Jan 15, 2008

A True Test of my...well, everything.


How do you make me crazy? Stick me in the dark in a cramped house with three hyper active children.

The Friday before last, I went to a birthday party at my friends house. I left the house in a whirlwind- a complete mess. The house was TRASHED. We'd come back from NJ a few days before and I vowed I'd clean it up on the weekend. And while leaving for this party, I had this sense of foreboding....the piles, oh, the piles....what if for some reason I couldn't clean up?

Well, the wind was blowing and it was raining like mad already, but I wasn't going to miss Jacks Birthday party....he was turning 2 after all!!

During the party, my friends lights flickered a little and it was getting NASTY out, so, we headed out earlier that we would hae normally.

I was aware as I got the kids in the car that this was no normal storm- not for California at least. The wind was so strong, it was hard to drive and branches were flying everywhere. I'd dropped Wyatt off at his friends house and on the way to get him, I noticed alot of downed trees.

When I'd gotten to my friends house to pick up Wyatt, she was on the phone, her power was out. "We have to get to the schoolhouse....one of the sheds is damaged by the wind."

If you'll remember, my friends and I run a preschool co-op at a historical school house in town. Last year we bought sheds to store all our supplies it.

We came to the school house but had to enter from another way because a tree was down and took out a power poll. All my friends came at once a we saw that our sheds weren't damaged....they were GONE. And our supplies scattered everywhere. What a disaster. We did the best we could to salvage everythig despite the continuing danger of the wind and rain and craziness.

I tried to head home- which usually takes 10 minutes- but this was an hour. I sat on the road in line behind a huge downed tree while they cut it away to clear the road.

When I got home, Matt was home to my surprise. Even his office, an hour away had no power.

So, I kept the kids in the car and tried to go to my moms house- she has a lot of natural light and less big trees. But, nope. A power power poll blocked her road and there was no getting past it. So, home we went.

The first night was fine...even fun.

The next night was ok, but getting boring.

The next 4 nights? THEY SUCKED.

My house was even more of an utter disaster and my brain was shot. My son couldn't go back to school...no power, no heat, no phones....and everyone was crabby and depressed.

I began to freak out. "I hate this house. I wish a tree would have fallen on it." I think I said this about 100 times. I really wished it would just go away. It was dark, dirty, cramped and awful...at least when the power was out.

I could not muster the strength to be positive ad just do what I could to make the most of the situation. It just wasn't in me.

I'm not saying the house isn't totally at fault. Despite our ordering of priorities and simplification mission, we are still bulging at the seams. This house is not only small, it's poorly planned. We believe with some remodeling it will improve GREATLY. And I think we are ready to start thinking about that more seriously.

But I'm pretty disappointed as what a crappy job I did dealing with the power outage. I was like a kid....whiny and irrational. It really got me wondering if there is ANYTHING I can handle? Anything at all where I don't act like a total spoiled brat? Sheesh.

Now, with electricity functioning again, I'm trying to appreciate things like lights (which I really missed the most) and refrigeration. And hopefully next time, I'll do better.

I have to add that last Friday (a week after the original outage and storm), I got the house in order and had some friends over for tea. It was nice to see some control on my part finally. After they left, I went ot pick up Wyatt from school. Upon arriving home I realized something was funny at home....what was wrong? THE POWER WAS OUT. I lost it. I called all my friends and they were out also. Everyone was livid with the power company. I mean, give me a break, we'd only had it on for a couple days! We'd had enough!

Then, my friend who's husband is a volunteer fire fighter called. It turned out the outage happened because a worker was further repairing some lines, but was electrocuted- thus the outage. He was killed.

Suddenly my dark house was a solemn reminder of what was really important. My threatened freezer full of food wasn't much to complain about.

4 comments:

Malva said...

At least you realized afterwards what could be improved about you... It could be worse, you could be oblivious. :) At least the power is back and if you're placed in those same circumstances again, you'll probably pull yourself together much quicker.

BTW, when I read the blog in Internet Explorer, the background is black and so is the text. So I have to select the text in order to read it. Is it intentional?

Carolyn said...

Yes...I may not measure up to the person I want to be, but I uess I get some credit for dealing honestly with myself. (i hope)

As far as the background and text....we have a Mac, and use Firefox, ours is black with white writing as usual...I'll see what Matt says. Sorry about that!

Isle Dance said...

That is so tragic. An opportunity to put things in perspective, for sure.

Anonymous said...

I love your honesty. I probably would have handled things just as poorly.. but what can you do? Atleast you learned how you can handle things differently the next time around. (knock on wood, that won't happen again anytime soon)