Sunday night-- we're hunkered down in the barn and awaited Irma.
By Monday morning the power was out and stayed out. Chickens roosted by flashlight for next 24 hours.
The horses stayed up in their stalls almost 36 hours. They weren't thrilled and kept room service busy around the clock. I have new facial wrinkles to prove it.
The forecast worsened every 12 hours until Irma's path passed directly over us. Joy.
45-55 mph sustained winds and 75 mph gusts.
Are we in Kansas? By Monday, cabin fever had set in. Unwise at is was, I was zipping on my ATV from house to house checking for damages.
The driving rain and winds soaked and froze me to the core--reminiscent of Winter snowmobiling in Canada. Makes one homesick.
Damages remained minimal. No structural or fence damages. Call it luck with a dash of preparedness. A family across the street had huge trees crush both their vehicles. I do remember hearing them partying and shooting guns on Sunday when Allen and I were in overdrive with storm prep. Despite having preparations of his own to make, Allen came through and helped me immensely. Mark, from Birmingham, even after a severe asthma attack,was determined to make a 6 hour round trip to help too, but I managed to deter him, fearing he'd have difficulties making it home. Friends are always there when you need them, life is good like that. Made better too when we all get through unscathed. A little tired though...
So what if it took us 2 days to put everything back as it was-- we were ready! So what if we spend the next month clearing lawns, shrub beds and trails-- it could've been so much worse.
Now that we have two chainsaws, we can buzz through the biggest trees.
I called to cancel my surgery a few hours before the hospital cancelled them all. I thought of using the extra time to try to decompress, take two days off and recuperate from the insane work. Life can be a cantankerous cow sometimes. My first day off was spent working in on my doggie Alcatraz project. The second day was to see its completion. Work hijacked my plans and I spent 11 hours there instead of here. I clocked out at 7 PM last night, so frustrated I was ready to start walking back home to Canada. Didn't help either that this marked two months since Cole passed. I went and sat at his grave. He reminded me I was a Smith and we fight, not give up. So, I fought with my fencing past midnight last night. It is done.
So what if my days off are on third shift now. The little heathen the fence is designed to contain and protect did at least contribute to the effort.
A week ago, Irma alighted in the news. All predicted paths had her going far to the East of us. Regardless, my primal self preservation kicked in and decided to start serious preps last week.
By Wednesday, we had all the equipment and all the tanks filled, just as the local gas station was running out of gas. We have three generators on the farm, one behemoth being propane powered. Even though chances were still slim we would be impacted by Irma and the tank was half full, I had it topped off.
Folks had been rolling there eyes watching me in my whirlwind of preparations. Had. As of Sunday morning, Irma is predicted to hit us directly with sustained winds between 45-73 mph.
Stoicism isn't only about enduring life's hardships without complaining, an important component often overlooked is the art of imagining possible outcomes and being ready for them.
I may be on the verge of stroking out from the preparations, but I won't be on TV lamenting to the reporter how Fluffy got sucked up in the 'tornader' when the roof of the mobile home was ripped off, or how the children have nothing to drink, or how there's a tree parked on my pickup. During my Saturday night fit of insomnia, I wrote down all the solutions to possible worst case scenarios. It's my job to take case of my boss's assets and I intend to do it to the max. My pea brain nags at me "How do you know you've done enough, unless you do it all?" Firstly, we won't be in our mobile home. I've moving all my food to a safer location.
And turned the power and water off.
My mobile home is completely shut down. A tree can cleave it, but it won't catch fire or flood from it. I've pulled my artwork off the walls and stashed it too.
Guns, documents... anything I don't want tossed around the neighborhood is outta there. Allen and I ran a marathon trying to secure anything loose outside of all the houses and barns to make sure they don't become dangerous projectiles.
I never realized how blessed we were with outdoor furniture.
Not a stick of furniture left to be thrown through a window.
I bought extra food for my oxen and the horses.
Dropped 1000 gallons of water in the Boonies in case we need that pasture.
Then added 1000 more to the tank and left it and the tractor in the middle of the field. She may get pounded with rain, but not trees or the shed roof. (Don't think I didn't agonize about leaving her in the open, but she's the only one with a front end loader capable of lifting roofs off other trapped equipment--- now you see why I don't sleep).
We're at a point where we can be walled off from the world for a month without a hiccup. Maybe a little overkill! Or is it? You never know. I bought the farm a new chainsaw on Friday as our old one needs a proper burial.
Allen and I finished up some tree cutting projects before we get inundated with more! I think I'm in love, slow and steady she was getting through a very dense oak. Really well balanced machine. I 💖 Stihl.
I have plans from A-Z on what to do with the horses during each phase of the storm. I'm going to try to keep them in the barn as long as I can, until the potential for flying roofing metal is too great, then I'll push them to a back pasture. No telling how many fences will be down, but I'm prepared for that too.
"For a good time call_____"As you can imagine, my Monday surgery is cancelled. Not like everything and anything that could go wrong this last week leading up to it hasn't been a factor either! I know Cole is watching over me and I've been asking him, day after day, to make his signs better understood. From narrowly getting approved for surgery by the cardiologist; to the AC in my home failing and coming very close to not being repairable (previous administration must've faced this issue and replaced the blower with a used one from a chicken house, so much of the crap we've cleaned up after him is so retarded I couldn't make it up--chicken feathers were all inside the blower motor); Irma, of course; being short staffed for four days; and the last great sign from Cole: on Friday when registering with the hospital, they refused me because my driver's license had expired a few days earlier, I quickly corrected the matter and registered but I'd received The Sign. Heard you loud and clear, little buddy. 10-4.
Besides it would take a SWAT team to pry me off the farm when a big storm is menacing to hurt my kids.
These are my charge and we'll ride this thing out together.
Horses are up,
Chickens are roosting in the shop,
We've had supper and are tucked in bed, nothing left to do but see what Aunt Irma brings with her from Florida.
My 4 wheeler and chainsaw are ready to go when the winds become civilized.
I'm hoping she passes us by and four days of preparations can be chalked up to practice. I'll redo four intense days of that versus four weeks of chainsaw work.
Dax is now 13 weeks old and weighs 24 lbs. A tiny brute.
Very scary. A furry dynamo.
Long hikes in the morning.
And longer ones at night.
And still he possesses enough energy to play with Pete for HOURS!
When not harassing Pete, he's decimating my lotus ponds.
He'll find trouble, no matter where it hides. It boggles my mind to think of ways to keep him alive through puppyhood. The challenges are daily.
Like when I watched him jump in a creek and end up two feet from a very large venomous cottonmouth. Good thing I was only 5 feet away and had my .45 on me.
On the bright side, we now know Dax isn't gun shy. In spite of pouring over gun dog training books, his recall still sucks. He'd rather do his own thing than come back to me.
Plan B: take more money out of my savings to turn my 2 acre yard into a fortress.
Therefore, if something does happen to him it will be an act of God, or Garrett.
Garrett still hasn't warmed up to him, and who can blame him!!!
They do love to run the trails together though, there is hope they can get along... one day.
Meanwhile, he's learning how to be a quiet and respectful farm dog. Much gratitude to the two older dogs he's emulating.
We've even begun practicing our canine citizenship skills in town.
He was quite the star at Auburn University Large Animal Clinic.
One day... I'll have a fine working trio again, with the spirit of Cole guiding us.
Dax's pedigree papers came in last week. Guess who's more closely related to my late soul mate than I had imagined? A part of Cole will always live on, but I now know that the little head I kiss every day is almost a mirror image of DNA.
Each day in my planner gets longer and longer, I'll be needing two pages per day and three of me by tomorrow. If I can hang on and get through the weekend, it'll be a miracle.
If Hurricane Irma can stay out of the gulf and not hit us, I'll be drifting off into a drug induced torpor by Monday morning. On Tuesday, I spent 4 hours at the cardiologist office getting poked and prodded. The nuclear stress test placed me 2% below average in the borderline no man's land. My heart isn't pumping out as much blood as it should. But, the surgery is viewed as being immediately necessary, so we're going for it. I'm so ready for this to be over. I looked over my schedule book for the past 16 months. Every two months, I'd get one of my days off to piddle around on my projects, all other days off have been spent at the vet's or a doctor's office. Speaking of which, my next day off this week is Thursday and I'm spending the day at the vet school getting the oxen's feet trimmed.
I'm burned out on not getting my time alone. When I get home from the hospital on Tuesday this will be my first act:
Then I'll bury my cell phone out in the yard. My fridge has gone from this:
To this:
And this:
I don't have the time to make myself frozen meals, so I bought a small fortune of prepared meals to last a month. And meat for me and the boys:
In either case, I'm hurricane ready... as soon as I check my generator today!
Also ran by the thrift store and bought some loose clothing, comfortable clothing!
