

Same thing with my cell service. I’ve never been a big cell phone user and mainly carry mine for emergency purposes more than anything else. I couldn’t justify all that contract money anymore so I went to cheap and prepaid ages ago, and not only have been all the better for it but have more coverage than I did with my previous provider anyway and rarely any of the problems I had before with dropped calls and such. My mom has used the same prepaid service for years so now that’s just part of my birthday present every year, air time, and I never use a whole year’s worth in a year anyway.

So those were not issues – everything else has been, in any case. My mom wasn’t going to let me starve or anything, and has gone far and beyond the call of duty again and again and again all these months trying to help save me from disaster, to the point where she really has no extra to keep sparing. What I hate the most is that, for months and months, she believed everything was going to be okay the next month because I thought it was going to be – only for that month to come around and nope, and there we’d be scrambling to keep my utilities from getting turned off or this paid or that paid. She didn’t go on her usual vacation last year because of me, and if it weren’t for Social Security kicking in this year, I’d probably already be homeless and she would not be on vacation right now. Then there’s the boyfriend who is unable to work right now and wants nothing more than to be able to provide for me/us, and maybe in a couple of years we will be a two-income family and all of this current stuff will just be a bad memory – but that’s then, and this is now, and now sucks.

Anyway, as I wrote before, after this many months of struggling like this, it had gotten to be end of the rope time, there was nothing left. Have sold almost everything I had left to sell other than the one thing(s) that are the only “family heirloom” type thing that is just mine, no one else’s, that I have left, stuff I mentioned in a recent post – and that may well still go, and is not worth all that much anyway. Well, there is one other thing, but I’ve got to get up home to be able to do that and haven’t really been looking forward to dealing with that anyway (i.e., potentially shipping some things that are very, very breakable) and am actually probably going to make a blog post about it next week – this is something that is not only a pain to think about selling and shipping via eBay or something, but is also something really only a small percentage of people would be interested in owning. I’m thinking with the power of the Internet, I might find that person between now and Christmas and solve this problem; otherwise, it’ll be going up on eBay probably about the time people start Christmas shopping.

But yeah, really, like I said – think about your job, if you have one. And then think about not getting paid or only getting paid one bill’s worth every month since last fall, and that’s pretty much right where I am, and have been.

Other possibilities – there’s so many people going for every job that comes up, and a friend of mine here in town who is in charge of hiring where she is told me lately it’s nothing like it has ever been. Instead of 25 or 50 resumes coming in for every job she posts, she’s getting 200. Then there’s the other ones – the ones I’m way overqualified for and so is most everyone else – someone I know who hires for a place like that put it this way: why would he hire anyone that’s likely to leave as soon as the economy gets better or something else comes up? He, too, is seeing hundreds of applications for every position that opens, and in the case of his business, he says about 90% of them are overqualified, or maybe qualified to have HIS job – but not the position that’s open.

But the other thing is – and I think maybe there are some others out there that missed this, because Kathy didn’t realize it, though I know not everyone missed it because several, including The Awesomest Squirrel Queen in the World, commented on it when I mentioned it before – I actually AM working, besides what I have not been paid for. I actually really like my new gig doing QA work, it doesn’t pay much but it’s steady, but at least it does pay SOMETHING. I also do some other freelance work to bring in a little, and then there’s my other venture, which many of you have been aware of for a while, which is still continuing to steadily grow, though penny by penny, and that’s pretty much literally. It is growing, however, and I’ve built a foundation of what should (unless the whole industry hoses) continue to be residual income that grows. As it is, what started out as a little venture with big plans brought in over a year’s time what would have been nice “extra” money… if it hadn’t almost been my ONLY money.

I really do almost nothing BUT work to bring in what little I do – if I’m not working on one thing, it’s something else, or something else, or doing QA work, all day every day. Sleep for three or four hours, get up and scramble to bring in some money some more. Just been a constant ongoing thing and probably needless to say, I stay exhausted.

But I am, much like I said before, finally at a point where if I can just get a grip on the backlog, getting by month to month again is within my reach. It may require 80 hours a week of doing QA reviews, but I’m finally to a point where being able to get by every month, even if it’s just barely squeaking by, is possible.

But that’s what’s so frustrating about all this backlog that has just been stacking up and stacking up all these months struggling through this and staying perpetually behind – two months behind on this bill, a month behind on that bill, every once in a while three months behind and barely saving myself before cutoff/cancellations or losing everything. That much stress and anxiety is not good for anyone and it’s just consumed me daily for months and been downright frightening plenty – I probably need to be on medication at this point but much like my glasses that have needed to be replaced for a couple of years now, teeth that need to be fixed, my stupid broken windshield that got broken while sitting in my driveway during a storm (yep, that’s my luck) and some other stuff that I have just had to put on hold (including stuff people normally absolutely do not NOT pay every year – read into that what you want and you’re probably right) – well, anything extraneous is just out of the question completely right now. My glasses may be all scratched up and my prescription’s probably long since changed again, but as long as I can see out of them, whatever, and I still have a partial supply of contacts left from a few years ago that probably also need a prescription change, but for going out of the house purposes, they’ll do just fine until I can actually do something about it all again.

Anyway, so there you have it, what I can say publicly anyway, and I don’t want to keep going on about it here but it’s sort of my understanding that several people have been involved in trying to help and even though I really don’t know the full scope of it all yet, I just wanted to clarify and better outline a little more than I did before, maybe. Especially in trying to give an example of what it really is I’ve been dealing with, and also – especially after realizing that Kathy didn’t realize I am working at all – to clarify that I am doing work, and doing other things to try and fix all this. It’s just not much money, but at least it’s a little.

I’m also going to do something that I never intended to do, but it was suggested to me by someone else that maybe I ought to put a donation button on the blog in case there were those that wanted to help but didn’t want to take a chance on embarrassing me by asking, or whatever. Believe me, at this point with things as bad as they’ve gotten and after months and months of struggling and dealing with this stuff, I’m beyond any embarrassment or anything of the sort about accepting any help and stuff. I know some have already done plenty and they’ve done enough, and I’m not going to think anything negative about anyone who doesn’t, but for anyone else who just happens along and wants to, or has, I’m humbled and beyond words when it comes to appreciation and gratitude of those who do or have. So there it is and I’ll be putting it in the sidebar to stay, I guess.

I just can’t really put into words how not only depressing but just plain frightening it’s all been. My anxiety and stress levels have been so high and so constantly for so long, and with a pretty huge family history of both stroke and heart disease, even all the more frightening to be that stressed out all the time. There was a very scary couple or three days in December that I really don’t ever want to relive again, and I’d like to think I’m handling all that anxiety and depression a little better than I was at that particular time, but then there’s weeks like last week, when ’round about Wednesday evening, it occurred to me that the reason I was feeling sick and dizzy was probably because I hadn’t really realized it, but I had spent most of the last three days holding my breath repeatedly because I was so worried about how I was going to take care of what needed to be paid that week. That kind of anxiety.

I just want to be able to breathe again, and not be in a constant state like that almost 24/7 for weeks and months at a time. And be able to sleep more than a fitful three or four hours waking up worrying some more. And maybe only spend, say, 18 hours a day desperately trying to make some income instead of 20 or 22. That would be an improvement.

I do know this. I may not have much else left at this point, but my family and loved ones, and friends blogger and non-blogger alike, and an awful lot of acquaintances as well – you’re all just treasures. I wish I had the right words to fully express how grateful I am and how much I appreciate and heart all of you, but as I said above, times like that, words just start failing me and I just start getting teary-eyed and sniffly instead. So please just know I do. If you’re reading this, then you are most likely one of those treasures and you’re just so fabulous I have no words left to say but that I’m proud to know you and that you crossed my path, wherever and however you did. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I Might Be Typing This in My Sleep, But Probably Not

Thursday was an odd day. First and foremost, it would have been my father’s 67th birthday, if he were alive.

The annual big Relay for Life event was in my hometown over the weekend, and the paper has been publishing the list of donations for luminarias as they come in for about the past month – donations made in memory of those who died from cancer or related illnesses, in honor of cancer survivors, and this year, in honor of caretakers. Well, Thursday was also the day that my father’s name appeared as one of those donated in memory of (by a relative of mine). Not so surprising, though somewhat ironic as far as what day it was.

The paper also publishes snippets of news from bygone days frequently – 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, and sometimes earlier. What was really kind of odd was that 50 years ago, on that same day, the paper showed him and a group of other young men from the county preparing to leave for Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon to attend that year’s Boys State session.

I don’t know. It was just kind of an odd day all around.

I want to thank everyone for the kind notes they’ve been leaving; I could never put into words how very much they are appreciated. There are several of you I have been meaning to e-mail personally for days now, but the kinds of hours I’ve been keeping, and time I’ve been spending lately scrambling around as I have trying to slow down this impending disaster – I sleep at weird times, and when I’m not asleep I’m usually snowed under, and my actual working schedule is usually overnights, so I’m usually awake when everyone else is not and vice versa. Except I also will just (when I’m not doing shift work) go for several hours, pass out for two or three or four hours, get up and go some more trying to get stuff done. But many of you will hear from me personally soon, I promise (and KathyT, I did e-mail you and hope you got it, sorry it took five days before I heard the voice mail, oops).

And thanks to many especially for the kind words about Dobie. He was here for so long, and still my “baby puppy” even when he was old and his health failing, and it’s still very hard to believe that he’s really gone. I have a very nice picture to share that my mom took at Christmas when I had to take him with me because of his failing condition, which has wound up being the last taken of so very many that were taken of him over fifteen years. But I can’t really look at it much yet, so I’ll save it for a day when I can.

I probably need to write some more about all the horrible stuff that’s going on and why things have disintegrated to the disastrous point they have, but I’m not really sure how to put it into words here because there’s really only so much I can say publicly – and for good reasons. But it sucks, because for those same reasons, I’ve sort of been stuck fighting this battle on my own almost, and with no one I could really be open with about the details other than my very closest family and friends.

But I will do all of that soon. Unfortunately a good bit of this week is going to be focused on probably selling what little I have left that is worth anything at all (not much, but a little) that is truly just mine – a few things that would have been, I guess you’d say, family heirloom-type stuff if I were leaving anything behind one day. Not that I’m likely going to have children or anything like that at this point, but you know – stuff I never dreamed I’d ever be forced to part with, not like this. I guess if I outlive my mom (doubtful), there’s still a houseful of family things – but nothing that’s just mine, except these few things it looks like I’m going to have to part with.

It’s not much – I guess that’s the worst joke of all about all this stuff, I’m not dealing with thousands upon thousands here and it’d probably be a whole lot easier to swallow if that were the case – but no, there’s only about a grand or two standing between me and complete disaster. Much less than 2K, really, more like about 1.5. That’s the part that really stinks, that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really all that much. But the problem is now I’ve run out of time is all.

In trying to think things through – and coming to the conclusion there were really no more options anymore but the one thing I have tried for over a year now NOT to have to do – it’s occurred to me that no matter how tough things might be right now, that really doesn’t bother me nearly as much as thinking about how I’m going to feel about it all a year from now, or two years from now, or five or ten years from now – when presumably things will probably be better, but stuff that meant something to me – things bought with me in mind and given to me for very specific reasons – will be gone. And I just can’t even let myself think about all that right now.

Anyway, this week will be busy busy – and I need to get going now as it is, much to do and much to finish – but I’m going to try and keep at the blog again, even if it’s just stupid stuff. Aside from all the awfulness of late, there’s also some really funny stuff I’ve been saving up to share. And I’ll be trying to get some personal e-mailing done this week and next too, some of you I’d been meaning to touch base with anyway and either the constant need-to-do-this or constant passing out cold from exhaustion kept waylaying. So will speak to many of you soon, and will definitely be back here shortly, as soon as I wrap up one big project that has tied me up for months. ’til then…

Merry Merry

I think this is the first time in my life I have ever been alone on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It won’t last – my sister couldn’t leave Nebraska until after work Wednesday, so Christmas for us is pushed back a day, my Christmas Eve will technically be tonight and Christmas Day tomorrow.  In fact, I’m on my way out of town shortly today to get that ball rolling.

Several days ago, I wrote about my frustration and sadness about not really being able to “participate” in Christmas for the second year in a row.  After I’d posted that, my godmother, who I love dearly, commented that it didn’t matter how many presents we had or did not have and that we would all still have a good Christmas and enjoy being with each other and laughing and having fun like usual, and well, she’s right, that’s all true.  But I still can’t help but be frustrated and sad that I couldn’t do much, and what Newscoma wrote the other day about her own Christmas pretty much hit the nail on the head for me too when it comes to Christmas:

This year is a lean, mean Christmas but I’ve gotten into the spirit to a degree. No, there isn’t any big ticket items. People are getting small gifts that I tried to put some meaning into. I’m a gifty person. I like seeing people’s faces when they open their presents. I’m weird.

That’s always been the fun for me as well, at least ever since I was old enough to do my own Christmas shopping.  You won’t find socks and underwear under the tree in our family – well, you will, but they’re the least important – we do gifts that others would probably think silly and certainly unconventional, but everybody gets stuff they really wanted (and some stuff they didn’t but are resigned to getting every year, like my brother-in-law getting sheep in various forms – a family in-joke) and we have a blast.  I like getting just the perfect things for people and seeing their faces when they open their presents, that’s the big thing for me.

And ever since my parents got divorced, my main priority has always been making sure my Mom gets the stuff she wanted.  And I couldn’t do much of either this year, and it depressed me.

As it turned out, I actually was a little better off than I thought I was.  I thought I only had one thing to give one person, and as I was getting things together getting ready to go out of town and kept finding things I’d forgotten about – including something my mother was supposed to have gotten for Christmas probably two or three years ago – I actually wound up with one gift for each person that will be at our family Christmas.  So I guess that’s better, but I’m still pretty frustrated and depressed about it all.

Really when it comes down to it, I’m about at the end of my rope in general.  Last week I spent three days in such depression, fear, and panic about just everything in general that when things improved just a little bit and I felt a little bit better, it was really concerning to me just how bad it had gotten.  It’s a little bit scary to get that far down.  A lot of those things that people will say things like, “I don’t know how he/she could have done that”, things I used to be able to say – I know why people do those things now.  I can tell you for a fact that if you get knocked down and desperate enough, things that may cross your mind, if only for a fleeting moment, are the kinds of things you never would have thought would do so.

But I don’t know, for some reason I’m still here, although sometimes I wonder if the only reason I haven’t just thrown up my hands and given up yet is because somebody’s got to take care of the pets, and if I weren’t here… well, the cats would probably be taken care of, but I know what would happen to my dogs, and it wouldn’t be what I would want.

So I just keep going, but I’m so tired of all the panic and anxiety and not knowing anything every month – how is this going to get paid, how is that going to get paid, how am I going to be able to eat next week, etc.  The car insurance and phone/Internet miraculously got paid this month – which the latter, you know, I’d probably do without too, but without Internet, then there’s NO income at all.

I still don’t know how the car payment’s getting made this month or catching up on the utility bill, and then January will come and all the panic just starts all over again.  Right now I only have one for sure, every month, monthly check coming in and it will only cover either rent, car insurance, or car payment, so that’s what I consider my rent check.  The rest is pretty much all up in the air every month right now, which is just… yeah, panic-inducing, frustrating, and depressing.

But for a couple of days anyway, I’m just going to attempt to enjoy what there is of Christmas this year and put the rest behind me for a little while.  There will be plenty of time after Saturday for the panic and worrying again, so I’m going to see what little bit of Christmas spirit I can muster up and go with it.

Dobie is not doing very well at all and just had a bath today – which just made him all the more furious with me – my Mom doesn’t know it yet, but he’s coming to visit for Christmas too (thus the bath).  I’m hoping hanging out in a warm house with carpet and a bed to sleep in all by himself with me for a couple of nights, and some turkey and who knows what all else there will be, will perk him up a little bit, or at least make what I am fairly certain now are his last days a little nicer.  He hasn’t shown much interest in food lately, but I kind of expect he will be thrilled about the turkey and whatever scraps.  Sure, table scraps aren’t really good for dogs, but he’s old and he’s dying, as far as I’m concerned he can eat whatever he wants (and whatever he WILL eat).

It seems like this year has just been a never-ending cycle of bad news.  Times have been so tough lately and not just for me, seems like half of nearly everyone I know has been going through something or other – friends losing jobs recently, another recently finding out hers will be terminated at the end of the year, others losing family members here right at Christmas.  It’s just all got to get better sometime, doesn’t it?

Anyway, I hope everyone who stops by here had a really super nice Christmas.  Some of you I miss so much and hope to see in the coming months.  In the meantime, I am on my way in a couple of hours for my own Christmasing, scanty though it is this year.  See you again soon.

The Usual, Unfortunately

Here’s yet another example of how rotten my luck is (and notably has been for some time).  I was getting ready to work on a project a couple of days ago that I badly needed to work on and finish before Christmas got much closer, and as I sat down at the computer all motivated and ready to get productive – the power went out.  Because at the house next door, they were chopping limbs off a tree… but had to get the utility company to kill my power line to do it.

The power was out for, I don’t know, seven or eight, maybe nine hours.  Just mine.  Not the house where the tree is.

In fact, the worker chopping the tree got through about 3:45, and had made several calls, but over two hours later, the utility company had yet to come back and put the (live) line back up.  So I called them too.  They finally showed up after 7 p.m., and by then it was really too late to do anything.

There’s something else I need to get done, but I need a large shipment of (free) Priority Mail boxes from the postal service to be able to do it.  I’ve been waiting a while.  I realize it’s the Christmas season and all with the mail, but just yet another monkey wrench thrown my way.  At this point, even though I badly need to get this done, I’m thinking maybe I’m better off waiting until after Christmas anyway.  Maybe people will have more money to spend on stuff they want but don’t necessarily need (which is what this project mainly consists of) by then.

In any case, I just can’t really catch a break lately.  There’s always something somewhere throwing a monkey wrench into everything.

I applied for a couple of jobs recently.  The very next week, both organizations announced major layoffs and a hiring freeze.

I’m very tired of things like having to choose between buying groceries or putting gas in the car.  Or whether to buy food to eat, or buy paper towels and toilet tissue.

It’s too bad I have to buy groceries at all, since it seems like nearly all the things I have to buy that are necessities have gone up 75-100% practically in the last few months.  Some of them have even gone up that much – yet the packaging has gotten smaller, there’s less of whatever it is in the package.  Other stuff is the same price but now, like, 11 ounces of whatever instead of 16.

Seems like I’ve been saying for months when will this all end?  Seems like it’s not going to.

People close to me will help, but by the time I’ve gotten another round or two of groceries and other necessities or bills paid, there’s nothing left and I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to make $1.49 or so stretch out for weeks again.  I need to put gas in the car again later this week and I’m thinking, OK, now how am I going to do that?

I eat maybe three, four times a week.  I know that’s not good.  But I do things like last week when I made the mistake, after having craved it for days and being hungry as heck anyway, of spending a little extra (less than ten bucks) on a spaghetti dinner from a fave joint around here.  Now I’m wishing I hadn’t and had that ten bucks back.

I have cut back virtually everything, pretty much, until there is no more.  The utilities are almost two months behind again, as that’s pretty much stayed for months now – it’ll get paid somehow.  I wouldn’t have Internet anymore I suppose, except since that’s my sole source of income I can’t very well not have that – of course if the utilities get cut off – well, you know.

Christmas?  I don’t get to participate in Christmas for the second year in a row.  I mean, we’ll have it, and it’ll be fine and nice and all that.  But I can’t buy anything for anyone, and just be opening presents I’ll wish nobody would have bought me since I can’t do anything myself.  I do have one thing for my sister that I just happened to wind up with, but I didn’t really intentionally go out and get it as a Christmas gift.  That’ll be it.

I’ve built up some residual recurring income.  It’s small now, but it will get better.  It’s just stuff that takes some time to grow and is going to continue to.  But it’s not going to solve any big problems right away, that’s for sure.

I do some work but there are issues with that too.  Always issues.  I’m actually constantly working, almost around the clock, sleep here and there when I finally crash, get up and get to work on something else again.  It’s some income, but not enough.  Working on other things too but again, more stuff that’s going to take time for anything to come of it.

I’m just really, really tired of it all.  Sorry.  I probably wouldn’t read here anymore for all the repetitive doom and gloom there’s been either.

Dobie is in such decline that I don’t really think we have much longer.  He is so frail and skinny now, it just breaks my heart.  And that in itself – him getting so frail and thin and pitiful, as well as blind – has posed all kinds of new problems, like today when he got stuck somewhere I wasn’t sure for a while I was going to be able to get him out of.  Last week he got a foot and claw stuck in the old furnace grill and I wasn’t sure I was going to get him loose from that either.  I keep thinking what if he does something like that sometime when I’m (rarely as I am) away from home and is stuck like that for hours?

He and the only other extremely elderly pet left are really throwing me for a loop.  Neither of them are eating as much as they should, although the cat is really doing all right otherwise for her 17 or so years.  It takes her hours to eat when she does eat, though, and she spends most of her time in there talking to her food.  Which is kind of funny, yes, but she’s always had this habit of talking to inanimate objects, starting with a roll of duct tape that was on the floor once years ago.

I always was big into Christmas.  I was thinking the other day of how nice it always used to be between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We’d have the tree up and on every night, and my parents had all this Christmas music on a couple of reel-to-reel tapes that were usually playing every night, and I’d just hang out laying with my head under the Christmas tree listening to music and looking at the lights and ornaments most every night.

Back when people used to have time to enjoy stuff like that, anyway.

I’d do the same at my grandmother’s house.  I remember what all the Christmas decorations she used to pull out every year looked like – probably because I was always helping get them out and put them up – even though I haven’t seen most of them in 25 years.  I guess my aunt still has most of them, I don’t know.  I don’t think there’s really anything I wish I had of all that stuff, except for maybe the little lighted Christmas trees that probably actually originally belonged to my great-grandmother.  There were two of them – one was silver and one was green – they weren’t anything special, just aluminum or tin with a light inside, and colored cellophane or something that made them look like they had lights on them.  Probably from the Fifties or Forties, maybe earlier.  They always sat on the end tables in my grandmother’s living room which, before that, was my great-grandmother’s living room.

I’m older now than my mother was when I left home for college.  Have I already written that here before?  I can’t remember.

So, enough joy and good will to men from me for now.  Maybe sometime I’ll have something better or funny to write about, there just isn’t lately or I’m too busy anyway.

I was about to write that at least Tojo has been staying mostly out of trouble lately, but I just reached over to move him as he was standing over Maggie looking like he was about to jump on her (again), and he bit me (not hard).  So there’s that, too.

The Thanksgiving Crab

I don’t remember where I’m stealing the idea behind this post from – I think I read and responded to someone talking about it in someone’s comments somewhere last week – but I was in total agreement with it.

Why couldn’t the Pilgrims have looked to the sea, instead of the land, for their Thanksgiving feast?

I know, I know – I KNOW the answer to the question and the Indians and the harvest and being thankful and land and blah blah blah and all that.  I’m just saying I really, really wish the Pilgrims had done that instead.

They were right there by the danged sea.  There must have been lakes and rivers (and heck, ponds!) nearby.    Couldn’t the Indians have taught them how to fish instead?

I am not, and never have been, a big fan of turkey.  Most of the rest of the usual Thanksgiving fare, I like just fine, but the turkey is usually the least eaten thing on my plate.  Most of my favorite Thanksgiving dinners have been the ones where there was ham as well as the turkey.

And then there’s the dark meat thing.  Put any branch of my entire family together – there was only one person who liked the dark meat.  My father – who’s been gone many years now, and really, even before that, pretty much since my parents divorced twenty years ago, and I usually spent holidays with my Mom and family – there’s nobody to eat the dark meat.  It’s useless, except to give to the cats and dogs (obviously they like that idea).

Post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches (with lots of mayo) are fine – for about a day, maybe two, then I’m over it.  When I was a kid, I refused to eat the after Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches at all.

The turkey was fun the one year when dinner was over, and my Dad put the carcass and scraps out on the deck for all the then-outside cats we had at the time.

A few minutes later, we were a bit shocked to see the carcass appearing to walk by itself across the yard.  The female cat who was, over the years, often referred to as “The Turkey Monster” was a great deal smaller than the carcass, so that was a pretty hilarious sight.

But turkey – for me anyway – just sucks.  I know the difference between good turkey and mediocre turkey and bad turkey – but I could almost just about eat cardboard instead, really.

On the other hand, seafood – now THAT’S a Thanksgiving feast I could love.  Lobster, crab, salmon, scallops – yum.  There’s really no seafood I don’t adore, except clams.  I’m a little picky about fish, but most fish is okay.  Heck, give me a Thanksgiving catfish or a Christmas catfish!  That would be A-OK with me.  Thanksgiving catfish, Christmas lobster, Easter salmon – oh, yes!

So, I think that one day – if I ever evolve out of extended adolescence and actually become the kind of matriarch that is the cooker of all Thanksgiving (and Christmas and Easter) feasts – I will begin the tradition of the Thanksgiving crab.

In more ways than one, I’m sure.

(Although I really would have been even happier if the Mayflower had drifted down to the Gulf of Mexico and landed in far south Texas near the border instead.  Thanksgiving fajitas, Christmas quesadillas, and Easter tamales – that’s what I’m talkin’ about!)

(And no, I don’t know why I included Easter in the above.  Every good white Anglo-Saxon Protestant knows you have ham on Easter instead of turkey.)

These Hands Weren’t Made for Manual Labor

The trip home to lay Schuyler to rest wound up a real comedy of errors.  When it comes to hard manual labor, really I am pretty much useless.  Edge has marveled before at how it’s not just that I don’t have much strength, it’s like I have NO strength.  I don’t think that’s a totally fair assessment; after all, I carry 40-lb. bags of dog food around often, or at least from the shelf to the cart, the cart to the car, the car in the driveway to inside the house.  No, Mr. Sacker, I don’t need help with that, I do it all the time, thanks.

But suffice it to say that even if the ground in my mother’s back yard had been more willing, I don’t know that I would have gotten all that much farther than I did.  As it was, the ground back there is little better than digging into solid rock.  I’m sure the fact that it’s been so dry and there’s been no rain didn’t help, but I’m not sure it’s much better during wetter periods.  I had one of the two old shovels of Dad’s I have with me and then was using Mom’s shovel too, which several times I was afraid was about to BREAK.  That’s how hard that ground was back there.

It’s also one of the oldest neighborhoods in town, although for the most part houses weren’t built there until the turn of the century.  Just about the time I started thinking, “You know, I really hope I don’t wind up digging up a Union or Confederate soldier back here,” I hit something that for a minute I was afraid was bone, then discovered it was just a very large tree root.  Every little once in a while I’d dig up a small piece of red clay and think where is the REST of this clay, and why can’t everything back here be like that?!?!  Between the roots and the rocks and the plain old just about hard as rock dirt, things were just getting more fun by the minute.

Even though I didn’t start ’til well past 6 p.m. since we were having yet another almost-100 degree day that day, it was still hotter than Hades and even when I was STILL out there at 10:30 that night with Mom holding the flashlight, sweat was just pouring down my face, into my eyes – ugh.  The neighbors probably wondered what questionable ritual we were carrying on back there and the temporary state of the resting place may not help that rumor.  I couldn’t dig nearly as deep as it probably should have been, but it was deep enough to do the job, and we covered up the area for the time being with a small stack of concrete blocks to keep any critters from trying to dig Schuyler back up.  We’ll move most of them back later on.

The concrete blocks were a nice little surprise too.  We don’t know why they’re back there, but there’s been a large stack of them there all along since we bought the house.  Nothing else in the immediate area is made of those blocks save for (maybe, now I don’t remember) an ancient barbecue pit so maybe they were left over from that.  I walked over there to the stack expecting to pick up, you know, your usual garden-variety concrete block.  With hollowed-out holes in it.

Nope.  They were SOLID.  And weighed probably 40 pounds or more each.  There was a bigger one that probably weighed closer to 60.  There are now about ten of them on top of the little grave site.  Ain’t nothing short of King Kong digging that cat up.

My hands are all blistered and cut up and sore and my arms are still aching but at least it got done.  For a little bit there I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get finished and didn’t know what we were going to do.  If there’s ever a next time, we’re getting a pickax this time.

So now I’m back home in Memphis and things are getting back to normal.  Three of the puppies (I know they’re not puppies anymore) are surrounding me sleeping underneath the desk and Dobie behind me.  My old white kitty – who would not leave my side the whole day and night that Schuyler ended up leaving us – is snoozing on top of a super-soft winter bathrobe that I got out for Schuyler to lay on that day and he wouldn’t, but my white cat and Maggie have been loving it.

And my oldest cat, Little, who has had a habit for years of talking to inanimate objects – rolls of duct tape, whatever – is talking to her food right now.

So everything’s back to normal again, sort of.  It seems much quieter in here though.

Mystery Solved

Guess who came home for dinner?

She’s fine, a little dirty and a little skinnier (but not that much), no wounds, and otherwise none the worse for wear.  Thank goodness Mom had put up the flyers, as it was someone in the neighborhood that had seen Snow walking past and called Mom.

She now has a belly full of tuna and water and was sitting in Mom’s lap being petted last I heard.  Silly old cat.

The Case of the Vanishing White Cat, or, White Cat Missing in Downtown Paris TN – One of the Two

So I have just returned from one of the most bizarre 24-hour periods of my entire life, I think.

My mom has a cat that I pawned off on her many years ago, having pretty much achieved my limit of foundlings at the time. Snow had originally belonged to a neighbor who moved off and left her to fend for herself, and after a few years of that and never allowing me to get near her, she finally made friends with me. My mom has always been a little partial to “pretty” kitties and Snow was, true to her name, a solid white semi-long haired cat who needed a home, so of course I orchestrated the whole thing and basically she couldn’t refuse, and the two went home together about, I don’t know, 14 or 15 years ago and have been best friends ever since.

I always had an idea of her age because I knew the neighbor who originally owned her fairly well and knew when she had acquired Snow, so she is pretty close to the 20-year-old mark – even older than my elderlies. And has really been in great health all this time until fairly recently when she was having some problems. But she improved and has really been doing pretty well ever since.

But we’ve, of course, known she was really, really old for a cat, and have sort of been in that trying to be prepared for her time to come any time now for the last couple of years or so. You know, you don’t want to think about it, but when I look at my oldest cat now in failing health and knowing that Snow was significantly older than mine in cat terms – well, you know.

So the other night, my mom lets me know (though I didn’t read it until yesterday morning) that she can’t find Snow. Snow has not been outside (nor even tried to go outside again but once, a long time ago) in the 14 or 15 years she’s been at Mom’s, and while she has her napping and hiding places like any other cat, it was unusual for her to not be seen before Mom went to work, when she came home for lunch, AND after she got home from work. And VERY unusual for her not to pop up when I walk in the house as I did yesterday – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So of course, we feared the worst and knew that time had probably come; that more than likely, she had curled up somewhere and gone to sleep and just didn’t wake up.

What we didn’t count on was the cat just having VANISHED into thin air, apparently.

When I finally read the e-mail yesterday morning and called my mother and confirmed that Snow still hadn’t turned up, I thought about it for a few minutes and then knew I was getting on the road. I didn’t even call her back to let her know I was coming, I just figured I’d throw some stuff together (thinking at the time I’d come back to Memphis later that night) and drive up there and find her before Mom got back home from work. Even though Mom had said she’d already looked all over the house, though there were a few spots she hadn’t checked yet that were hard to get to without a ladder and such like that.

So that was my master plan – I figured yep, I’ll drive up there, I’ll have found her by the time Mom gets home, then we’ll bury her in the back yard or something, and I’ll drive back. Snow’s never been much of a hider and we know all her usual places plus the rare ones she does go hiding in, like underneath my bed up there among the mattress springs. I had no doubt that by the time the sun went down Thursday night, she would have been found. I was just SURE I would find her by the time Mom got home from work, but at the very least, was certain we would find her by the end of the evening.

So I get there and unlock the door and walk in.  No white cat comes out to greet me (which was really what I was hoping most, of course – that me showing up would finally bring her out – though I knew it was unlikely and was pretty sure wherever she was, she was no longer alive). I start searching pretty much ALMOST everywhere, though there were a few places I needed to look more thoroughly but couldn’t locate a flashlight. But after a couple of hours, I had done a pretty thorough search of the most probable places in the house and even some fairly improbable.

Then I went outside to look, and locked myself out of the house. House keys, car keys, cell phone, and pretty much anything I would have liked to have had for the next two hours – sitting on a chair in the kitchen. The only possible way I could have gotten back in was through the basement, but I knew the door at the top of the basement stairs was bolted and locked twice because – yeah, go me! – I’d locked it back myself after going down there to look for Snow, even though I knew good and well she couldn’t have gotten down there.

So having nothing better to do for a while, I walked around the neighborhood a couple of times looking for her. We were pretty sure she hadn’t gotten out of the house – there was one single moment she could have, but we thought it pretty unlikely too, or at least unlikely she wouldn’t have been seen doing it. Plus she’s a little skittish around people she doesn’t know. That cat getting out and not winding up practically right back on the front porch crying to get back in – also unlikely.

At some point, I knew what time it was because of something I totally forget about living in the city as I do – the courthouse clock chimed four o’clock. So I watered the lawn and the plants outside, since there was nothing better to do, and looked around for other stuff to do but found nothing else I could really do to make myself useful without certain things that were, nay, inside the house that I’d locked myself out of. So at that point, I figuratively throw up my hands and take a seat in the rocker on the front porch and wait for Mom to get home from work. Once she did, aside from our break to go grab some Italian food for dinner, the search began again.

I am telling you we have looked EVERYWHERE in that house, all places probable as well as totally improbable. I have crawled up in the top of closets with ceilings taller than two of me. We opened doors and cabinet doors that have probably not been opened in three years. After I searched under the aforementioned bed again, we eventually picked up the mattress and turned the box spring upside down and looked again just to make absolutely sure. We’ve looked in the dishwasher, the washer and dryer, the stove, and every other appliance that wasn’t open anyway but just to be sure. We’ve looked in trash cans (under trash that was already in there), toilets, behind and under and top of every single thing there is in the house to get behind or under or on top of. By this morning and totally baffled, we were looking in places a mouse would have had a hard time squeezing into, much less a cat, just to be sure.

We have looked at and in and around every single inch of that house. It’s like she just evaporated.

Now, common sense would tell you okay, she just got out. But we really don’t think so (though going to keep looking). And granted, as much as we love her, if there’s a deceased cat somewhere in that house, it’d be nice to find her BEFORE she’s inevitably found due to other reasons I don’t think I have to describe in detail.

But I am 99.9999999% sure that cat is not in that house. I’m STILL trying to think of places she could be, but I swear to god I have looked at and poked around in and shined a flashlight in every single solitary inch of that house that she could be in.

And I’m almost as sure she is not outdoors. Yes, common sense would tell one that, but you just don’t know this cat. It is so very, very unlikely in her case, but even if she did, it would have just been impossible for her not to have been seen exiting the house by the two people that could have.

We are grieving and sad, of course – she’s been a part of the family for such a long time – but after the last 24 hours and much more than that, we are simply dumbfounded. I have never experienced anything like it. We’ve had a million cats (well) since I was a kid, I know what cats do. We scoured every centimeter of the house, two and three times over in most cases. She disappeared. Vanished. Again – like she just evaporated.

I of course have a LITTLE hope that she did get out and maybe someone found her and took her inside, but that cat is skittish around ALL people but us and certain members of the family – I don’t see it happening. Traffic’s not really a danger in the immediate area – we’re close to downtown, but not THAT close. Other animals – possible but unlikely, besides, she lived on the streets before, she’s not un-street-smart.

I’m just really going with the vanished into thin air thing right now, after expecting a million times to find her any second yesterday and last night, for hours. If she’s in the house, I guess we’ll find out sooner or later (sooner probably). But I can’t imagine where because I’ve been EVERYWHERE in that house now, and beyond. It beats all I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot with cats in all these years.

I wish I had a picture but I don’t seem to have one on this computer, but she’s just your basic solid white cat with orangey-sorta eyes, medium haired – mostly short, not long – not real big but not that little either.

Well, so anyway, if you’re in or around the downtown Paris, TN area and see a solid white cat – please catch her if you can, and get in touch with me, and even if you can’t catch her, please let us know where you saw her. (PS She is a total fiend for tuna.)

I don’t think she’s out there, though. I don’t know where in the world that cat is – or at least her physical self – but I’ve about decided wherever she is, it’s not anywhere in this plane of existence the rest of us are in. Jeez. Dumbfounded, just totally and completely dumbfounded here.