Easter went on a rampage in the southern states. Devastating tornadic weather swept through Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, parts of Tennessee.
The news media hardly mentioned it. They were too busy force-feeding you an overdose of the Virus Bullshit.
Easter always crowds my mind with appealingly sweet thoughts of spring: pastel flowers, fragrant blossoms, soft blue skies, ripe green fields - bunnies and baby chicks.
Here in the wilds of Tennessee Easter Sunday was drenched with torrential rain, dark with dismal skies, and chilly enough to make me hibernate under winter blankets.
It was a joyless day, but the really wicked weather waited until dusk before it arrived. The winds whipped up with such incredible force that I thought I was back in Texas.
I tried to ignore the howling gusts until suddenly the front door blew open all by itself!
To condense a long story, the dead bolt was installed improperly by the previous idiot who lived here. I have been meaning to fix it for an embarrassingly long time, but procrastination kept getting in my way.
The door-opening incident has inspired me to put the dead bolt on my lengthy ''To Do'' list.
Fortunately the lock on the doorknob works, and I barricaded the door with a chair.
During my five-and-a-half years in Tennessee I never felt wind this strong. A wooden ladder blew off the back porch and a metal chair soared off the front porch. Heavy things kept hitting the roof, which inspired my Gothic imagination.
I always worry about those tall trees that I like so much. They are only about twenty feet away from my bedroom. If they ever topple over, I'll be toast.
Since I'm surrounded by a forest, I could be pelted by trees from any direction. The thought curdles my blood during high winds.
In a cowardly attempt to ignor the foul weather, I crawled into bed and started to watch the old movie Easter Parade. Judy Garland didn't even finish singing her first song when the lights went out.
The power outage happened just at dusk. It was going to be one helluva long night.
Admittedly, I'm very ill-prepared for these nasty flukes of nature. I have oil lamps but no oil. I have transistor radios but no batteries. I don't know where the heck the battery for my laptop is.
I have one feeble flashlight and a few candles.
It's almost impossible to describe how dark it is out here in the proverbial middle of nowhere. Blacker than the darkest shade of black.
The wind raged with sinister screams, rain poured relentlessly. Unknown things outside kept banging and crashing.
The thought that it was about ten hours until dawn inspired me to do a search with my feeble flashlight - looking for ANY item that might connect me with the outside world.
I found an old transistor radio in a drawer. Batteryless, of course.
A long extension of my search finally yielded an ancient cassette player that fortuitously had batteries in it.
Aside:
I don't often get to use the word "fortuitously".
By the feeble light of the flashlight, I transferred the batteries from the cassette player to the radio.
They worked!
Sort of.
The radio is lousy...and the radio reception out here in the Tennessee Boonies is far beyond appalling.
I could only pick up jumbled fragments of distant stations, undecipherable smatterings of words and music - - all sandwiched between rude, jarring static.
Note:
Is this blog post getting too long? Relax. You won't find this quality of free entertainment anywhere else.
To make matters worse, the only way the radio would work at all was if I put one hand on the station dial, put my other hand on top of the antenna, and pointed the radio toward the east.
(no, I am NOT exaggerating or kidding)
So I crawled into bed (accompanied by my two timid cats) with my feeble flashlight and the exasperating radio.
And all through the black night I kept one hand on the dial, the other hand atop the antenna, with the radio pointing east.
I managed to pick up a hillbilly station that was playing extremely morbid Gospel music about dying and going to Heaven, which I suppose was a redneck version of Easter joy.
One agonizing song after another - with no commercials or breaks whatsoever.
After about the forty-fifth song, I moved along and FINALLY found a station from the local town (which, from where I live, is about a zillion miles away).
At around 3:00 a.m. they finally gave a weather report: high winds, flash floods, but no tornadoes.
Three thousand people were without power (that's about the entire county) and dozens of trees were uprooted.
There were uprooted trees on the street where my cousin lives (she lives near town).
By dawn, the wind started to abate and I was exhausted. I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the power was back on and there was no discernible damage outside.
Thank God for small favors.
And unnecessarily long blog posts.
Fair Warning:
I'm in a rotten mood. In fact, my mood is beyond rotten. If you're looking for uplifting inspiration and unmitigated joy, you're in the wrong place.
My blog reeks with the stench of grim reality.
I'm not sure what unmitigated means, but it sounds impressive.
I've been low on supplies for weeks but never (yet) made it to town. There were torrential rains all last week, which finally froze and turned to snow on Friday.
I'm not about to make the perilous trek to town on slick or icy roads.
Mother Nature's warm and assuaging breath melted the snow quickly, but the relentless rain returned yesterday, making it impossible to do anything.
When I heard that the rain might temporarily stop on Tuesday (that's today) I gleefully and frantically made plans to drive to town.
Dry days are so rare in Tennessee, that any possibility of encountering one should be seized immediately and utilized wisely.
With no raindrops in immediate sight, I started out early this morning.
My car actually started for a rare change.
First I drove to my mailbox - which is about two zillion miles from the house. Since the latch on the box is broken, all my mail was a soggy, pasty mess.
I decided to drive back to the house - so I could hang up my mail to dry (am I being funny?) and clean the filthy windows on the car.
Halfway up the hill to the mansion, I got stuck in the mud. That's nothing new. I get stuck in the mud every time it rains.
But I wasn't just stuck.
This time I was Super Glue stuck. When I crawled out of the car I sunk in mud up to my knees.
I should mention that my left knee (still) hurts so badly that I can't bend my leg - which makes maneuvering in four-foot-deep mud rather difficult.
I'll also mention that I was wearing my best pair of jeans and an extremely nice winter coat.
I fell in the mud at least half a dozen times (no lie). Within ten slippery minutes I looked like the Tar Baby in Uncle Remus.
I'm going to be merciful and spare you all the agonizing details, but I will say that it took two hours to extract the car from the mud - - during which time I said things so vile that it would make Satan blush.
Eventually I had to trek up the hill through the mud to the garage, where I got cardboard to wedge under the car tires.
I was so friggin' disgusted after the two-hour ordeal that I went inside, ripped off my mud-covered clothes, and collapsed into bed.
I am COMPLETELY out of supplies. Fortunately I found an extra bag of cat food - but it's a brand that they hate.
Why don't you have groceries delivered to your house, Jon? It would be easier.
Hey, Kemosabe, I don't live in Fairyland. I live in the outer realms of Hell. I doubt if anyone could find my address. And if they did, the delivery truck would probably be permanently lost in five-foot-deep mud and fifteen-foot-high weeds.
I'm going to valiantly try again tomorrow (Wednesday) - even though MORE rain is predicted.
Unrelated note:
I thought my previous blog post about the Oscars was fairly interesting but only about three courageous and gracious people read it. So I removed it. It probably wasn't as intriguing as I initially thought. Perhaps I'll post it again. Heck, who knows?
I'm in such a rotten mood that I don't give a rat's ass what's on my blog.
Here's another sunset photo - just in case my previous post left you yearning for more.
Yesterday (Thursday) was a completely wasted day.
Due to the radically changing and frequently disagreeable weather here in Tennessee, I always have to carefully and strategically plan my trips to town.
If it rains I'll risk getting stuck in the mud. If it's icy, I'll likely slide off a cliff on the narrow and winding mountain road.
Thursday (yesterday) was predicted to be unseasonably warm and abnormally clear - a perfect day for a venture into town.
I was already flustered at getting a late start and - right before I was ready to leave - my fluster turned to panic when I couldn't find my car keys.
Half an hour later I discovered them in one of my shirt pockets.
Do I have a second set of keys?
Yea. Somewhere. But I have no clue where they are.
Unfortunately, the glowing weather forecast didn't mention that there were going to be hurricane-force winds.
For a moment I thought I was back in West Texas.
The wind was so strong that - when I got to town and crawled out of the car - I was almost blown directly into Kentucky. It was an abominable day.
To make a long story short (which was never one of my fortes) I got an incredibly bad migraine.
I always get aura migraines, which radically affect my vision.
So -
instead of doing all my grocery shopping like I planned, I only went to the bank, paid a few bills, and briefly stopped in the Dollar Store to get a couple necessary items.
Then I said
I don't give a royal rat's ass about shopping!
and I went home.
What a waste!!!
The temperature is dropping drastically tonight as I write this. It's going to be frigid today (Friday) with ice.
I'm tentatively scheduling my next trip to town sometime in mid-July.
