Texting While Driving

And THIS is what happens when you drive a tractor while texting!

Arrrgh. It be de 9th Talk Like A Pirate Day!

I be talkin' all de day long, like a pirate, see? All me pirate jokes be used last year. But this year, I be readin' a Louis L'Amour book called THE WARRIOR'S PATH. It be told in the 1620's along t'east coast of new America like. I be readin' it, thinkin' it be all about frontier men and Indians like. Den dis mornin' while readin' de story, guess where de hero done sails off to? Port Royal, Pirate Capital! ARRRRGH. It be a fittin' surprise fer dis day, me buckles . Yes, it be.

Hopin' ye have smooth sailin' fer de rest of dis here day like.

Arrrrrgh.

Talk Like A Pirate Day Be Tomorrow!

Argh, me hearties! Tomarrow it be Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Argh. Be ye rememberin’ it all t’day long, like.

The Lighter Side of Catastrophe, cont.

I'm standing next to my husband, explaining to a friend how stressful it is on us from the long-taking work on our house from May's storm.

"We constantly make word substitutions, or revert to pointing at something in order to communicate," I said. "Our brains are mush."

"Yes," agreed my husband. "And forgetful, too. Just this morning, I forgot my binoculars."

We looked at each other and cracked up laughing. We both KNEW he'd meant to say glasses. We're praying our friends and acquaintances will understand, and hopefully, whenever our house gets fixed, we'll go back to a new normal.

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.)