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| Photo copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. |
The shock hasn't worn off entirely yet, which is probably good, because every time I think too long about it, the shakes threaten to take over and I will dissolve into nothing functional.
I'm eight hours behind today, which, of course, means that Hunger Road will be very late tonight, no doubt. Why? Because we've been without electricity for about that long.
It's back now.
With fingers crossed.
Last night, while Wings was up in bed resting and I was working out here, we experienced three short power surges. Brownouts. Those are, unfortunately, nothing at all unusual here; we've had them forever, thanks to electric co-op issues. We also get full-scale power outages far, far too frequently for this area. It's not the best service.
Sometime later, probably an hour-ish, something caught my attention out the corner of my left eye: a reflection, distorted as it would be in water, in the jalousie window open on that side. It looked like two small patches of flames. It also looked exactly like the reflections sometimes look in the window from the TV screen below and to the side. Only trouble was, there was nothing in the screen like that.
I raced outside to look. Nothing. No flames, no smoke, no smell. No heat. Nothing. No the slightest indication of anything wrong anywhere.
Yes, I checked. Thoroughly.
There was still light from the sunset in the western sky, and I finally decided that what I had seen had been some bizarrely-twisted reflection of a patch of red cloud backlit by what remained of the sun's glow.
Still, it bothered me, and I returned outside a few times to look around.
Nothing.
I finally gave up looking. Later on, we had dinner, and eventually, called it a night.
I got up early this morning, as usual, with no indication over the next few hours that anything was wrong. As Wings was getting into the shower, we experienced another brownout, followed instantly, this time, by the acrid odor of burning electrical wires. It was clear there was nothing burning in here in this tiny place, so I took off outside, and found the electrical connections outside smoking rapidly. I called to Wings to let him know, then went to the box to disconnect the cord. This was not something I wanted to do, obviously, but it was that or let the whole thing explode, flames along the wires that would take both live propane tanks with them in a split second.
And us and the dogs with them.
So I held my breath, sent up a silent prayer to whatever, whomever, might be listening, and yanked the plug out of the socket.
I'm still here, obviously.
That was not in any way a sure thing, since we discovered that the short began at that end. It destroyed the adapter, melted the prongs, and shot all the way up the 100-foot cord to the other end, where it set a tidy little blaze inside the plugs. There's a sooty scorched mark on the side of this place now, covered with the yellow-white powder from the fire extinguisher that Wings unleashed on it all.
It turns out that the cord that was sold to him as suitable for exterior use was in fact not, and after too many years and and too much heat and too many rains the wire housing cracked and some water got in and it damn near killed us in our sleep.
And again this morning.
On top of all that, and the constant migraines, and the constant inflammation in my neck and shoulders, and the constant AI pain and fatigue, and the constant battle with low blood count and low blood sugar, I am also battling another kind of bug, and one of the chickens is egg-bound and I have spent much of the day trying to save her life, which may prove fruitless, and I am at my wits' fucking end.
At some point, something's got to give. Before my sanity does. Or our very lives.
Here's your warning: The first person to talk about coming to "help us build," or "help" in some other way, gets blocked. Permanently. I cannot go through this with anyone YET AGAIN, and here's why: You. Will. Not. Be. Helping.
I keep saying this over and over, and yet people keep wanting to come and "help." No. What they want is to come and have a vacation in a lovely place and perhaps hammer a few nails and so forth and maybe feel like the roughing it among the Natives. That's not what this is.
We live in a very few square feet of space. With minimal amenities. WE. HAVE. NO. ROOM. I cannot believe I have to keep repeating that last, but apparently I do, because people who know our situation yet are themselves comfortably situated in actual houses either cannot or will not wrap their heads around what OUR situation actually is. Do you know that we have less than five minutes' hot water at a time? That I have to go outside (even when it's 20 below) and light the pilot EVERY GODDAMN TIME we need hot water? That I heat water for dishes in the coffeemaker because it's a hell of a lot more efficient? That winter is coming and it's about to get really fucking cold and hard and harsh here? A few years ago, it got down to 40 below at night.
FORTY. BELOW. ZERO.
This is not vacation. This is not play. This is not fun. Real talk: This is real-life survival-level shit. And also, the next person to respond to my saying that I'm fighting literally to survive by talking about how they understand because they had to replace their cell phone also gets permanently blocked. Christ.
I am so fucking tired. I don't know how much longer we can do this. We're getting too old for this shit. And on Tuesday, Wings finally has a consult for his knees, after eight years of trying to get them to move on it. That is not an exaggerations. We've been badgering them off and on for eight fucking years. For a diabetic, ferchrissake.
This is where shit gets real, folks. It's not comfortably, it's not middle-class, it's not even mainstream working-class; it's daily do-or-die shit a lot of the time, and it's hard as hell. The rewards, when you're well enough to enjoy (or even notice) them, are worth the hassle, but there comes a point where we are no longer going to be able to continue to pay this way for having lost everything five years ago.
At some point, we have to find a way to build a house. And yes, it has to be built; there is no other way to get one on this land, and I will be goddamned if I will let another finance company screw us out of a so-called manufactured home the way they did five years ago. We have no way to come up with the individual sums of front money needed for each stage; we make it (barely), but it's never enough to put aside a few grand at a pop for each stage. Which would, of course, start with having to have someone draw up plans, because neither of us has that skill set. Then there's siting it, grading it, laying the foundation, then the individual pieces of putting the whole thing up.
So at some point, I think I am going to have to try to crowdfund the early stages. I have no idea what it would cost to get plans drawn up, nor who we could hire to do it (certainly no one around here), and so this will be a while down the road. But with no generational wealth (nor even generational middle-classness) upon which to draw, no family resources, no loans or other outside help after what we've been forced to undergo, that's the only thing I know to do at this point.
Because now I am scared. Because now I know that we have survived the last five years in this tiny tin can only through the grace of something watching over us in spite of it all.
People tell me continually that they want to help us build a house. They mean come here for two weeks and pound nails into wood and see the sights while they're at it and stay in this place where there's no room. That doesn't help. What does help is what always helps in situations like these, just like with disaster zones: not inexpert hands and in-the-way bodies piling additional stresses upon already-grossly overstressed psyches, but cash. I know that sounds crass, because everyone has their heads full of these big romantic supposedly all-American notions of old-fashioned barn-raisings and shit, but that's not reality. Reality is the ability to hire professionals for the parts we can't do ourselves, and doing it ourselves where we can. I'm good with a hammer. Wings is better. Blueprints? We're screwed.
This is vent. Nothing more. I'm closing comments, because I don't feel like talking to people about it. I'm still shaking periodically, and if I let myself surrender to it, I will lose it completely and I will never be able to stop crying and I don't need the fucking tears migraine on top of the other one.
People want to help now? Here's something else people keep telling me to do: an Amazon wish list. There are three items on it unlike the rest (Wings's camera lens that he needs for his work, and two Mac components for my own). Those are not the things I'm talking about here. The others are all feed and supplements of various kind, all of which we give the animals. (Some of them, like canned dog food, chicken scratch, and grain for the horses aren't on there yet). The dog foods we combine, which is how ours stay as healthy as they do. The supplements, including things like aloe and psyllium and flax powder, are keeping Ice alive, and the vitamins are keeping She-Wolf from going blind. All of those items are regular purchases, every one to three months, depending on the item. People can share the list with their networks, and if you feel like picking up any one of 'em, we're profoundly grateful. I can't do "incentives," as seems to be the crowdfunding thing these days, because I just . . . can't. I don't have it in me, I don't know what we'd offer, and I literally do not have time and energy for fulfillment as it is. At some point, I'll get a youcaring link up for the first stage of this, but I have no idea when, because at the moment, I first have to find someone both trustworthy and good at what they do who will talk to us and give us a ballpark figure without charging us for that step, too.
And now, I'm going to go check on our gravely-ill chicken, and I'm going to fight back the shakes some more, and I'll feed the other animals while I fight back more shakes, and then I'll come in and make dinner, and eventually they'll probably get me in the end anyway and then I'll be useless for the rest of the night. Which is not all that different from now, actually.
We cheated death, in very literal terms, but now we still have to find a way to keep living.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
