Irene's Calling Card

Well,I'm back! I have had most interesting week. The best place to start is at the beginning,I guess.

Last week,as I posted,we were keeping an eye on Hurricane Irene.Here at home,there was a hurricane of sorts going on...and I brought it all on myself. I have posted in the past that I have depression and terrible anxiety. I have had this since childhood.I am on medication and that has helped greatly,though I still get bad anxiety sometimes; I just don't wake up everyday with a knot of dread in my stomach. At any rate,I didn't realize that I was almost out of pills until...well...I was almost out.I had 5 days left. I didn't think that would be a problem,I called the refill line and figured I would get it mailed to me in about four days,since it was coming from Portland,ME,and that has been the usual time frame from reordering to appearing in the mailbox. I called on a Thursday. I ran out on Monday. Now,you know how they say to never just stop taking medication? You have to ease out of it. I figured,what's one day,folks forget to take their meds all the time. It would probably  show up on Tuesday,anyway,right? I wouldn't even miss a day. Tuesday comes....then Wednesday....

By now, I am in full blown withdrawal.Nausea,vertigo feelings,the works. I felt miserable. I can't sleep. My brain starts doing funky things,I start crying for no reason whatsoever at various times. I did manage on Thursday to keep a visit with My Dear Friend Michelle,and we had a nice chat. However, as soon as I got home,I went right to bed.I knew you could get such withdrawals symptoms from pain meds,but not from depression type medication. Finally,Friday afternoon,my meds showed up and I took one right away. By Saturday night,I was fine. 

However,Friday, I pulled my sciatic nerve. I first pulled it 18 years ago lifting a TV and not using my legs to lift. Ever since then,if I move a certain way,it flares up again. It hasn't happened in a long time,and I wish I could say that I did it moving debris from the storm,or something as equally dramatic,but...I didn't. I did by shaving the back of my right leg in the shower. 

Yep. Shaving my legs. I turned my left hip just right and bang! I felt it,and I knew. I could barely lift my legs over the tub to get out. Since then,I have been moving slowly,taking Aleeve,laying down,and sitting with pillows to help with support. It's a bit better,but even sitting here with a pillow behind me is very uncomfortable,and painful. Sigh.

Now for our Irene adventure......

We started getting rain on Saturday night,and by Sunday PM we had winds gusts of up to 60 miles an hour. The boys had a front row seat on our screen porch:

I took the photo through the screen,as you can see. Our neighbor Walter has some pine trees that looked like they might go,and we could hear them cracking when the winds were the strongest. At noon,we lost power. Rick and Brother B went outside to speak with our neighbor Mike,and as soon as they climbed the stairs and closed the door to the screen porch,this sucker fell:

As you can see,the 30-40 ft limb crashed next to the house,taking the cable,electric,and phone wires with it,and just missed the boys. If they had chatted with Mike just a few seconds longer,it would've landed on them. Mike and his girlfriend came running over to make sure they were OK. I heard a big crash from where I was laying in bed,and the boys telling Zach to stay in the back of the house until they could see where the wires were.The power had already gone off,but they wanted to be sure.All was well. The bad thing was our big generator got damaged,and our flag pole got bent to the ground,but at least no one was hurt,and our house just missed being hit. We do have another smaller generator,so we could at least keep our fridge going,and we could run the TV and DVD player if we wanted.

In all honesty,we didn't watch too many DVDs.We didn't really even listen to the radio.Zach read,and I knitted during the day and read by lamplight at night. We did have cell phones so we could call folks to let them know we were OK and to check the time,but I rarely looked at a clock. We had our gas grill,and we moved our camp stove and a propane tank into the house. We had rain barrel water for the birds,pool water to fill the toilet tank (if it's yellow,let it mellow;if it's brown,flush it down),and we did have bottled water and Crystal Light to drink. We also have water in our dug well,now that we no longer use it. We used to that bathe,wash our hair,and the dishes. It was actually no problem. We had plenty of food as well. Zach didn't complain once. He said he liked not having electricity.He was quite glad to see that our outdoor cat,Molly Bruce,came through unscathed:

I wish I could say the same about our corn. The rest of the garden was fine,though:

Yesterday,some workers from TN showed up to reattach our lines. They came up to help our Public Service of NH electric company.Crews from OH and TX were on their way as well.Canadian crews had to turn around and help back in Canada. By late afternoon,we had electricity,and by 8:00 PM we had cable and the phone.In all honesty,I didn't miss the TV or the computer.

Right now,the menfolk are grocery shopping,since I can't,then they are going to cut up that limb and get it out of the yard. And I am going to take my first shower since Saturday....hopefully I can shave my legs without ruining my back further! That is....if I can bend to shave them at all.

I hope any of my blog friends out there who had Irene zip through are all OK and are getting back to normal.Today is a lovely,bright day.....hope you all enjoy it.