Maybe I should keep a diary. Disconnected.
Across the street from the Atlantic Ocean, we finally have hot water
restored. The house is odd-looking at the moment, rather like a Western
settler's cabin. Gallons of water poured through the kitchen ceiling in
two days, the ceiling finally collapsed, and the insurance company sent
out a rep. My S.O. figured she was going to get screwed but when the
assessor looked around, she (yes) said "Sure, we'll pay for this." And
went to call some house tear-down service they work with to come in here
yesterday and pull down the entire ceiling, insulation and all.
Someone will need to work fast because it gets cold here early, but the
restoration is part of the service too. No, this is not an ad for
Lloyd's of London, but they are the only company that would insure this
place because we are so close to the Ocean.
We never lost our lights. But we lost our furnace and hot water twice.
The second time water flooded the basement and knocked out the regulator
device on the hot water heater. We were taking showers at my SO's
mother's house.
The animals were terrified. When the rain kept raining every day and
pieces of the ceiling began dropping, the dog drooped his tail and he
spent a lot of the next two days flopped out on the bed looking very
unhappy. Animals do not happily tolerate changes to their environment,
especially when they see their humans freaking out, albeit somewhat
quietly. The cats, rather than drooping around, went into Krazy Kat
mode. Sleep in daylight, yes; but at night have three-way brawls,
door-scratching contests, and concertos of screeches. No one hit anyone
with a brick.
We have varying opinions of what started this. One suggestion: global
warming. Who knows? Shit happens. I can't blame Bush for this one,
though Karl Rove sounds like an increasingly good candidate (Jersey went
for Kerry). My SO's is the most picturesque and mystical theory: that
she held the door at the post office for Russian Orthodox priest who is
Abbot of a nearby monastery. "Everything went into the shitter after
that priest blessed me for holding a *&R# door!" I suggested calling
one of the Roman Catholic seminaries in Rome itself where they are
training exorcists (no kidding) so he could exorcise the Orthodox
monastery and we could start some battle-for-Hell update to the Polish
scene in Boris Godunov, i.e., Jesuits vs. Orthodox.
Thursday I'd scheduled as a vacation day for medical reasons. Wednesday
night I found out a friend of mine here had lost his 43-year-old
daughter to breast cancer after a 3-year struggle. In the last five
years this man has lost his older daughter and his wife to brain
tumors. Now it was breast cancer and yet another child. She left
behind three young children and a husband holding himself together with
spit and baling wire. So I went on Thursday morning to the funeral
Mass. Her father, my friend, walked past me during the recessional
behind the casket and nodded. I have never seen such sadness in a man's
face. Not "tight-lipped anger" at the God in whom he still deeply
believes, just profound sadness. Every parent in the room I am sure was
asking the same question: "What if that were me?"
And of course it was pouring when they left for the cemetery. A funeral
out of The Barefoot Contessa.
We were not pounded as badly as towns a few miles south. Lakes flowed
into basements, basements turned into lakes, power went out, cars were
swamped to the roofs. My supervisor at the animal shelter was baling
her basement with a wet-dry vacuum, turned it off, accidentally touched
the still-spinning blades, and had her hand slashed up and endured nerve
damage.
In 61 years I've seen intense storms on Long Island, in New York, even
upstate. But this really does seem like an extended, slow-motion
version of Katrina. It extended over a week, surging, backing off, then
coming back at us with increased force. Now the sun is out, the storm
seems to be gone, all that is left is a brutal wind which is actually a
gift because it's drying out the worse flood areas. For parts of The
Shore are still underwater and basements, even the de-watered ones, are
stinking ruins. People who make a living cleaning houses will make out
like thieves on this one. We in this house truly were lucky--some of
our neighbors had unprintable materials from the sewers backed into the
basements combined with salt water from the Ocean and the estuary 300
feet away.
Everyone is just tired.
Ken
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