The Storm; Part One

The power came back on at 5:30 this morning. What a great way to start the day! This storm was THE WORST in decades and it triggered me into a mental health slump that was very hard to sustain at times. Soon, the water heater will have heated the water enough for me to have a shower and I can wash this whole experience away.

tuesday

The moment I lifted the bed covers off me on Tuesday morning, I knew that the most urgent thing needing doing was to build a fire. It was freezing cold in the house, so out I went in my slippers and hoodie to chop and fetch wood. I’m a pro at lighting fires, and so soon there was a roarer in my firebox.

As soon as I was I back inside, I heard precipitation pounding hard on the roof. It got louder and louder, so I grabbed a flashlight to see how heavy the rain was, but it wasn’t rain, it was hail.  I checked the thermometer. It was 1° outside!

When it let up at 8:20, I was quickly out the door with Her Highness to get a short walk in before the predicted ‘bomb cyclone’ arrived, but when we got to the trailhead in the car, she refused to walk. It was too wet and cold for her. When she saw me turn to look back at her, she ran to the car and when we got home, she ran to the front door.

Once back home, I got warmed up, and then it was time to head to the community hall for my two vaccinations. I took Her Highness, but I kept the car warm for us and she didn’t have long to wait for me. We came right back home to the warm fire, and soon afterwards, I went off to have lunch with my fellow ASL-ers, and Sheba stayed by the hearth.

Before heading to Ground Up for lunch, I put all my battery lightbulbs into sockets to charge them. Each one can store up to 4 hours of charge so that if we have a power failure this afternoon, I will have a light source for my evening. Our ‘bomb cyclone’ was due around 2:00 pm, a time I’d be sure to be home from lunch. Winds of up to 120K/hr were still predicted as I left for lunch! They say it could be the worst windstorm in several decades. Yikes.

By five o’clock, there was no sign of the storm, so I went to the weather alerts to re-read them and that had me decide to have dinner quickly while I still had power. That was a good decision! Shortly before six, it hit, and man-oh-man, did it hit. The winds were frightening. Big branches and billions of cones were pummeling the roof and making a tremendous racket. The cats were terrified. It was extremely loud. The wind and the falling forest hitting my metal roof kept the cats cowering under the bed.

I was extremely happy to have my battery light bulbs. I used them to comfortably read all last evening.

wednesday

Wednesday morning began with me out in the shed at 5:30, pouring gasoline into the generator so that I could get the fridge going and try to see if the Internet was working (it wasn’t). That, chopping wood and laying extension cords everywhere to power up the fridge and computer had me go, go, going all morning.

I lit a huge fire, but there are no fans to circulate the heat, so it collects high in the room. Still, it was comforting for Fred, Ethel and Sheba who all gathered ‘round it to be warm and calm. There was still wind Wednesday morning, but it was nothing like last night. It was the worst storm I have experienced so far since moving here. I imagine power is out all over the place, so I have no idea when I will have power restored. It’s a fucking mess out there. My yard is one huge trip hazard.

But it ain’t rainin’. That’s a Godsend. I spent the morning gently cleaning up as much of the fallen crap as I could off the decks, the front walk, and the courtyard so that it’s easy for me to get in and out and to fetch wood without fear of slipping or tripping. The bulk of the work I’ll leave for Henri.

As I headed out to walk with Sheba, I worried about what I would find on the trail. I’m not up for an obstacle course. As I left, I saw movement at Dave and Ursula’s place, so I went over there to see if they could connect to the Hydro website on their phones. They couldn’t.

I backed out of the driveway, and headed west along Violet Crescent, but I didn’t get far. There was a tree down. It had fallen across the road and taken out the power lines which were hanging down across Ron and Cheryl’s driveway. So, I turned around and went the other way out onto Wild Cherry, and then to Buttercup, the main road connecting our little neighbourhood to North Road, the island’s major thoroughfare. But Buttercup, too, was covered in downed wires. They were all along the road and across it. I did not want to drive over them, so I and all my neighbours, are trapped in our little enclave.

We clearly will not have power for a while, so I’ll need gas to keep my generator running, but until the wires are cleared, I can’t get to the gas station. And who knows what the state of North Road will be. Even if I could get out of our little area, it’s not a given that I could make it into town.

I went to bed around 10:00 am. My head was reeling with the amount of work that I need to do and having to deal with the generator. I wanted to escape, so I turned the generator off, and I slept for an hour and a half. When I woke up, it was time to feed us all. I used the barbeque to heat some food, and then I got busy sweeping up forest shite.

But my mind was in turmoil. So, I got into the car and drove down Buttercup to see if the wires had been cleared, and they had been. I turned around to fetch my jerry cans and on my way back to Buttercup, I saw Pete in his driveway and he joined me with his two jerry cans, and we went into the village for gasoline.

When I got home, I started up the generator. I planned to use it for the remainder of the day, and I managed to find and install an old DVD player so that I could watch movies in the evening. Thank God I had the presence of mind to buy my generator. I greatly value having my fridge working and being able to watch movies.

When we went for our afternoon walk, I was a zombie. I walked like a member of the living dead. Chaos is anathema to me. It’s become a curse since the onset of C-PTSD and FND. And everything is in chaos on Gabriola right now. I want to clean up the yard, but with no energy and a very sore shoulder, raking and sweeping is a trial. So, I made very little progress on Wednesday.

I can’t shower, I must schlep water from the collection barrels to flush the toilet, the dishes are piling up because I have no water with which to wash them. So, my plan for Thursday is to buy some water, heat it on the barbeque, and do my dishes. With extension cords running everywhere in the house, shite all over the floors because I can’t vacuum, and dishes overflowing in the sink, doing the dishes is a start on reducing the chaos inside the house and inside my head.

When it came time to stop and feed us all, I was grateful to be able to watch my DVDs and to chill. But my bliss ended when the generator stopped working. I got it going again, but it only lasted a few minutes and then quit again. Same thing happened a second time, so I bagged it for the day and went to bed. Sigh. Another problem.

This outage has really fried my brain. That’s what I might say in conversation, and no one would ask me what I meant. This outage makes me feel vulnerable, fragile. I’m coping, no question, but I feel awful. So, I sat myself down at my dining room table, a place a rarely sit, but the chairs have good back support, and I feel like I’m in a ‘working’ posture, and I challenged myself to parse my meaning when I say my brain is fried.

I know from the amazing film I saw about PTSD, that my feelings are magnified by my condition. So that’s one aspect of this uncomfortable state of mind, and the other is as I’ve said here many times. Disorder, chaos, these things trigger great emotional discomfort for me, and with so much out of order during this outage, my mental health is crashing. I know that when the power comes on, I will feel myself again, but right now it’s hard to do everything and anything.

It's always challenging for me when there are outages, but this time has really freaked me—particularly because my landline is not working often, and that is my only way to call for help and my alarm needs it to work.

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Once, when I flew to Vancouver, I took a taxi from the airport to go into town. It was during the pandemic. I didn’t want to use public transport. It was raining and I was looking out the window beside me, and as we slowed down to stop at a streetlight, a complex ramp and interchange structure came into view, and I had a seizure. The complexity of the structure looked chaotic to me. Chaos is anathema to me, and it hurts my body. I can feel my angst in my shoulders and chest. That’s how I learned that chaos is anathema to me.

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Beth is coming to visit next Summer. I have good friends here, thank goodness. But long-time friends super-charge me. It’s always been that way. These friends are the only family I’ve ever had. But now, there’s a new facet to “special,’ because I privately revel in their acceptance of me and my symptoms.

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Most of my photos didn't turn out well, but here's a few that worked:

This is the forested part of my yard, behind my fence. That's a very big tree
that fell over but not all the way down. The sound of it snapping scared my
neighbours and made local dogs howl.

This is one large branch that fell. It goes from the fence to behind me where I
am standing. It is too heavy to lift. I will have to saw it into pieces to get it out
of the yard. Pete said he would help me. next week.

My front porch.

The back porch after all the big branches had been removed so that I could get
in and out for fire wood safely. The deck and courtyard were an obstacle course.