The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont

I was only gone for a few minutes. Honest.

There have been construction workers and masons and plasterers here off and on all day. My poor hubby came home from work, exhausted, so attempted to catch a few winks before supper. With the workers gone, I suddenly remembered I hadn’t picked up the mail. It’s only 70 steps from our front door. 140 steps all together. When I came back into the house, my groggy husband was laughing on the phone. I almost picked up an extension, because, from his joviality, it had to be a relative, especially since he was talking on his cell phone, a number which only a few people have -- which also meant I couldn’t have picked up an extension, anyway.

When he hung up, he told me he was so embarrassed that even his eyeballs hurt. The voice on the other end sounded exactly like his brother in Wisconsin. The voice said, “Hi. I’m Bob your plasterer.” Well, as it happened, BRUCE, our plasterer had just left our house a couple of hours earlier, so DH responded, “You are such a con artist. Oh, har-har-har! Some contractor you are.” Apparently, the person on the other end of the line became defensive at this greeting, and explained that he couldn’t get back to him sooner since his wife was dying and they were at the Cleveland Clinic. This definitely wasn’t his brother. But why did he even have our cell phone number?

A million apologies later, my husband finally hung up and tried to find a place to hide, even though Bob couldn’t see him. I tried to assure him that some day, when our house is all put together again, and we can look back on things which happened during this time, that he would probably find this funny. He moaned pitifully before slinking off into the basement.

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe

This morning we “lost” our dumpster. It was full, from our stuff as well as a neighbor's. A semi-truck came, sinking its wheels onto our lawn, and drove the rusty old thing away.

Many neighbors still have their dumpsters from the storm which struck our area in May, or else their dumpsters have disappeared because their houses are completely repaired. Not ours though.

Somehow, we felt helpless watching it leave. Because our house isn’t fixed, and now we don’t even have a dumpster, my husband commented, “It feels like we’re second class recoverees.”

Now, we're keeping our eyes out for the return of an empty dumpster in our green-ish yard. That would mean workers would be returning to... work. Yea for dumpsters!

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe

One of the problems of stress and lack of sleep is memory messing. For example, although it’s been over seven weeks since the storm struck our house, I’m still flipping on (and back off) light switches in rooms without power.

Another big problem is word substitutions. At first they were frustrating, then scary (to happen so often), but now we just laugh at them, and live with the hope that someday our memories will return to us whole once more.

Another example: After our construction workers left, I checked the blue tarp over our empty space which would someday hold a window. Because a storm was coming, I informed my husband that “the construction guys buttoned down the tarp.” Of course, I meant battened, but the image of these strong men taking the time to button a large tarp to a house set me into a fit of giggles. (Perhaps you needed to be there… Perhaps you're glad you weren’t.)

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe

Because a tree crashed through our old windows, now at last, six weeks later, our new windows showed up in our construction person’s red truck. My husband looked out and said, “ I wonder if it was a pane to drive them here?” I groaned and he continued, “You should have seen through that.”

Tired and Stressed Out Conversation

So… we’re at the breakfast table, listening to the Amish workers next door using power tools, when my husband asked how they got to town if they don’t believe in driving cars, or how they could use power tools if they don’t believe in electricity.

I then remember a fact we learned at a fair years ago. “Remember that one fair where the pigs ran for the mash? Mash for the Dash?”

DH: “I think you mean, Dash for the Mash. Wasn’t it in New York?”

Me: “Yes, of course. Well, it was at that fair, in one of the buildings where we learned… was it the Amish or the Shakers? I can’t remember which. But a man invented a vacuum cleaner and a woman invented… something that men use… Am I rambling.”

DH: “Of the ten things you tried to say just now, three were probably lies, three were made up and three were true… Crap. What did you do with the other one?”

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont

After having cleared out our three refrigerators from the week without power, I stated to my husband, "I have a new food rule."

He responded, "Eat anything you want?"

I blinked, then amended, "I have two new food rules: eat anything you want, and don’t keep leftovers in the refrigerator more than two days."