Val Is NOT Having a Good Day

It's a three-day weekend for Labor Day. Not that it matters. The "time off," I mean, not the concept. Since I don't work, weekends are just like weekdays to me. I should be happy, looking forward to the cookout we're having with The Pony on Monday. But it has become extra "work" for me now.

Saturday evening at 5:25, our electricity went off.

It has been blazing hot all week. 103 in town, 99 out here in the country. That's actual temperature, not heat index. Hot enough to make the devil sigh (to borrow from a Tracy Byrd song, "Watermelon Crawl"). HOT. Hick got home around 4:30. The sky had clouded up a bit.

"Was there rain in the forecast?"

"I don't think so. Just a couple of sprinkles. But it rained hard down at my store."

Then the wind started to pick up at 5:00. DARK sky. Then a little rain. Then a LOT of wind. Whipping the rain sideways, twisting the trees all will-nilly. Then hail. Then lightning. The lights flickered off. Came back on. Then went off for good.

"Do you think somebody is reporting our power outage?"

"Probably. But they don't need to anymore. The electric company can tell."

"Huh. Well. At least there's still enough light for me to see my lottery tickets."

Hick counted his SUS2.5 money. Looked out the front door. Sat down to wait for his John Wayne movie "The Horse Soldiers" to come back on. It had just started. 

We got an email from the electric company that there was a possible outage in our area. 95 homes affected. Reason unknown.

"Huh. I guess they'll have to send a crew out of St. Louis."

"Not anymore. They have some out on the highway, over towards the junior college. They'll send a crew."

"Yeah. On a holiday weekend."

"They have people on call. They like it. They'll be making at least double time for the holiday."

"They'll be taking their sweet time! To rake in more money!"

The Facebook page of our enclave had people asking if anybody knew anything. I'm sure they all got the same notice we did from the electric company. Hick told me I could call in and report it. I told him HE could call in and report it! Without electricity, we have no internet. No water, no air conditioning. No FRIG II, no lights, no cooking. One toilet flush for each bathroom. If Hick could get his phone to work, he could look up the number and call it himself. He did not.

Around 6:10, we got another notice that the estimated restore time was 8:30.

"I guess you're not having corn dogs for supper. Do you want a ham sandwich?"

"Nah. I'm not real hungry."

Hick saw on Facebook that people were saying not to take the county blacktop road to town. A tree fell on the low water bridge, and took down power lines. Which meant, according to Hick, that the tree-trimming crew would have to come out first, to clear away the tree.

Around 7:00, Hick went to bed. I was done scratching. I just sat at the kitchen table. Hoping. Sometimes it gets repaired before the estimated time.

8:30 came and went. 9:00, too. 9:30, 10:00, 10:30. I gave up waiting for power. I cracked open an individual can of Beanie Weenies for my supper. Followed by an apple for dessert. In the dark. Only the dim light of Hick's two solar lights on the porch rail seeping through the kitchen window.

At 11:30, I went to bed. Five minutes later, I got another update. The electric company was sorry that they did not have power restored by the estimated time. That's it!

At 2:30, another update. Estimated restore time was now NOON on Sunday.

At 4:20, the lights came on. The AC kicked on. I got up for a flush and some water. Sat down in my OPC. And the power went off again at 4:35! I immediately put my OPC down so I wasn't trapped. Good thing we have that battery backup, which was deader than a doornail within minutes, having been drained by the 11 hours that came before.

Hick left for his SUS2.5 at 6:00. I went back to bed. Hick had promised to manually open the garage door, so I would be able to at least drive around in T-Hoe to cool off if the house heated up. Thanks to the rain, it had been staying at 75 degrees through the night.

At 6:45 a.m., the electricity returned. You'd think I'd be celebrating. I now had flushes and water to go with my daylight. But I also had a whole FRIG II to clean out.

All week, I had been buying things for our cookout. That's because I can't carry in a lot of heavy stuff in this heat. And Hick can't help because of his surgery recovery. I'd just finished the shopping on Saturday afternoon, with two pounds of hamburger. The pre-made patties this time. 12 of them. To make my life easier. Hick had brought home 4 pork steaks from a buddy who had a hog butchered. He was really excited about those pork steaks. Now they're garbage.

According to my estranged BFF Google, food in a powerless refrigerator is only good for 4 hours. Not 13 hours. So today I have to go back to the store, and buy hamburger, pork steaks, sour cream for dip, bacon for the baked beans, hot dogs, slaw, cheese, and mayo.

I am not looking forward to the cleaning out, nor the carrying in. If we had known that the electricity was going to be off past 8:30, we could have gone to town for ice, to preserve our refrigerator foods. Or Hick could have started the generator for lights, and to run FRIG II. 

You'd think the electric company could send out more helpful notices. Even to say that they don't know when power might be restored. Then people don't lose all their food. I'm afraid that some of those 95 homes will be hurting, having probably just bought their groceries at the first of the month. By the electric company not informing us right after 8:30 that this repair was going to take much longer, people assumed the power would be coming back shortly.

Has the Record Been Broken?

Friday afternoon. Friday evening. A phone call for Hick. But it was an old guy he'd been installing electricity for. NOT ONE OF HICK'S HAREM! Bedtime for Hick. Up early Saturday morning. WITH NO HAREM CALL!

I'd like to think this needy weekend behavior has ended, but there WAS the call on Thursday night around 8:00. From one of Hick's Harem. Perhaps she was worried about the long weekend. How Hick doesn't go by the apartments on Fridays, and then with Labor Day coming on Monday.

Hick was leaned back in his recliner. He pretty much just gave perfunctory answers. It wasn't a chatfest.

"Oh. Okay. I'll be there tomorrow. Yeah. It's okay. I'll come by tomorrow."

"What was THAT about?"

"Just one of my ladies at the apartments. She has her dog's shot record."

"Huh. Does she think this is an emergency? Did it bite somebody?"

"No. I just have to have a record of the dog's shots, to go with her doctor's note that she needs the dog as a support animal."

"Well. She made sure you'll come by on Friday! That's your Harem."

I guess others might have seen Hick while he was there. Thus getting their Hick Fix on Friday, to tide them over until Tuesday when he goes back for lunch at the Senior Center.

Imagine, If You Might

Hick sent another picture from Cheap House on Thursday. He can't do much else with no helpers. I don't know if he's working through this in his head, or just doing it to show ME. Because I cain't understand nothin', you know!

Text with Hick's own grammar and spelling:

"This is what the opening from hall to kitchen and living will look like when I get the studs and drywall on it.you can see the edge of the one bedroom door on the left. Picture from front door. Piece of wood on right is just to show where wall will be"

I still had to ask some questions. Yes, walls will be white drywall. I don't know if he plans to do any painting, since it will still be sold as a flip. I don't plan on putting in flooring, either. But the little stick-out part on the left with the board will still be there, just covered by drywall. The water heater will be behind that, and the laundry room entrance in that area. 

This seems like a good area for the eventual owner/liver to put up a coat rack, or a thin hall table. It could be a handy catch-all kind of nook, perhaps for a kid's backpack to be ready to grab and go out to catch the bus.

With that board on the right, you can see how it will be an outer wall of the bedroom. Then as you walk past the corner, the hall opens up. You can see the bathroom door, and how you would turn back for the eventual bedroom door.

Now if Hick's help would only be as interested in meeting with him as his Harem...

Back Under Construction

Hick was back to work on Cheap House on Wednesday. Or at least back to taking pictures. He'd spent Monday and Tuesday putting in electricity for some random old man. Didn't bother to tell me, except I passed him at Mailbox Row, and noticed that he came from the complete opposite direction than town. No wonder Cheap House hasn't been getting any doner!

Anyhoo... Hick sent me a couple pictures on Wednesday morning. I suppose to prove that he was indeed working on Cheap House.

This is the view when you walk in the front door. Hick says it will be a hall, with a wall where that brown board is. A wall that runs from that board back to the kitchen area. There will also be a wall on the right, from that support post back towards the kitchen, and coming up to the front door. There will be a bedroom to the right, but the door into it will be between that support post and the yellow thing. You would walk in the front door, and then turn right at the bathroom door area (seen behind that blue broom), and come back towards the bedroom door. 

There's another bedroom on the left. You can barely see the bottom of the door frame just in front of that push broom. Hick says it might seem small in the picture, but the hallway will actually be 48 inches wide.

Standing by that blue broom, you can see where the entry to the laundry room will be, between the two wooden posts. To the left of the ladder is the living room area, and the back door that gives entry from the back yard.

Hick also sent a text with these two pictures. As you can imagine, the info I gave above came from interrogation, as I could not have figured it out from the text alone:

"This will be the opening going into kitchen from front door. There will be a wall where the brown board is standing. No Old Buddy today so couldn't do alot by myself."

Anyhoo... if Hick can get his paid help to work, they will be getting those walls built, and then put up drywall. Thus partially-completing even more of Cheap House before flipping it to a flipper.

Maybe There Should Be a Symbol

You know the symbol for Ghostbusters? The red circle with a line across a ghost? I think we need one for entitled parkers. A stencil to paint on the pavement where entitled (in their own mind) parkers tend to take up space. Like the driving lane at the side of the Gas Station Chicken Store. Another Rumpushole was parked beside me on Tuesday when I came out.

This is NOT A PARKING SPACE! It is the driving lane. If another vehicle was getting gas at the diesel pump back there, the driving lane would be blocked. Two cars went by as I was getting the picture. A lot of people exit out the back towards the alley. It's easier than getting out with traffic at the light.

Of course it was a MAN who came out and got into that car. It looked like a PT LOSER Cruiser. I don't think I've ever seen a woman park like this. They usually just take the handicap space, in their own form of rumpusholery. This guy looked like maybe he was a golfer. In his 60s, with a tanned partly-bald head, and wearing light colored shorts and a collared knit shirt. Shame on him! He had no trouble walking and climbing into his car.

I wish there was an office of Rumpushole Police Chief that I could run for. If elected, I would be tossing out parking tickets like the principal tossing out detention slips after the vampire bloodbath at the prom, at the end of the 1992 Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie. [YouTube, :43] Which was a comedy, by the way. But I wouldn't be laughing.

Et Tu, Machinery?

I bought some baby carrots for Hick to have with dip. You'd think it's a pretty simple side dish. I stir a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch Dip powder into a container of sour cream. Then I open a bag of baby carrots and rinse them off and pat them dry. Easy peasy. Several days of side dish.

I know that nobody runs a baby carrot farm. That you don't buy seeds to plant baby carrots. They are full-grown carrots that are cut and peeled and shaped by machines. I've never seen them on an episode of How It's Made, but I'm not an idiot. I'm sure you could find the process on YouTube if you wanted to see where baby carrots come from.

My bag of baby carrots looked just fine. Here's the other bag I bought at the same time:

Nothing unusual about that. Just baby carrots ready for chomping. I HOPE! Because there was something unusual in the first bag I opened.

That's no baby! It's more of an older, college brother. Thank goodness it wasn't a gnarled great grandaddy. I told Hick he could gnaw on it like Bugs Bunny, or I'd peel it and cut it up to go with the real babies. It's still in my Chinese Tupperware, so I guess I should get out my peeler.

How did this behemoth make it through to the end of the production line to get bagged? I would imagine there's some kind of sifter that lets a uniform size baby fall through. That would seem more economical than hiring PEOPLE to stand at a conveyor and toss out the giants. But what do I know? Maybe it's just another case of NOBODY DOING A JOB CORRECTLY.

Or maybe a case of a MACHINE not doing a job correctly.

A Good Silent Stew

Hick drove me to my doctor appointment on Thursday. He drops me off at the door of the clinic, then parks and comes inside to wait with me. That way I don't have a long walk. I stopped by the bathroom first, then got in line at the counter to check in. 

There are three windows (actually just slots in the counter) to check in. Only the middle gal was working. I was fourth in line. Hick came by and said he'd get our seats. I like the one on the end of the first row. It's the closest to the door where they call the patients back. I'm so slow getting up and moving that it doesn't seem fair to sit farther away and make the staff wait on my seemingly endless journey.

The gal at the far end called one of the line-waiters over. Another one finished up. And I was next, after a man who was helping a woman in a wheelchair check in. I got my turn once they wheeled off. I'd already done the online check-in on YourChart, so mainly I just had to verify my name, address, and phone number.

I turned to walk over to Hick, and saw that MY SEAT WAS TAKEN BY THE WHEELCHAIR MAN! What in the Not-Heaven, Hick! You had ONE JOB! Well. Two. To drive me there and back, and to save my seat. Now he had let a stranger sit there, and I was forced to sit on Hick's other side. In the third chair, not the first. 

My nose was a bit out of joint when I sat down. Hick was animatedly talking to the stranger, who was not strange to him, but a former schoolmate. They went on and on about people they knew. About their treasures that they have accumulated from auctions and flea markets. Wheelchair Man had just bought a toy pinball machine for $15. Hick was commenting that I had one like it as a child, trying to draw me into the conversation.

I was polite, but inside I was steaming. Not just because Hick had given away my seat, but because Wheelchair Man had parked the woman (his wife, it turns out) in the wheelchair facing away from everything! She was at the end of the row, facing a wall that had a sealed window into the pharmacy area where I rarely see any people. Every now and then she would make a comment to join the conversation. But it had to be said over her shoulder, since she was facing away from us.

That figures. This ol' boy was just like Hick. Not really thinking about his wife to include her in the interaction. I was fuming. I held my tongue. I didn't want to say anything directly to Wheelchair Man. But I guarantee Hick was going to get a piece of my mind later, about the way that guy treated his wife.

After 15 minutes, a nurse called for Wheelchair Wife from a door down at the other end, where I go for labs. Wheelchair Man got up and said goodbye to Hick. He spun Wheelchair Wife around and pushed her all the way across the front row. I turned to Hick, to give him a roasting over Wheelchair Man's oafish behavior in parking his wife facing away from everything, and Hick beat me to speaking. With a nod of his head towards their backs, he said:

"His wife is blind."

Oh. Well. Um. Good thing I hadn't said anything!

"Oh, no! I was just going to yell at you for that guy parking his wife where she couldn't see anything! But turns out it didn't matter, because she couldn't see anything!"

I don't know why, but this whole situation reminded me of one of my favorite scenes in Silkwood. When Kurt Russell comments on Cher's makeup, done by her girlfriend Diana Scarwid. He makes fun of how obvious it is, and how the girlfriend (Angela) is not a very good beautician. Then Meryl Streep tells him it's not nice to make fun of what a person does for a living. Kurt Russell says, "If that's what a beautician does, I'll take mine rare." Then Meryl Streep tells him that Angela works at the funeral home.