Rain, Wind, and Power (Outages)

 1.) Rain

Praise God, after an unusually dry spring (there's been widespread crop failures) it rained enough over the course of three days that there's still standing water in the yard. 

It's too late for a lot of the crops, but I'm hopeful that it'll help the crops that have already come up. The cotton may be sparse, but maybe what's there will be healthy and thick when it's time to harvest. 

It's not a bad thing for my garden, either. 

2.) Wind 

What HAS been bad for my garden was the random gust of wind we had that picked up the windbreak we'd set up by the zucchini and flipped it over right into the middle of my cucumbers. It also took some okra out. 

It's still sitting there; we've been so busy with other things lately that Chris hasn't had a chance to go out with the power drill and disassemble it, and I haven't been able to get out there either. It doesn't help that I usually have to take Bitty Baby with me when I go out there, and I can't put her down on the ground because the fire ants are all stirred up by the rain (I don't care about the mud so much-- getting smeared with it is just good clean country living). 

3.) Power Outage 

Another side effect of the rain (which all came in the form of repeated thunderstorms) was a 12 hour power outage. 

Thankfully the weather was cool, so I wasn't sitting in a sauna with the girls at home, but I was starting to get concerned about the food in the fridge. The cardinal rule of fridges and freezers in power failures is to keep them closed to conserve the cool air inside. I had done that, not even opening it to get things for breakfast, but it was creeping up on 11 hours and I was getting worried. 

Right around lunch, I got a call from Chris. "They're saying it'll be evening before they get to our house. You'd better get the food into the cooler and put some ice on it." 

Now, both the smaller igloo cooler and our Yeti cooler (which is literally large enough to hold a butchered hog carcass) were both sitting in the back of his truck, stained with meat juice from a Trail Life turkey leg sale two weeks ago. The larger cooler is better insulated, but Chris told me I'd probably have to settle for the smaller one, "I don't think you can move that big one." 

Challenge accepted. 

I somehow wrestled it out of the back of the truck and then, my arms were barely long and strong enough, carried it back to the house. I rinsed it out with some vinegar water and pulled, tugged, and wrestled it through the back door into the kitchen. 

Of course, as soon as I'd emptied out the main part of the fridge the power came back on. 

I had the fridge mostly empty by that point, so I just finished getting everything out and then wiped down the shelves. Bitty Baby was taking a nap, and there was no point in wasting the opportunity and all that effort. 

4.) The Shred be with you 

I have taken to letting the zucchini in the garden grow to what we call "brother beater" proportions (large enough to be used as a blunt melee weapon) and then shredding it in the food processor. 

In past years I crammed this into small ziplock bags and tossed them in the freezer, but this year I think I've hit on a way to make them a bit more useable. I took the shreds, measured them out a cup at a time, put them on a cookie sheet and froze it into pre measured lumps. These then went into gallon bags. 

More useable, and a lot less packaging. 

5.) Geeky Reminder 

I went online, found a picture of a palantir from The Lord of the Rings, and set that as my phone background. 

It wasn't covered at all in the movie, but in the book Denethor (the steward of Gondor, Faramir and Boramir's dad) has a Palantir that he gazes into obsessively. He's too noble to be corrupted outright by Sauron's control of it, but Sauron uses it to show him the armies he's amassed, the battles he's won, and the evil he's wrought across the land. Denethor despairs, overwhelmed by the evil he sees there, and, just as in the movie, tries to burn both himself and an injured Faramir to death rather than fight the battle in front of him. 

I can't help but think palantirs and smart phones have a lot in common. I need the reminder not to let my phone become one.

6.) The End of School 

Little Boy has his last day of school tomorrow. 

It's been a very odd, sorrowful last week of school. As far as I can tell the teachers at Little Boy 's school have done a good job shielding the kids from recent news (I'm thankful for this, my son inherited my anxious temperament), but there's an air of anxiety at drop offs and pick ups that there wasn't before, and they've tightened security on campus. No visitors allowed, even parent spectators for field day. 

I broke my rule and wrote about the political side of what happened; you can read that here. On a personal level, it's been very surreal seeing people that look like my neighbors on the national news. Uvalde is only two hours from where I live, and the small town I live in seems to be culturally and ethnically nearly identical to it. I feel like I know how that community is reacting, because I've lived through (smaller) tragedies in my own community, and that makes it very close to home for me.

 I  also hate, hate, HATE the way it's already been co-opted as a political talking point and the people suffering are having to fight off the vultures. 

When I was in high school, my family's house burned down. There were seven of us kids at the time, my dad was deployed to Iraq, and we all escaped the burning house at 2am. As I'm sure you can tell, the optics on it were fantastic. "If it bleeds, it leads." 

 It didn't make national news (by the grace of God), but I remember my mother having to deal with local news reporters. It got so bad that she lied to them about what flight my dad was on so that we wouldn't have to deal with cameras and reporters crowding us when he got home.

She was dealing with people trying to exploit her situation for "views", each reporter angling for an "exclusive" for their news studio, while also taking care of seven traumatized children and dealing with massive property loss and sudden homelessness. 

I know that the families in Uvalde are dealing with the same thing, but magnified because it's a worldwide news story. I think maybe one of the best things I can do for them, other than pray, is to stop following the intimate details of the story and stop enabling the vultures disregarding their privacy for the sake of ratings. My knowing details about what happened  and how they're dealing with it won't make what happened any better. 

7.) Swim Lessons, road trips, and other extreme parenting sports 

On a lighter note, our summer calendar is filling up already. I found out a local high school with a natatorium is offering swim lessons over the summer for much cheaper than any of the parks or gyms. We signed Little Boy and Little Girl up, so hopefully they'll be at least a little more confident around water. 

We're also looking at a possible trip to Oklahoma to visit my brother and his wife (avoiding Shawnee, where I went to college...there's some people there I'm still friends with, but there's other people who I don't want to see, and one or two that if my husband or I saw we'd probably end up with an assault charge against), and enrolling the kids in the library's summer reading program. 

My goal is to avoid using the TV as a crutch. Between the broiling hot weather and the fact that Chris will be working for at least half the summer, it remains to be seen if I can pull that off. 

Bonus: 

The local bank in Uvalde is collecting a memorial fund for the families affected by the shooting. This is probably the best way to help them on a practical level if you feel so moved.