Brandon and Daisy Venture to North Carolina, Episode II: "Cape Fear'd"

 We were in North Carolina for roughly five days total -- we arrived on a Thursday night and left on the Tuesday morning after Labor Day. I count the night of arrival and the morning of departure as one day because they were basically travel days and not a whole lot of time was spent doing proper vacationing.

On Sunday, Daisy had made plans for us -- the only real plans we'd had for the entire trip, in fact, when it comes to real "event things" we wanted to do while we were there -- we were scheduled to go on a dolphin-watching boat tour off the coast. This tour required you to book tickets in advance, and then drive down to Myrtle Beach to the location to where the boat launched from.

It's a decent hour's drive to Myrtle from where my parents are; it's not an awful drive, but it takes time. And this was Labor Day weekend, to boot. Traffic was nuts, and the dolphin-watching boats were booked solid. Thankfully, Daisy had gotten us our reservations/tickets a few days beforehand. We were told to dress for all weather as the boats went out rain or shine, and of course, if was very likely you'd get wet while on the boat itself, as you'd be out in the ocean for some time and...waves. Splashing. Winds. Etc. 

Well, Sunday turned out to be an incredibly godawful hot day, with clear skies and a lot of blazing sun, and the temperature shot up quickly. I made sure to pack my sun hat with me -- a denim oversized bucket-hat I'd purchased down there last year -- and we slathered ourselves in sunscreen. The dolphin-watching tour was estimated to take about two hours, sometimes more and sometimes less, depending on how many times the boat would need to stop to look at dolphins. Etc. It was a very detailed experience with a full webpage full of notes and suggestions to follow for it.

Now, mind you, this is not the first time Daisy and I have gone on a boat trip for pleasure reasons -- we'd done the Lake Michigan boat tour from the Navy Pier in Chicago a couple of years ago, and earlier in the summer we had of course done the whale-watching tour in Nova Scotia. At this point, both of us know how this game is played. Boats are nothing new for us. And honestly, I wanted to see dolphins up close. The whale tour had left a lot to be desired, such as...the only whales we saw were like 30 yards away. Dolphins are everywhere, especially in the Carolinas, and they tend to travel in giant pods of large numbers.

So we drove down to Myrtle Beach -- not North Myrtle, but Myrtle proper -- and ventured down a number of sketchy looking back roads and side streets to get to the highway that would eventually take us to this port where these boats would launch from. There were so many people there. Daisy and I parked at least 1/4 mile away from the docks/restaurant/launch point and had to hoof it in the sun, get our tickets counted, and then...wait in a line of about 200 people that stretched waaaay back up towards where we parked. 

I don't know what the boats' max capacities were -- there were two of them, the Sea Thunder and the Sea Screamer. Both of them were identical except for paint jobs, and I don't even remember which one we were on. They would disembark on opposite-ish schedules, so as one was coming back in, the other would go out, constantly exchanging great numbers of passengers. We had our pictures taken -- I guess this is a Coast Guard regulation in the event someone goes overboard -- and we were ushered onto the boat we'd been assigned...with, likely, about 50-60 other people. Yeah.

The boat seats were not comfortable. They were smaller than airline seats, by a lot, and were hard plastic, like stadium seats. Daisy and I are larger people, of course, and well...we both had a lot of trouble fitting into them. Daisy had to change her seating a number of times because it was so uncomfortable for her. 

The boat took us out a very long, canal-like passage (with water so brown that it could have been Coca-Cola) and then out of a seawall and we were finally on the open ocean. The skipper gunned it, and we were shooting away from the mainland and into the seas. 

And we saw....nothing.

About fifteen minutes after getting out into the ocean, the boat was approached by a few jet-skiers who told us that they'd seen a pod of about 100 dolphins or so going nuts about a mile from where we were. The skippers were like "okay, that's where we're headed then" and once again gunned it in that direction.

We got there...and we saw nothing.

We went out another few miles and made a big circle...and we saw nothing. Not a single dolphin. Not a single jumping fish or otherwise any signs of life. The coastline was a hazy blur far behind us, many miles away, and...we saw nothing.

The skipper turned the boat around and headed back towards shore. Apparently one of the (many) children on the tour saw a large sea turtle swimming near us. I did not see it. 

An hour later, once we got back into the dock, the skipper let everyone know at that point that none of the tours had seen any dolphins all day, and that everyone who'd been on the trip would get a free voucher that never expired for another trip out to see dolphins -- they could use the voucher tomorrow, next year, or many years down the road, it didn't matter because, again, no expiration. Later, Daisy would confirm with me that she did receive it in her email, so I guess the next time we visit North Carolina we've got a "free" boat trip waiting on us.

By the time we got back to the car, we were both very hot and thirsty, and were hungry.

We had asked the parents that morning if they were planning to go see a friend of my dad, who had a band that was playing in Southport that night. They'd told us they were originally going to go, but had decided they weren't really feeling well enough to do so and were tired, so they didn't want to. That was fine with us; we told them we'd likely get something to eat on the way home then and not to worry about us, and that we'd be home for the evening before dark. 

This to me was a pretty set plan -- as in, not something we would have expected to change. So, Daisy and I searched for some vegan or vegan-ish restaurants in Myrtle Beach, since we were deep in the heart of Myrtle already, and found an Indian/Mediterranean place we wanted to try, got the directions, and drove there.

By the time we were in the parking lot, we'd each gotten multiple missed calls and texts from my mother, saying they'd changed their mind and that they were going to go see the band play, and, could we be home by X time etc?

We could not be. We were well over an hour away from home, and were about to sit down for a meal. Even if we weren't, we would not have made it back home before they left.

We weighed our options. The carry-out/pickup on the restaurant's website advertised 15 minutes or something like that, and the place did not look busy. We figured we could eat, turn around and drive back home and get there eventually, even if we had to drive directly to the location ourselves and meet them there. Or, we could not eat and just turn around -- which wasn't really an option for either of us, we were both starving to the point where we were starting to get ill. 

Either I or Daisy (I can't remember honestly) let them know we were eating and would be down there when we could. Of course, had we known they would be changing their minds and would want to go, we would've come straight home after the dolphin tour, showered, changed our clothes, and we could've looked somewhat presentable. We didn't have that option anymore. My dad responded that they'd leave a spare key for us if we wanted to stop at the house and do all of that stuff before we drove to join them, but I believe Daisy told them that we'd just meet them there.

So we went inside the restaurant, sat down, and got our menus...and it took the servers forty minutes before they even came to take our order. After the order was done, it took another forty minutes to get all of our food -- and they even forgot one of the dishes I'd ordered (we weren't charged for it, so eh). 

We were mixed on the food -- I really liked a lot of the stuff I'd ordered, and Daisy hated most of the stuff she'd ordered. It was also ungodly expensive; the meal was something like $140 total. Was it worth that very high cost for a meal? No. Not at all. But I didn't think it was awful or anything like that. Again, overpriced, but not terrible for me. 

Once the bill was paid, we were back in the Malibu and headed north, out of Myrtle Beach and back up to North Carolina once more. We'd plotted the GPS to the bar's area in Southport -- I just assumed that it would be a normal bar, like a neighborhood bar the same as most of the ones my dad's bands played in as I was growing up.

I was wrong.

Southport has a residential area, and then it has the historic "rich white people" area, and on the outside of that area is the "rich white people bars and restaurants on the water where white people come and eat and drink a lot and listen to white people music" area. Guess where the bar was?

It was a Sunday night on a holiday weekend in Southport, where nobody would have to work the next day because Labor Day. It was also supposed to be the last "nice weather" day for a solid week, as it was supposed to rain and storm from that point forward, including on the holiday. We just wanted to make an appearance as it was important to my parents, be included in something they'd asked us to be included in, etc. 

Well, we tried.

The closest parking to this area was this time easily half a mile away from the venue, on some side streets with public parking next to a historical park/recreation area. Mind you, at this point Daisy and I were tired -- we'd been out all day, I'd been awake since around 6am, we'd already done a ton of walking and being out in the sun, and now we would be walking at least another mile (to the venue and then back, of course) to see my Dad's friend's band play.

Daisy plotted the GPS for walking to the location from where we parked, and we set off. As we approached the bar, it was very apparent which place we were headed to in a crowded on-the-ocean sea of strip-mall like restaurants, bars, and ice cream shops...because it was where the loud music was coming from. 

We were literally 300 or so feet away from the bar when we ran into my parents, walking the opposite way -- having been there and already left.

We were not upset -- my dad's maladies were acting up and it was really bothering him to be upright and to stay there to watch the band, though they had for a few songs. They had kept up appearances, so to speak, just like we were trying to do with them. They went back to their vehicle to go home -- their vehicle which was considerably closer -- and we told them we'd be home eventually, we had to get back to the car and pick up a few small essentials from the local Walmart first (we were both out of bottled water and I was out of sugar-free energy drinks -- the things that kept me going while I was there). 

The walk back to the car was beautiful, because it was literally along the coast. As in, there was a road and a bike path, an eight-foot wide area of sand, and then open ocean. The sun was setting. Most people were beginning to filter out of the bar areas and back to their own vehicles, or were otherwise out for an evening stroll. We took a number of photos of us together, including the one that will be used on this year's Christmas cards (more on this later) and finally got back to the car just as it was getting dark.

We then went to Walmart, which was mostly abandoned for it being an evening on a holiday weekend, and picked up those few essentials we needed. We also found one of the new Beetlejuice Beetlejuice apple Fantas, which we tried and both liked (it remains to this day the only time I've seen one in person in a store), before returning home and winding down the rest of the night.

The next day was Monday -- Labor Day -- and our final full day in North Carolina. My mother told us that Gabriel Brothers -- known colloquially and in most fashions these days as Gabe's -- had opened stores down there. 

I've talked about Gabe's before here, specifically referencing it in my stories about travel back home, as they are based and headquartered in my hometown of Morgantown, WV. They are a discount clothing and department store chain that dates back to the '60s, and was a huge part of my life growing up. They'd always had multiple locations in WV and PA, and a few in Ohio, but generally only in that small part of the tri-state area. Gabe's was my lifeblood growing up and remained so well into adulthood -- I still have clothing and items I purchased from Gabe's decades ago, some still in daily use and some that's traveled with me from location to location, state to state, apartment-to-apartment-to-house for almost my whole life. They were cheap, and because they were a discount store you had to carefully examine items that you purchased to make sure things like zippers worked, pockets weren't but out, stitching was normal, and there weren't holes in it....but as a kid, I was poor. Gabe's was where the poor people shopped in the 80s and 90s because it was cheap. I can't tell you the countless pairs of shoes I got for under $10 that I would wear for years until they fell apart. I can't tell you the number of $3 and $4 band/music/comic book t-shirts I bought there, or the number of $8 jeans and shorts I wore, or how many $6 gaudy Hawaiian shirts I owned in my college years that came directly from that store -- not to mention all of the food, DVDs, CDs, PC games, comic books, novels, greeting cards, cleaning/household/kitchen supplies, sunglasses, bedsheets, underwear, socks, swimming trunks, hoodies, gloves, and coats I got there over the years. It was my go-to store for almost anything I needed right up until I moved out of WV in 2006.

Well, in the past several years the store has expanded -- I know, a brick-and-mortar retail store expanding into new locations in the 2020s? Insane, right? -- and they have now built new locations in multiple states up and down the eastern seaboard and even as far west as Oklahoma and Missouri. One of those states, of course, was North Carolina -- in Wilmington.

I will state that the NC/SC locations were probably greatly influenced by the sheer number of West Virginian transplants who retired down there just like my parents did. My parents are far from being alone as WV natives down there -- there are a lot of people who have bought property in the southern coastal area of NC, including many people from Morgantown. It's somewhat bizarre to drive through Oak Island in the fall and see not one, but multiple WVU flags outside people's homes, or bumper stickers/car decals on vehicles, or people wearing WVU shirts (which we saw plenty of that Saturday we were there since it was gameday). 

Because my mother told us about the one in Wilmington, and because she and I used to have such fun going to Gabe's when I was a kid, we made plans to drive up there that Monday, on Labor Day, and peruse the store. As an aside, Daisy has experienced the magic of a Gabe's store with me before -- she did when we were visiting my parents in 2017, in Morgantown -- though I don't remember if she actually got anything at that juncture. I recall that trip being somewhat disappointing myself, in fact. 

My mother was lukewarm on the idea; she didn't know if she wanted to go, and didn't know if she would. I told her that was fine, we'd love to have her with us if she wanted to come, of course. 

That morning, as expected and predicted, it was pouring rain. Rain like I haven't seen in a long time. Coastal rain is different than inland rain -- if you get enough of it, it floods out streets and culverts, because when you're already at sea level, there's nowhere else for water to go. It floods out sewers, parking lots, and any/all low-lying areas (my parents would experience more of this when, two weeks later, a tropical rainstorm blew in and dumped close to two feet of rain on them in a 24-hour period, and flooded out the community college where my mother worked). It's why all the houses down there are on stilts. 

My mother decided against going with us, but Daisy and I decided to make a go of it anyway. It was the only chance we'd have to do it, and Daisy wanted to hit up the Sealevel Vegan Diner again while we were in Wilmington.

As an aside, and a wide aside at that -- one of my favorite movies of all time was filmed in Wilmington, and it's likely not one you'd ever guess. That movie is the 1986 Stephen King adaptation Maximum Overdrive, based on his short story "Trucks" from his first short story collection Night Shift. If the name doesn't ring a bell, it's the movie where a mostly pre-fame Emilio Estevez and a group of people (including Yeardley Smith, the voice of Lisa Simpson) hole up inside a truck stop when machines all over the world come to life and begin attacking humans. If that still doesn't ring a bell, it's the movie with the giant evil Green Goblin-headed semi truck.

Good lord do I love this movie. I urge you to find it and watch it if you never have. It occasionally circulates through one streaming service or another.

Make no mistake, the movie is not great. It has a great premise and a soundtrack by AC/DC, though (it's their compilation album Who Made Who). Well, I did some digging, and found out that the purpose-built truckstop for the movie was built on the opposite side of the river in Wilmington and is now a storage facility of some sort -- we legit drove by the filming location(s) multiple times while we were there. Mind you, the movie was filmed in 1985 and the area is way different now, but I still thought this was wildly fun to find out. 

Anyway.

So we drove up to Gabe's in Wilmington not knowing what we'd find there -- if it would be a small, crappy little store full of disappointing things or a sprawling behemoth of a place. My parents had been there before and said that it was relatively new -- as in, since the pandemic. That gave me hope. We also had to be mindful of what we purchased, as well; we both only had carry-on luggage. I myself had only brought my backpack as my entire goal was to pack lightly. Daisy had only her small suitcase with her, because it's not like we were on a weeks-long trip like we were to and from Canada. Anything we wanted to get we'd have to be able to fit into those bags -- and keep in mind, I'd already purchased a  large, bulky hoodie on this trip.. My dad had told us that he'd be happy to ship a box of stuff to us if necessary, but we didn't want him to have to do that -- especially not while he was fighting off several different ailments. 

The store was a sprawling behemoth of a place -- likely the largest and best/most well-stocked Gabe's I'd ever been inside.

Oh dear. This was a problem.

Throughout the entire time we were in the store -- which was so large that I could not see the other end of it and/or see where Daisy was about 80% of the time we were in there -- it was raining and storming so hard that I could barely hear the store's radio. The power flickered slightly at least once as well. I very quickly lost Daisy in the aisles and rows because there was just so many things I could have walked out of that store with that day. Most of these things, I decided against picking up, and it hurt me not to. I ended up getting a few small items, with the largest of them being a pair of Ecko Chuck-Taylor-style black high-tops with flames painted on them...for $6. New. Do I have any idea when I'll wear them? No, but I needed them. 

Over the course of an hour or two, Daisy found a few things, like some leggings and some vegan candy -- but I will tell you that if we had our large suitcases with us, we both likely would have spent hundreds of dollars in that store. There were so many things we wanted but just didn't have the room for. Gabe's will now be an absolute must-visit stop on all future trips down there to visit my parents. 

Unfortunately, however, the Sealevel Vegan Diner was closed for the holiday.

Upon returning home, my parents seemed...distant? Aloof? I don't know how to really describe it. I'd noticed this as a trend while we were there from the beginning this time around, but had mostly brushed it off because I knew my dad hadn't been feeling great. However, it was never more apparent than on that day -- just...malaise in both of them that I couldn't place. If my kids were visiting me, I'd be excited to see them and spend time with them while they were there. My parents were excited when we booked the trip, but once we actually got there, well...it seemed like a lot of that excitement had been greatly muted. Last year, my mother talked to Daisy for multiple hours on end. I also sat on the porch and hung out with my dad and the dogs for hours on end. This time around it was as if we'd already done that and there was simply nothing left to say, and we were just people in the house.

To be fair, my mother and I did have a very long sit-down conversation with me that was greatly intimate -- about our lives and where we were in them -- within a day or two of us arriving. I got a great sense of fear from her; fear for her own health as well as my dad's, fear of the future, and fear for both of us given our ages, levels of fatness (oh, because you'd best believe that came up again), stations in life, and finances. I assured her that we were fine and are still relatively healthy, neither of us are gaining weight, and that if our finances weren't stable we wouldn't have been able to afford the trip. This seemed to put her mostly at ease, but this was the only conversation of that sort we had during my entire time there, and even it felt really out of place and sort of disconnected. I wasn't sure what to make of it overall.

We understood, at least, that my dad's health was likely overshadowing our visit. He wasn't exactly feeling his best to put it mildly, and the cascade effect of that running down through my mother and to us was part of what made our interactions all seem so very stilted and muted. Not once, not once did either of my parents comment on the fact that both of us had oddly colored hair -- my parents have never seen either of us with dyed hair before. I tried to get them to say something on it, too -- I told them the colors we'd likely try next, gave them the details of what it took to do it and make the colors stay in the hair, etc. Nothing. I don't know if they were both purposely biting their tongues or they just didn't know what to say, or if it didn't faze them at all. When I accidentally dyed their guest towels lavender (because I accidentally washed them with our tie-dyes) my mother didn't care -- she just noted "we never use those towels anyway" when I apologized profusely. Ten years ago she would've lost her mind. 

It was just weird. Like, not pod-people weird, but the entire vibe of our interactions with my parents while we were there was definitely off. Even now, a month later, I can't really put my finger on what it was. I noticed that my mother seemed to be drinking far less than usual, but that alone doesn't seem to explain it in any sort of satisfactory way, so both Daisy and I just rolled with it, I guess. 

Brandon and Daisy Venture to North Carolina, Episode II: "Dogged"

 The trip from Omaha to Charlotte was mostly uneventful. I dozed off a few times on the plane. While I do love the adventure aspect of air travel I am not really a fan of the actual process, and I'm sure few are. This is primarily because I am not a small person, and neither is Daisy, and cramming ourselves into these airplane seats is not comfortable for flights longer than an hour or two at most. We make do with what we can, but none of it is particularly comfortable or fun.

Omaha to Charlotte is a somewhat long flight -- I believe it was like two and a half hours. We were, of course, flying halfway across the country. And, as mentioned before, we were flying American Airlines.

Hoo boy.

I learned during this trip that there are two classes of people -- there are people who can afford to fly Delta, which has upped its game tremendously over the course of the past decade or so, and then there are the people who aren't willing to pay double the ticket prices and who have to fly the low-cost airlines with multiple stops and/or multiple layovers. American is fine for what it is; it's likely near the top tier of the lower-cost airlines -- but the people who fly American are definitely a completely different class of people than the ones who fly airlines like Delta. American Airlines customers are definitively more white trash and generally just trashy people as a whole, and this was exhibited on these flights to and from North Carolina. People were rude, they were drunk, they were disgruntled -- it was very noticeable. 

It didn't help that American has zero screens in the back of their plane seats, they offer zero reading materials (not even a SkyMall magazine -- does that even still exist?), and their flight attendants were not only rude for the most part but were not even really attractive people. Does that make sense? I don't know if I've ever been on a set of flights were the flight attendants weren't gorgeous young women or very good looking flamboyant gay men -- at least not until these flights. I'm not trying to be elitist when I say that, but just factual. Is the job of flight attendant not traditionally, stereotypically, performed by some of the most attractive people possible? I'm not judging but rather making a wow observation that apparently this is no longer the case, at least not for American Airlines.

But the plus side is, American Airlines will give you the entire can of soda or juice when the in-flight snack service comes by. Delta and most other airlines will adamantly refuse to do that. I appreciate this, of course. I'm a guy who drinks like 100oz of liquid or more per day, and a little 4oz cup of soda watered down with ice isn't going to cut it if I'm thirsty. 

So, there we were, on long flights with zero screens to occupy us. Like I said, I dozed off for a bit a few times. Daisy read one of Nora McInerny's books that she hadn't yet read before. 

When we got to our gate in Charlotte, we found that our flight into Wilmington had been delayed. By the time we got on it, it had been delayed twice. I believe that they mentioned some sort of nebulous "mechanical issue" and that the planes would need to be swapped out, but honestly I was tired and didn't really pay that close attention. We finally got on it, later than expected, and lifted off towards Wilmington.

I had never flown into Wilmington airport. I expected it to be the equivalent of Morgantown's airport back home -- a small municipal airport with a couple of gates and one little terminal. I mean, Halifax's airport is pretty small and so is Bangor's -- and both of them I'm sure could be far larger than they actually are based on the population in their areas.

Well, Wilmington is apparently a big jumping off point for numerous touristy areas around coastal North Carolina -- it is on the coast itself, of course -- including Oak Island and other tourist towns and beaches, given its proximity. So it was a bit of a larger airport than I was expecting. And we were flying in riiiiiiight before Labor Day weekend, the last big tourism holiday of the summer.

It is not a bad airport. It is indeed somewhat small, but not as small as I expected. It's designed really well, really intuitively, and has some very pretty southern architecture. As we were arriving something like two hours later than expected, we still had to wait in line for the rental car.

We got to the rental car line and there were two people in front of us who were very chatty with the attendants. There was a long line that was forming behind us. I was very tired and irritable, we had already missed our opportunity to go get food somewhere or do any actual grocery shopping before we would get to my parents' house because it was late, and I had not had any nicotine other than the Nicorette mints in about nine hours at this point -- and the mints really don't work that well if you're going to use them for hours upon hours on end. Their effectiveness really begins to wane around hour six or so. I was getting very frustrated and irritated, to the point where I wanted to scream shut up, make with the keys, people have places to be to the customers in line in front of us who were so incessantly chatty. 

This is a failing of mine and I'm working on it, though I do not think I'll ever be able to rid myself of it entirely.

We were given the choice of a Camry or a Malibu for our rental car. I chose the Malibu, as we have had multiple Malibus in the past for rentals and knew how everything worked in them. I wasn't about to choose a Camry that we had no clue how to operate or where the controls were, etc -- new cars are confusing and mostly uncomfortable, as evidenced by the new Hyundai Elantra we rented last summer on our trip to Canada -- a car I never want to sit in again or ever drive.

I don't even remember what color Malibu we got now. That's how inconsequential it was to me for the trip. I believe it was black or a very dark gray. It was a fleet vehicle with Massachusetts plates I believe. Or Connecticut. Or Wisconsin. One of those states. Is it important now? Not at all.

It was already dark by the time we got it out of the rental lot and was only getting darker as we made our way to my parents' house, which was about a...eh, 40, 45-minute drive. It wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but we were again reminded that North Carolina drivers are fucking crazy, and that North Carolina highways -- even the interstates -- do not have lights on them. So we were driving through the dark, passing by swamps, over bridges and through forests almost completely in pitch-black conditions -- which I hate. 

"How many gators do you think we've unknowingly driven by, just off the side of the road in the swamp?" I asked Daisy.

By the time we arrived, my mother had already gone to bed for the night -- my dad made sure she got up and saw us for a bit before she returned to bed. We were exhausted, and we were immediately accosted by the dogs. 

My parents have three dogs -- two golden retrievers and one shih-tzu. Sofie (yes, spelled with an F) is the oldest and largest golden retriever I've ever seen. She's now 11 or 12, which is ancient for a dog of her size and weight, and when we visited WV in 2017 she had to be close to 200 pounds -- this dog was larger than either of my parents and heavier at that. In her old age since, she has now dropped a lot of weight (she's like 115, 120 now) but is still quite large and is absolutely nuts. She's a dog the size of a small bear -- she will step on you, she will knock you down, she will bark and howl in your face, and if she doesn't get the attention she wants, she will bitch-slap you across the face with her paw, sending your glasses flying across the room. 

Don't ask me how I know about that last one. 

The second golden retriever is a new addition to the household since we were in town last year -- her name is Annie and my mother insisted she be adopted from someplace in WV once her breeding years were over, so they did -- last fall, after we left. Annie is six or seven, and is very nearly the perfect dog. She is very sweet, very intelligent, makes a great guard dog, and is active and playful without being an asshole about it. She is what I would describe as the ideal golden retriever, the dog I wanted when I was growing up. 

Hachi is the shih-tzu, and he is eight or nine at this point -- I can't remember how old. I know that when we were in WV in 2017 he wasn't a puppy, but he also wasn't fully grown either. He is a very sweet, hyper little yappy dog who actually closely resembles the (now long-deceased) shih-tzu we had when I was growing up, Moot. But, unlike Moot, Hachi isn't an asshole. Moot was the biggest asshole dog I've ever known. Hachi is like Moot without the asshole tendencies like growling and biting at you or trying to hump you to dominate you. He's a sweet boy, a lapdog, and he really loves people. He especially seems to love me when I visit. Per my dad, Hachi has girlfriends all up and down the street and all over the island, and is universally loved by everyone.

So, as we arrived, we were basically bowled over by the dogs. And of course, they're loud and unruly, which woke up the parrot, who also became loud and unruly and began screaming, all at like 10pm. Daisy and I were tired, unshowered, had eaten very little (we'd had some food in the airport but that's about it) and just wanted to relax, decompress, and go to bed. 

I don't remember much of the rest of the night; I don't even remember if I showered or not. My mother went back to bed, and dad and I sat on the back porch for a bit so I could vape, then we watched a bit of Picard as the parents had recently acquired Paramount+ and he was just beginning the third (and best) season of the show. I don't remember if I ate anything else. I don't remember if Daisy ate anything else. I was burnt out from traveling the entire way and eventually, I went to sleep with her.

When I woke up the next morning, Friday morning, it was early. My mother is usually up by 7 or so, so she tells me now -- which is a somewhat new thing. The dogs usually get my dad up around the same time, maybe slightly thereafter. But I was up around 5 and could sleep no longer -- the bed in that guest room, which we slept on last year too, is so very hard to sleep on for me, especially as I get older. It really messes with my hips, knees, and shoulders, and the parents keep the house a lot warmer than we keep ours at home, even with the AC. Even though it's my parents' house and therefore my home by extension, I was not about to turn their thermostat down to 67 or 66 -- the temperature we like it at home when it's hot in the summer.

And it is hot in North Carolina. It can be cooling down everywhere else, but in late August/early September, it is very much still summer in North Carolina, and with that comes humidity (I mean, we're on an island there, so there's ocean) and oppressive coastal heat. It was usually already into the low 80s by the time the sun came up in the morning -- I am only guessing there -- and got into the mid 90s by the time the sun was well into the sky. It can be very uncomfortable.

Because it was so early, I got up and made a cup of coffee and tried to get a small sandwich or something to eat without being too loud for the family. The dogs at this point are used to me, and used to us moving around when it's still dark -- Sofie will watch me, acknowledge me and wag her tail a little. Hachi usually sleeps with dad, and Annie usually sleeps on a dog bed next to the bed in the master bedroom.

Oh, there's something else I should mention, lest this story become more confusing without it -- my dad has been sick. He went to the hospital the week before we arrived because he's had pain in his abdominal region stretching down into his groin area. He thought it was a possible kidney stone, a hernia, or a flare up of diverticulitis -- which he has had for some time, but hasn't had any real incidents of note of for many years. When he went to the doctor, he was told it wasn't a hernia and was indeed a diverticulitis flare up, and got some antibiotics for it. He still felt like shit, but the antibiotics helped. Still, he was moving a lot more slowly and in pain, and because of Annie being a nut and running circles around the bedroom when both of them were in bed -- and I am sure because of the pain too -- he had been sleeping on the couch in the living room almost exclusively, for what I assumed to be some length of time. While we were there, he got further results back from his doctor that confirmed that yes, he had multiple kidney stones too -- something that would have been nice to know about previously, of course. 

So, he slept on the couch, which made it a bit difficult for us to move about the house in the night or early morning hours for, well...pretty much any reason. I am not a quiet person, though I try to be as much as possible. Daisy has told me before how loud of a person I really am even when I'm trying to be quiet. And I also cannot see in the dark. The Keurig makes noise when you make coffee. Doors opening and closing make noise. Lights shower light all over the main floor of the house. The refrigerator and microwave make noise. The back porch lights turn on and off with a voice command to the Alexa. I can't stop those things from happening, I can only try to lessen their impact as much as possible. So it was a...very interesting routine I had every morning in trying to not disturb the parents before they naturally got up. I honestly don't know how I didn't wake them. Maybe I did and they didn't say anything.

Anyway.

That day, Daisy wanted to go get some vegan food, and we needed to go to the grocery store to get us some food and other incidentals for a few days. The place Daisy wanted to go was back in Wilmington, a place called the Sealevel Vegan Cafe. I actually think I'd found it some time ago in doing some research of the area -- it had what was apparently voted PETA's best vegan hot dog of 2021, a cornflake-batter coated dog with buffalo sauce and slaw on it. I honestly cannot remember what it was called now, but it was something I'd noted that I wanted to go try while we were down there, so Daisy made it one of the stops we'd make. 

We went there that morning through a classic Carolina torrential rainstorm, a storm that was not really predicted and raged while we were inside. The food was fine. The dog was disappointing, and easily the least favorite thing I ordered (though still good). What was fire was their chickenless chicken sandwich and the made in-house kettle cooked potato chips.

Afterwards, we went to get vegan donuts and beignets at some little mostly-abandoned place downtown, picked up some groceries to last us a few days, and returned home.

There are a lot of things we did on the trip that I have a hazy memory of now, honestly. I was drained the entire time we were there. The bed in our guest room was less than comfortable, as I mentioned, and it felt like I was constantly inflamed while I was there -- allergies were terrible (they were last year too) and all of my joints constantly hurt when there. Ibuprofen and glucosamine were my best friends. I was in a lot of body pain. Daisy seemed to fare mostly okay for the most part, which surprised me. The most enjoyable parts of the trip for me were the times when I was just able to be myself -- the hour or two in the mornings where I could get a quiet cup of coffee on the porch with my vape and a book, and just sink into the chair. Some mornings I got bored and restless doing this and hoped everyone would just wake up and move about the house so I could have some company, and others I was so relaxed I could've fallen asleep on the porch chair -- and may have for a few minutes, briefly, from time to time. 

The next day, Saturday, was the home opener for West Virginia University's football season, versus Penn State. I had been looking forward to watching the game with my parents for weeks, as it would be the first game we'd been able to watch together for many years. Daisy was on board for this and was excited in her own way as well -- she is not a fan of football at all (despite my many years of trying to indoctrinate her into its cult), but as she's told me many times about a great many times, she just loves to see me excited and happy, as that makes her happy too. My parents, of course, are football fans and can, at times, be very passionate about it -- indeed, the first thing I saw when we pulled up to the house a few nights prior was the giant WVU flag I'd sent them for Christmas last year proudly flying off the flagpole on the front porch.

However, that morning was the local craft fair -- which we were interested in going to. The farmer's market we'd been so excited to go to when we were down there had ended for the season a week or two prior, but the craft fair (which was half of the farmer's market anyway, and in the same spot) was going strong and was done on Saturday mornings, apparently. So we'd planned to go to that. We asked my mother if she wanted to join us and she said she would. Dad would not, he was not feeling great and did not want to have to walk around for an hour or two -- which I understood, of course. Craft fairs aren't really his thing anyway. They're not really my thing either, but I know Daisy found several really neat things when we were down there last year, and I know my mother likes them and usually sees people she knows. So, we all piled into our rental car and the three of us went -- marking the first and only time that we've ever driven my mother anywhere for any reason. 

There wasn't really anything there that any of us wanted or were willing to spend the money on, but Daisy did get this really cute picture of us:

Multicolored hair and all. 

Also shows the size difference between me and my (very small) mother -- I am very surprised that I came out of a woman that small:

Like, I'm a big guy, but I'm not like 600 pounds or anything. It seems like my mother gets smaller every year. Her own mother did that too as she got older, and I am slowly shrinking in height as I get older as well. I guess it's a familial trait?

Anyway.

After the craft fair, as we were not there that long, we stopped at one of the "Beach Life" (or whatever it's called) souvenir shops -- which I figured would be a fun excursion to take with my mother in tow. I have not gone shopping with my mother for anything in well over fifteen years at this point, so having her come with us while I got some salt-water taffy and a hoodie, I thought, would be a fun excursion. And it was. She found a dolphin necklace she wanted, and we got it for her (Daisy later told me how she would likely wear it proudly all around everywhere and tell people her son bought it for her while he was in visiting, which warmed my heart). I got a long-sleeved sky-blue shirt and a black hoodie with "save the turtles" on it or something; I thought it was nice and the generic Oak Island hoodie I bought down there last year, from the same shop, was great -- it is warm and comfortable as hell, and it got heavy use last fall and winter -- so this one I expect to get the same amount of wear and use. 

We returned to the house and watched the game -- it did not go well for WVU and I dozed off on the couch for a decent chunk of it. By the time the second half rolled around I had mostly lost interest; I spoke to my oldest aunt on the phone for a decent amount of time when she called, and my mother went to bed early. I don't remember what Daisy and I did; I know we sort of just eventually retired to our room and fell asleep at some point. 

This was how most of the trip went -- get up for the day, have something planned that we do that takes some of the day, return to the house, and then spend the rest of the day at home while everyone winds down. Interspersed with a trip to the beach here and there. 

Brandon and Daisy Venture to North Carolina, Episode II: "The Sequel"

(mostly written the morning we left, with some edits made after our return)

 Hi all.

Well, there is a lot to talk about going on in the background, and I alluded to that in my last entry here, but for now, it's time to talk about the trip to visit my parents in NC. I will go back and cover the other stuff when I can, of course.

So as you may or may not know, soon after our return from Canada (during which I zeroed out any and all PTO I had stored), I began making calculations and running some numbers to see whether we could feasibly, somewhat inexpensively, visit my parents in North Carolina this fall. Flights were looked at with varying departure dates, varying departure times, and of course variable prices. I knew and only knew the following:

1. I did not want to leave on a first-AM flight that would require us to be at the airport at like 4am

2. I did want to fly directly into Wilmington instead of Raleigh this time around, to eliminate the 3-4 hours of driving time in the rental car before we were even to the island upon which my parents live; Wilmington is 30ish miles from my parents' house versus 170-180 from Raleigh

3. I did not want to get a departure flight home that wouldn't get us back in Omaha until well after nightfall

4. I did not want non-refundable tickets 

5. I did want trip protection insurance, seat selection pick guarantees, and priority boarding (I paid extra for all of these things -- the priority boarding I added when we checked in for the flight online about 12 hours before leaving)

6. I did not want to check baggage for a five-day trip.

I had some, ahem, points of contention with the wife for that last one.

"[Daisy], all you really need is like three outfits and your swimsuit. And some sandals. My parents have a washer and dryer -- we can wear the same shit more than once, after it's washed of course," I said.

You know that old adage that some people plan and pack for a trip months in advance, and some throw a random smattering of shit into a suitcase the day of, and they marry each other? That's us. Want to guess which one of those two I am?

Okay, just to eliminate the guessing game, I'm the one who had his bag for this trip -- and it was indeed a bag, a sturdy canvas backpack -- packed fully by sometime around the second week of July. In fact, when the power went out and we were in the dark ages again, I had to go to that bag to pull out my iPhone charger to take to the parents' to re-fill my phone's battery.

Daisy is very much of the mindset that she may need to wear multiple outfits every day, because she wants something for all occasions -- in addition to needing every book, vitamin, gummy vitamin, granola bar, cosmetic, her hair dryer, etc. known to man. For a five-day trip.

My bag? Aside from the small essentials like my pills and a few vapes and my phone charger? Three pairs of shorts, four shirts, four pairs of underwear, a spare pair of glasses, and a spare pair of flip-flops. In a small Ziploc I also have Q-tips, my toothbrush/toothpaste, and some sinus/allergy pills. In the front compartment of my bag I have a single stick of deodorant, a single shampoo bar, and a single bar of soap. I also have a small Ziploc filled with our laundry detergent sheets and dryer sheets, so we don't have to worry about Daisy having any sort of allergic reaction to the stuff my parents use. I also included four tie-dyed shirts I made for my parents for their birthday, which was the week prior to our arrival. The real present is us, of course, but the last time I made them tie-dyes they loved them, so I figured that was a fun idea.

Part of packing light for me is because, yes, I will be perfectly fine wearing the same outfits a couple of times -- I'm at home with my parents; I have nobody to impress. Part of it is that I long to travel light, to not have to take a suitcase on a cross-country trip. And, finally, part of it is that there is a 30-pound box of comic books for my Dad, in my backpack, that is taking up a lot of space and weight. Once it is out of there, and once the parents' shirts are out of there...I will have a much lighter bag and much more space for anything I bring back. 

Anyway.

For all of those things in the above requirement list to be fulfilled -- regardless of the stuff about packing -- the round trip tickets for both of us, everything included, was close to $1200. 

It is what it is. Air travel is expensive.

Daisy was not happy with me about this, but I reminded her that there are precious few times left that we'll get to visit my parents when they're both alive, and they are genuinely grateful and excited when we go to see them. Plus, I was booking this trip, and was handling everything for it to my own, very admittedly neurotic, specifications. All Daisy had to do was book the rental car, which she did -- and very inexpensively at that.

Daisy's parents -- more Dad than Mama -- agreed to watch over the children [read: our cats] while we were gone, and I made sure to order them some extra treats and an extra case of food just in the event that we could be better prepared for any unforeseen circumstances. Daisy set up all of the security cameras around the house -- basically, nanny cams for the cats -- so that we could view them while we're gone. I put a hold on the mail, went down my to-do list checklist to make sure I took care of all I could, removed my debit card from my wallet and left my keys here (in the event Dad needed to take the car out of the garage for any reason) and grabbed all of my extra cash so I didn't have to use my travel-approved credit cards for absolutely everything while we were there. We told the parents we would Uber to the airport for the flight, but Dad insisted on driving us over there himself. 

My overall goal for the trip was not to be there for amusements or for destination events -- it is to finally be able to decompress and fucking relax for a few days. I have been wound so tightly and for so long that it's seriously starting to affect my mental health, my stress reactions, and my responses to people and things in my circle around me. On top of it all I have just been so very tired, so exhausted by life and everything bad that's happened this year that I just needed a genuine break; I needed it all to stop. While Canada was very fun and we did a lot of fun things while up there, I did not really see it as a vacation but more of a "family visit obligation." I was so burnt out by the end of it that I wasn't myself, I was but a withered husk of myself in clothes and flip-flops. 

The good thing about visiting my parents is that it can all just stop if we want it to -- we have no social obligations in North Carolina. We have no friends there. We went all the places we were interested in when we were there last year. We have no places we had to go to this year, aside from the grocery store and Walmart to get some essentials. Daisy wanted to go to the beach every day, which was not a hard concept because we're on an island. We also wanted to visit a few vegan restaurants to try what they have, but even that wasn't super-imperative to either of us, really. 

So, the parents picked us up from the house and got us to the airport on the morning of the trip, we got through security quickly and efficiently, and we finally lifted off the ground -- wheels up, jets blasting, toward North Carolina...

Back to the Dark Ages, Part II

I fully admit that as my memory of what happened during this time is really fuzzy, I may be missing some details or getting part of the timeline wrong. What I can tell you is that this is the series of events as I remember them, and I apologize for any inaccuracies.

 My power banks were not completely dead, but I knew I'd need more power for them. Daisy had made a deal with me before she'd gone over to the parents' that if it wasn't back, they could come get me on Friday -- as I no longer would have to work, Friday/Saturday are my normal days off -- and I could eat, recharge everything, enjoy some air conditioning and some company for several hours.

I had also had some foresight -- on Thursday night, when a lot of cell signal had finally returned (signifying that repairs to the power grid were, finally, really progressing) I had gone on Amazon from my phone and had ordered a massive power bank for next-day delivery. Knowing that such items generally come pre-charged at least halfway, if not more (some come fully charged right out of the box), I figured that it would be enough to get me through however long this bullshit was going to last once it arrived, in the event that I couldn't get over to the parents' that early on Friday. 

Charging my phone with my oldest power bank while I was dozed off that morning in the early morning hours in my chair killed that power bank down to 0% and only brought my phone up to around 70%. Charging my vapes and my mp3 player's speaker dropped the other one down to 30%, and then to 0% by around 9:30 that morning, after I'd showered in the dark by the light of the radio lantern to get all of the sweat off me.

I was able to reach Daisy and told her that whenever they wanted to come rescue me for the day, I'd be very grateful. The house was so very stuffy and humid and it was getting to the point where I could no longer really function without some actual food in my stomach or air conditioning. I was also going completely, totally stir crazy -- I had listened to the radio until it died, wound it back up and listened to it more until it died again, had read through every single comic I had in my reading stack to the point where I was so very sick of reading anything, and (because it didn't require electricity) pulled two fresh white shirts out of the closet to tie-dye them because I needed something to fucking do. 

Daisy and her parents did come to get me and I went over to their house for several hours -- I took a bag of everything I could think of that I would need to charge, and plugged all of it in once I got there. I got some food, some air conditioning, and some desperately-needed internet time on my phone, during which I reached out to my coworkers to let them know that no, I still did not have power and had no real ETA for when it would be back. I was also able to follow a lot of OPPD's repairs in real-time -- they were restoring about 10,000 customers every hour or two for a long time, and had already cut the outages in half -- but were already saying that some customers may not be restored for a week or more for the heavily-damaged areas.

And, let me tell you, there was heavy damage. Having been stuck at home, I hadn't been able to see the actual real-life devastation that 90-100mph winds could do, and had done, to most of the city. I'm not sure I've ever seen so many downed trees -- trees that had to 80-100 years old split right down their centers or completely uprooted. Garage doors and windows blown in. Entire trees resting on roofs that were very clearly caved in by the impact. So many, so many fences blown down in large chunks, or completely destroyed. Cars smashed by trees laying on their roofs. I've seen some pretty extensive storm damage before -- after all, I have lived in tornado alley for almost eighteen years now -- but never so much seemingly random and very widespread. Some large trees were completely destroyed and on top of people's homes, while other trees and homes twenty yards away looked pristine and untouched.

Our street, and many others, had the neighborhood denizens clean up what they could and place the debris on the curbs, which (we were told) would be picked up by city clean-up crews and hauled away. 

As I am writing this, it is August 23 and they haven't touched our street yet when it comes to storm cleanup. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

That Friday afternoon, once everything was charged, I came back to the house to take care of the cats and watch over it in the event power came back on. Daisy and I had an agreement that as soon as the power came back, I was to let her know and she'd come home. We also had an agreement that once it did come back, we weren't turning everything on immediately (like the air conditioner) so that if it died again in twenty minutes, it wouldn't blow stuff up.

The new power bank had arrived, delivered by Amazon, in the time I was over at the parents'. While Daisy gathered some stuff from the house to take back over to the parents' -- because as long as the power was out and we had no AC, she wasn't sleeping at home -- and cleaned the litter pans, I unboxed it to find that it had come with a 77% charge out of the box already. I immediately put it to use. 

Let me tell you, folks, invest in a good, high-capacity power bank if you have not already done so. This is the one I got, and holy shit:

 With 77% power out of the box, this little power bank charged my phone from almost dead to completely full no less than five times, charged all of my vapes countless times, and charged my mp3 player, and its speaker at least twice. At full power I may have been able to run my computer off it for a while. 

Shortly after 6pm on Friday night, we hit 48 hours without power.

At this point I was very hot and very frustrated; everything in the fridge and freezer was now certainly ruined and would need to be disposed of, and we'd just gotten a lot of groceries the week prior. Cold things, frozen things, and a lot of vegan things that were expensive. Adding insult to injury was that I'd just gotten two brand new bottles of pumpkin spice coffee creamer that I'd been waiting to come back into stock, finally, for the fall season -- and as soon as they had, I immediately snapped up two of the last ones the store had left. All ruined. Everything ruined.

Also, at this point we didn't even know if the fridge would turn back on when the power did, as we know our luck and the fridge was one of the big appliances in the house we had yet to replace -- and it's easily 20, 25 years old. 

I listened to podcasts and drifted in and out of sleep on the couch for most of the overnight hours; it was about all I could do. When my phone was charged I would obsessively check the OPPD restoral map and website for updates to see if there was anything new on restoral efforts. What had been over 200,000 on Wednesday night had dropped to about 60,000, then 40,000, and then as they worked they apparently must've hit/taken out another grid, because it jumped back up into the fifties again.

By the early morning hours of Saturday, before it was light outside, I made sure the cats were fine and I went upstairs to my office, where I opened up the window and put one of the battery-powered fans on my desk chair to blow cool air from outside directly on me. I then dozed off and on some more. 

It was far too hot to sleep upstairs -- heat rises, and it was already in the mid-80s in the master bedroom. The window and the little fan wouldn't help that much. The living room downstairs was by default the naturally coolest room in the house, and when it was cool I could open the window at one end and the French doors at the other end and establish a little airflow and circulation throughout the house. However, I didn't want to do that at night -- for one, raccoons, opossums, stray cats, rabbits, and all sorts of other creatures (including at least one skunk I have seen) use our neighborhood's backyards like a transit superhighway, and all I needed was for a skunk to come up on the porch, have one of the cats see it and go running to the screen door...

For two, even though it was pitch black dark in our entire area with everyone's power out, an open window even with a screen in it on the lower floor of a house, facing the street, is like begging someone to break in and start robbing the place -- something else I didn't want, especially not when I would be sleeping on the couch six feet from said window. 

The house stank. With no airflow and without our air cleaners able to run without power, every time one of the cats went to the pan, you would smell every scent molecule...eventually, once the scent made its way over to you. The air was stale, breathed-in, humid, and oppressive. Saturday's temperatures were supposed to be in the 90s and Sunday's were predicted to hit 100. 

This is part of the reason I went upstairs early Saturday morning -- I needed to go sit in my room and acclimate myself to the heat as the day got hotter. I have a battery-operated atomic clock on my wall that also has a thermometer on it -- the thermometer said that it was 88.9 in my office. The longer I could deal with that as it got hotter, the better it would feel when I went back downstairs later in the day where the temperature was only about 83ish. 

For perspective, we keep our thermostat, year round, anywhere between 67 and 71 depending on the time of year. In the summer, on the brutal days, I will occasionally put it down to 66 or 65 to make the air conditioner run longer, and in the winter when I'm freezing I'll sometimes turn it up to 72 to keep the furnace running for a while longer as well. The normal, ambient temperature in my upstairs office, even when the AC is on in the summer, rarely goes below 75. Right now as I write this, it's 77.

But 88.9 was not the end of it.

As the day went on that Saturday and everything heated up, it reached 96.7 in my office -- and this is well after I closed the window and curtain to keep the sun/heat out. There was nothing that could really be done. I forced myself to deal with it as long as I could, and began having flashbacks to summers in Kansas in that rented house with a very old, almost non-functional AC unit. 

Still, I thought, the cats -- though they were far younger then -- lived in Kansas with me without any real air conditioning, with nowhere near the number of amenities and conveniences they have now, and they were all fine. You lived through it too, Brandon -- you'll be fine. People and cats live without air conditioning all over the world and they survive it every day.

By the afternoon and evening hours I had finished off all of the bottles of water, Powerade, and almost any other hydrating liquid in the house. I was starving, I was very sleep-deprived, I was overheated, and I was just done with this no power bullshit. I would stare at the clock, sometimes talking to it, asking time itself to turn the power back on, please, it had been long enough. I was correct in my assumption that it would feel far better going downstairs after forcing myself to bake all day in the sauna that is the upstairs of the house -- but before I did, I took another cool shower in a desperate attempt to feel better. 

I used a coupon code I had in my email as well as a special deal discount that Papa John's was running, and ordered a single large pizza with extra cheese, roma tomatoes, and onions -- I have ordered pizza from the Papa for so long that it is, to this day, the only password I have memorized over the years and know it by heart. 

I only ordered one because, despite my appetite for pizza, it's not like I could stick it in the fridge or freezer for later. It arrived within 25 minutes and I tipped the delivery driver very well and told him he was my savior because I still had no power and just needed to eat something. 

I ate 2/3 of the pizza very rapidly, and saw movement on the street out of the corner of my eye -- it was multiple OPPD bucket trucks driving down my little residential street, followed by a few guys in hard hats walking up and down the sidewalks. Almost as soon as I texted this information to Daisy, all of them disappeared.

Around 6pm Saturday night, we hit 72 hours without power. 

It was also around this time where the new, very high-capacity power bank finally died, which left me with only the two smaller ones. 

Pete was not a fan of being without Daisy, but he was even less of a fan of the heat. He was flopped out on the couch next to me, dozing off and on, looking at me like "it's hot, bruh."

Empress was still fairly active and somewhat playful -- she brought me her ball to play fetch with her a few times before finally just giving up and sprawling out on the hardwood floor like "it's too hot for this shit, dad."

The temperature in the downstairs of the house reached 86. When I went upstairs to make sure they had new, cool, clean water in their bowls, it was 88.9 in the master bedroom and 96.8 in my office. Hank and Mable had tried to sleep upstairs in the hallway on the carpet and I very gently made them go back downstairs where it was much cooler.

It slowly began to get dark, and I'd resigned myself to yet another sweltering night without power. Daisy texted me and asked if I'd clean the litter boxes before it got too dark to see (it was already, frankly, too dark for me to see) and I told her I would. I also agreed to go back over to the parents' on Sunday, despite me needing to work Sunday night if the power was on, to again recharge things and get something to eat, soak in some air conditioning, etc.

About five minutes after that, I heard a click, saw the electric clock on the TV stand light up, and saw the ceiling fan slowly begin spinning again. 

After 74 hours, the power was finally back on. 

I immediately plugged in the power banks, as well as my phone, to get them to start recharging in the event that the power would go back out after a few minutes. It likely would've been a fruitless endeavor, but some juice is better than no juice. I also immediately texted Daisy to let her know the power was back on, and texted our neighbor (who was not at home) to let her know too. I turned on all of the ceiling fans and suddenly, there was air movement again throughout the house. The cats, who were all in deep heat-slumber scattered around the house, noticed the air movement and started to get peppy and awake again.

As excruciating as it was to wait, I waited about half an hour before (with a silent prayer to whatever higher power I do not believe in anyway) I turned on the air conditioner. It fired right up and began the long process of trying to cool down the house.

Daisy was dropped off by her parents a short time later, and we began putting our now-working appliances to use -- I could finally do some laundry, I could finally run the dishwasher to clean the multiple days' worth of dishes that had piled up. 

And then, we attacked the (now working) fridge and freezer.

Everything in it was, as we expected, a total loss. Everything in the freezer was cool to the touch, but it was certainly not frozen. Some stuff had liquified. A lot of stuff in the fridge had liquified. We didn't even bother trying to save the condiments or salad dressings or hot sauces -- it all went directly into the trash. The only thing save-able from the fridge was a ziploc bag full of candy bars I'd brought back from Canada -- candy bars that did not need to be refrigerated in the first place and were still somewhat cold. Everything else had to go -- hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of stockpiled frozen and refrigerated food, stuff that I didn't even know we had buried in the back of the fridge or freezer, all of it completely ruined and spoiled. To say we were devastated is an understatement. 

Aside from a brief fleeting power blip here and there over the course of the following few days, our power remained on and restored after it came back up. We had also found, upon closer examination of the storm damage over the time we were waiting for power restoral, that the one sole tree we have remaining on our property had a large, calf-sized branch that had cracked in half and was ready to come down in our backyard. Daisy ordered a pole saw and a handheld electric chainsaw and the next morning, Sunday, we used those tools to hack it off the tree, chop it up, and then we dragged it to the curb to match all of the damaged limbs and branches everyone else on the street had piled at the ends of their yards. That is where it remains even now, as mentioned above.

It took almost 24 hours before the AC returned the house to normal temperatures.

I put what remained of the pizza in the fridge once it was emptied and once Daisy gave it a good scrubdown cleaning (something she'd wanted to do for a while anyway). 

I did return to work that night (Sunday) and have been working since (well, more or less -- I'll get to this at another time). We did replace a lot of the food in the refrigerator/freezer -- slowly, cautiously, being mindful of what we really needed to have on hand versus what we just wanted. We even got a roofing crew to come out to the house and give us an estimate on the damage we sustained -- the piece of the siding that was ripped off was but a decorative cowling, not a true piece of siding; the roofing crew cut off the ripped part and nailed the rest of it back down in about thirty seconds. They also confirmed that we were missing zero shingles and the roof looked to be in relatively great shape -- so the shingles we found in our yard after the storm were not ours, apparently. Whose were they? Who knows -- 100mph winds could've blown them in from multiple blocks away. We tossed them in the trash. 

In the time since, life has returned to mostly normal. OPPD was indeed correct -- it did take some people in the area a week or more to have their power restored. Some people around the area (including some folks I work with) had a lot more damage, or they had power but their Cox internet was out for two more weeks before it was restored. As far as I am aware, no lives were lost in the storm.

So, that's the story. I am really, really hoping we don't have to live through such a nightmare again -- or any other nightmares, honestly, as we've had enough in 2024 as it is -- anytime soon.

More updates to come soon, as I have a lot to talk about that I have not even touched on here yet. 

Back to the Dark Ages, Part I

 I am...getting very, very tired of 2024.

I am about to tell you a story of events that happened a few weeks ago, and involved some particularly trying times. I'm not looking for sympathy or help (believe me, we're fine) but I am going to lay it out here for everyone because it was not pleasant.

As a lot of you know, this year has been, frankly, terrible for severe weather in the midwest. We have had numerous tornado close calls in and around Omaha, and some in April and May that actually hit parts of the city (notably the west side of Omaha, as well as the airport to the east of us). These storms, up until recently, thankfully missed our section of town -- or if we did get them, the effects were far milder than expected. There were several nights, though, where the tornado sirens went off at like 3, 4-something in the morning, and Daisy had to get up, come downstairs and help me wrangle the cats to get them into their carriers in the event that the tornadoes came close enough to where we'd have to either leave and take them with us or cram ourselves into the sturdiest, most closed-off room in the house -- our downstairs bathroom -- and hope for the best. 

As an aside, if you've never had to chase down, catch, and cram five cats -- two of them geriatric, and three of them who absolutely hate carriers -- into carriers in an emergency, all while tornado sirens are going off and you're trying to pay attention to the television to see if tornadoes are headed for your neighborhood and because it's still the overnight during the week, still being logged in and trying to work...I do not recommend this horseshit. It is not fun and one of the many reasons I absolutely must get out of the midwest as soon as humanly possible.

Anyway.

Our luck had been pretty good. The storms this season mostly blew over us or by us, and we could let the cats out of their carriers once the threat had passed, Daisy could go back to bed, I could resume my night of work and devote my full attention to it, etc. But this happened multiple times, and my nerves and patience for this spring/summer's storm season was at an end. By the time we returned from Canada in late June, I figured we were pretty much done with it.

And then July 31st happened.

Understand that in most years, July 31st is way past the "peak season" for tornadoes and severe weather in the midwestern states, even in the places I've lived (Missouri, Kansas, and now Nebraska). May and June are generally the high-point months, though it's been particularly nasty a few years in March and April too as the temperatures and weather patterns shift in the spring. So, end of July and into August we're reaching our hottest weather of the year in Omaha, but the weather is generally fairly quiet as we round the bell curve and head into more seasonal fall-like weather of September and October. 

As you folks know, I tend to follow weather pretty closely -- partly because of anxiety and partly because, especially in the months when I have to do so, I need to know when and how I will be able to mow the grass and do the string trimming, and Daisy needs to know when she has to water the garden and when she won't. My weather obsession also allows me to warn people at work, most of whom don't care because they don't have property to protect/live in secure apartment complexes, etc and won't follow the weather, that there's some bad stuff coming and that they should save their work frequently, and text us in leadership if they lose power or internet and the like. In the days leading up to the end of July, the weather people in and around Omaha predicted some moderate severe weather over the course of a few days that either never developed, or developed somewhere else than where they predicted, or started to develop but fizzled out. So, I wasn't really that concerned -- after all, the two giant trees that were problematic on our property we'd had removed after the storms of 2021. They were the only two trees around us that could have done substantial damage to our home were they to come down (and believe me, had we left them up, they would have in storms we've gotten between 2021 and now). Tornadoes are one thing -- straight line winds and downbursts that can't really be predicted more than a few minutes to an hour in advance are quite another.

So, on July 31, I had just gotten up for a normal Wednesday night of work when the sirens began going off. While there were a few small tornadoes around the area (the siren will trigger when there's one anywhere in the county, and I don't know how many were actually confirmed) the sirens were because the storm front that had formed while I had been sleeping that day, and had begun moving through the area, was capable of 80-100mph winds -- with a lot of those winds already being clocked at weather stations around and outside the city in the 70-90mph range.

This is wildly unusual for Nebraska. Yeah, the midwest is windy -- it is almost never like that. 

We turned on the TV, of course, and got the cats into the carriers in the event that we'd need to evacuate. It was at least 85 degrees outside -- muggy and stuffy, and in the span of about ten minutes, it got dark. Dark as actual night, at 6pm in July. The streetlights kicked on. Our porch light kicked on. And for a while, all was calm -- it looked like the worst of the storms were going to blow over us or blow by our part of the city. 

And then it hit. 

It's been a long time since I've seen storm winds like that. The house shook, everything rattled. The winds ripped giant limbs off trees at houses down the street, and they crashed to the ground and rolled, or were blown into roofs. The power went off and on about five or six times in very rapid succession over the course of a minute or two, and Daisy basically dove to turn off the air conditioner so that the fluctuations did not blow it up after we'd just had it fixed, all the while telling me, begging and pleading with me to get away from the windows to avoid flying limbs and objects (of which there were many -- but the wind was blowing from the opposite direction). After a few minutes of clicking off and on, the power finally gave out and stayed out. The storm raged outside. With it being black as night, I couldn't see anything inside the house -- I have really bad night vision. I also had an amazing, overruling anxiety need to watch the storm from the front window and watch when it passed enough to where we could basically look at it and say that we were in the all clear, or clear enough to get the cats back out of their carriers.

This took about an hour. In the midst of this, around 6:30 or so, I called in the power outage to report it, because that's what you're supposed to do. The automated message told me it would be fixed around 8:30.

Uh huh. Sure.

When the storm passed, it became light again outside -- at least normal lightness for a normal July evening, where it doesn't get dark dark until after 9pm. When it was done, people in the neighborhood began exiting their homes to survey damage and remove tree limbs from blocking the street. A trim piece of siding on the top level of our house was ripped off and hanging above our garage. There were shingles in our yard -- we did not know if they were ours or someone else's, because 90-100mph winds. There was damage and debris from trees all around us, in our yard, the street, on people's homes, etc. 

We were very thankful that we'd removed the large trees from our yard when we did.

But the power was still out.

We used our phones to follow the weather and confirm that the worst of everything was done for our area. Our signals were weak and it would take several tries to load a webpage at times. I had texted my boss and our crew at work that night (who was just arriving) that we had some minor damage to the house and the entire neighborhood was without power. My boss responded that he'd taken the night off work because he'd been sick anyhow, but he also had some minor house damage. I let them know that as long as all my stuff worked, as soon as the power came back up, I'd login. 

While the storms passed us, they were still wreaking havoc on the rest of the surrounding area, and that included what appeared to be the power stations feeding the cell towers. We went from spotty signal to zero signal on our phones at the drop of a hat. And when I say zero I mean just that -- no calls, no texts, no 5G internet, nothing. The entire network was gone, as if it was just wiped off the map. 

So, let's recap -- it's the middle of the week, last day of the month, it's 85 degrees outside (it dropped to around 70 once the storm rolled through), and we have no power. We have no power, it's getting dark and we haven't eaten anything yet, and we have no phones, no internet. Without power, we have no air conditioning -- in fact, no air movement whatsoever. We can see that there's been some damage to the house, but we don't know the extent of it -- for all we knew, there could have been water pouring down through the roof through holes or damage we didn't know about. We have two black cats we can't see in the dark, and three others who like to get under your feet at every opportunity. Oh, and because the power's out, we can't even get out of the garage to leave the house because we can't re-engage the garage door opener ourselves if we disengage it, as the spring's tension is what actually holds the door closed, not gravity or the door itself -- not to mention we wouldn't be able to lock it. The last time we disengaged it we had to call professionals to actually hook it back up.

We were, essentially, in the dark ages. 

However, all was not lost. 

After the storms in April and May, however, I invested in a multipurpose lantern/flashlight, weather and normal radio, and power-bank combo device that charged and ran from wind-up (it could also be fully charged via USB when there was power, of course). It was $30 at the time, and I knew that I'd rather have it and not need it than not have it when I really did. Well, now seemed to be that time. The lantern provided us some light once it was fully dark, and we sat on the couch and played a card game while we essentially waited for the power to come back on or for our phones to work again. I also had two separate power banks I'd purchased in the past for occasions like this, so we were able to charge up our phones.

By the time it got around to 11pm we were occasionally getting spotty signal on our phones again -- the power company said they'd clocked something like 218,000 outages in their service area from the storm. This was the biggest outage in their recorded history, and they were working around the clock to get damage repaired and service restored to their customers. Resigning myself to knowing that the power would likely not be back that night (and even if it was, it was going to come back while I was sleeping), Daisy and I got some battery powered fans, opened the window upstairs, and went to bed.

When I awoke around 5am, the power was still off. There was still almost no signal on my phone. I could occasionally get the OPPD (the power company) webpage to load detailing the outage numbers, and it appeared they were making good progress -- fixing about 5-10k customers per hour. 

I want to stop here for a moment to elaborate on how miserable it is to live without power in the 21st century, especially in a house that really doesn't have great cooling/ventilation/natural light, because ours does not have any of those things. You can't really do anything to not just keep busy or pass time, but you can't cook, you can't see, you can't do any real amount of chores, you can't even really eat anything because if you open the fridge, it lets the cold out. You're bound by what you can do in natural light, and that's about it. However, if it's very hot outside, you won't even want to do that stuff.

Daisy and I sat around the house most of Thursday as the temperature got hotter -- there was little else to do. As Thursday evening rolled around and we entered 24 hours without power, Daisy couldn't really take it anymore and said she was going to go sleep at her parents' -- who had never lost power, who had food and air conditioning and internet, and invited me to come with her. They'd come pick us up, it would be fine.

I couldn't do that -- I wanted to be here in the event the power came back, as I would need to work (I work on Thursday nights). Also, with the power completely out for the neighborhood, that meant no security cameras, no Ring, no security system whatsoever but me and my weapons, and we're not in the best neighborhood, though far from the worst -- it would be, for the criminal mind, prime time for home break-ins when, without cameras on them at all times, thieves would be bolder and know they wouldn't be caught.

Plus, I mean, the cats are here. Mable overheats easily, which we saw when we got back from Canada and still had to wait several days for the air conditioner to be repaired. I wanted to make sure the cats had food, fresh and cold water, and treats to keep them at least somewhat comfortable -- as much as possible -- while we lived through this ordeal.

So Daisy went over to the parents' and I stayed here at the house with the animals. I made sure I had reading materials, and luckily my mp3 player and speaker downstairs were both fully charged. I crashed out on the couch as it was much cooler downstairs, eventually moved upstairs to my chair in my room, and slept some more. My memories during this time are hazy/fuzzy as I was just so overheated, could barely sleep, and was so incredibly bored more than anything else with nothing I could do to alleviate it. I had considered writing, but I would require light for that and, also, my brain was so fuzzy that I couldn't really focus long enough to do anything worthwhile. I'm sure I was in the first stages of heatstroke. 

On Friday morning, the power was still off -- 36 hours now without it.