This makes me exceedingly happy...

…that this is the worst of the debris that made its way into my yard after the terrible storms and tornadoes of the past week.   My house and neighborhood are okay – many downed trees and power lines but nothing that isn’t fixable.  Many fared much worse.

Getting back to a normal routine seems harder to accomplish not only because I don’t have an internet connection and am typing this at a Starbucks with 150 of my closest neighborhood friends, but because I drive by absolute devastation every day.  It’s a wholly different thing to see tragedy in person rather than see it on the news - especially if it's a place where you spend a lot of time. My friends and family closer to the damage don’t have power and have to boil their water – still lucky.   The constant background noise of sirens, chainsaws and helicopters around my house is just now starting to lessen.   Attempting to blog feels silly (nor do I really have the inclination to do so) and blogging about a brand new kitchen when my nearby neighbors have lost everything feels grotesque.   I was supposed to be having my final inspection last week the day the storms came so obviously that didn’t happen.  In addition, my contractor works with the fire department so I know he spent several sleepless days and nights helping victims.  And you wonder why I have a hard time being assertive with him when he is a HERO!  A hero with puppy dog eyes.

Pretty much the worst thing that’s happened to me is my power went out for a day.   I lost some food in the fridge, my house smelled like a candle store barfed and my delicate ladyperson sensibilities were offended when I was propositioned by a horny neighbor looking for a way to pass the apparently impossibly long night without tv.  Dude, calm your dick down and show some respect for me and, you know, the death and destruction a few miles away.  However he did throw in option of grilling me a pork chop which, I won’t lie, was rather tempting considering all I had at home was an apple and some stale crackers but um, no thanks.  I do draw the line at prostituting myself for food until the actual apocalypse comes.

Frankly all of those things can be considered kinda good – I still have a house that has the luxury of smelling like candle barf, I get to shop and restock my fridge, I spent some time huddled in a candlelit tub and I was deemed good enough for bored sex.   I’m on top of the world. 

Actually, the hardest thing I had to do was deciding whether it was more important to donate large amounts of tampons or peanut butter.  There are some things I would gladly forego a meal for if I had to make a choice...  But I opted for both.  And contact solution.  Nobody thinks of contact solution.  

So I spent the weekend in quiet domestic service (Time to get a smartphone!  And a battery powered radio…) here at the Ranch.  Washing windows, picking up candy-colored insulation from my yard blown in from gawd knows where and gratefully cleaning my baseboards.  I never thought I’d ever type ‘gratefully cleaning’ and ‘baseboards’ in the same sentence but a little perspective does that to a person.

So please pardon me while I try to find my internet connection and my sense of normalcy again.  I imagine it’ll be spotty for a time.