I’m waiting for the Water Doctor to arrive. Our rental house in Connecticut has a well. Our neighborhood is considered “back country”, a description I found charming, and slightly hilarious at first, coming from the NorthWest. What’s not so funny is that we are currently without water. We moved four days before Irene hit and lost power, along with almost a million other people (I’m not exaggerating), for nearly a week. We have one bathtub in the house, which my realtor suggested I fill the night before Irene hit. I didn’t understand why at the time. Now I’ve become expert at flushing toilets with buckets, though I found the swimming pool more convenient as a water source.
Thank god for that pool. We couldn’t really decamp to a hotel because of the animals, though I was severely tempted. The girls washed their hair on the deck and then jumped in the pool to rinse. The dogs drank out of the pool and swam with the girls, all four of them disobeying my orders to KEEP THE DOGS OUT OF THE POOL. When Hank got hot he would lie down on the first step to cool off, just like an old man taking a dip. I showered at the realtors office. We ate out most evenings, which was the only perk of losing power. At night we lived in the dark. We tried to buy flashlights before Irene hit, but every hardware store within 30 miles was sold out, and of lanterns too. The girls used the head lamps we miraculously still had in our possession from a caving vacation two years ago. I had a small torch that put out a feeble light. We lit candles and played cards, and some never-opened board game we found in one of the many unpacked boxes from our old family room. We went to bed early because there was nothing else to do. I tried to read by flashlight and ignore the strange noises coming from outside.
This house we are living in sits up on a hill, surrounded by trees, and is pitch black at night. During the day our forest is right out of The Blair Witch Project. At night its just plain scary. The cicadas, and whatever other nocturnal animals are lurking around, create such a din that it sounds like the Belizean jungle without the Howler monkeys. There are coyotes roaming, and god knows what else. Werewolves probably. Charlie investigates whenever I let her out, utterly fearless and unconscious that she’s a runty Corgi. Sugar is far too wise to venture far from the door, and looks at me like I’m crazy when I ask her if she wants to go out with the dogs at night. That alone should tip me off. I can’t even see Hank at night unless I shine the flashlight on him, he’s so black. Of course I play it down when the girls get spooked, pretending I’m not just as freaked out as they are. They slept in the same bed the first night without power, but the youngest woke up with a sore back the next morning and said, “I’m not that scared.” Whether her pain was from compensating from her dislocated patella, or the thrashing from her older sister in her sleep, they slept in their own beds from then on. After all, they had the dogs. They traded off who got which dog each night. Hank seems like a better bodyguard because of his size, but he snores and has terrible flatulence, shedding enough black hair to knit a sweater all over their sheets. Charlie, though small, is a light sleeper and will bark at the smallest sound. Good for hearing intruders, bad for uninterrupted sleep. But I didn’t get either dog. It didn’t seem fair, since their rooms were upstairs and mine was on the ground floor. I should say “ours” as it’s the master bedroom, but as my husband left for Africa with our son two days before Irene hit, I haven’t really shared it yet. I’m not sure I will either, the way things have been going…
The night of the hurricane we slept in the basement. Hank, Charlie and Sugar followed us down, not wanting to be left alone in a strange house. Poor Cocoa had to stay upstairs because I was so tired from the move I couldn’t bother carrying his cage downstairs. The eye of the storm supposedly passed right over us, but luckily no trees fell on the house, though branches and debris had covered the yard. Crab apples and acorns littered the driveway, making popping sounds as I drove over them the next morning. I was afraid they would puncture my tires, but I kept going I was so desperate for coffee. Our power was out and I couldn’t make it at home. Trees were down everywhere, blocking the roads in some places. Rivers and creeks had overflowed, flooding houses in lower areas. It had rained torrentially the entire day before. And I use that word carefully, coming from Seattle. I had to turn back when the water got too deep to cross in my husband’s small car. Head thumping furiously now from caffeine withdrawal, I returned home to switch cars. Youngest daugher was awake and hungry so we callously left middle daughter still sleeping (Pirate’s Rule), and eventually made it to town from a different direction.
Starbucks was closed. I wanted to cry. But as I turned the corner I saw an Italian restaurant with the door open and I said to youngest feverishly, “They’ll make me a cappucino.” “Oh god,” she sighed as I parked. Her embarassment wasn’t so great that she didn’t follow me in however. There was a cute boy mopping the floor. “Do you have power?” I croaked hopefully. “Mom, they’re not really open,” youngest whispered loudly at me. “We have power,” he replied. “Starbucks is closed,” I announced, “I can’t find a coffee anywhere.” “I know,” he answered, “I tried myself.” He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. “Could you possibly make me a coffee?” I asked beguilingly. At least I tried for beguiling, but the look on my daughter’s face was one of utter moritfication so I can’t be sure. “I can make you a coffee,” he said. “See?” I crowed triumphantly to her. He poured my cappucino into a ceramic cup, and I took one nanosecond to appreciate the pretty design on the froth before bolting it back in two gulps.
The Water Doctor just came and reset the water pump. I wanted to hug him, but resisted the urge. His vocabulary was better than mine.
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