I made contact with the guy who had installed the electric fence. He ordered me the replacement parts i needed and said he would provide easy instructions over the phone about how to wire it into the wall when it arrived.
The electrician came right out. He fit me in even though he was all booked up. It was a two person crew; the husband and father of one of my colleagues and they always gave amazing service at a fair price. Together they restored power to the back of the house and installed a surge protector on the utility pole outside. They told me that as long as both green lights were on it was working. During the approach of every storm after that i would stand out on the porch and look in the direction of the pole, making sure both green lights were going strong. If ever they weren’t, i intended to begin unplugging fences and appliances before the storm arrived.
While the electrician was present he pointed out to me that my air conditioner pipes were freezing over with ice. I placed a call to the a/c repair man and he was able to come out that day. He added more coolant and the thing stopped icing over. It started sounding like an airplane when running. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing but as long as it was running i wasn’t going to tinker with it.
This was the line of storms that delivered the lightening strike that knocked out the power, blew up the electric fence control panel, and required an electrician to restore power to the back of the house a week later.
I was sitting in the tiny house riding out the storm when there was a blinding flash of light in the living room and the loudest pop i’d ever heard. If i didn’t know better i would have thought someone had fired a gun in the living room. I knew where the light had come from. I had been sitting right next to it. It was the electric fence control panel. I walked across the room, occasionally lit up by flashes of lightening and retrieved the big lantern. I turned it on and set it on the floor in the middle of the room. The dogs were terrified. They huddled around the lantern licking their snouts nervously. Before this particular storm Cashew was never really fearful of weather. Sili was terrified but Cashew was fine. After this particular storm Cashew was a wreck at the first sign of any weather. Somehow i had broken my beautiful guard dog. She had sensed the lightening strike before it happened. Right before the wall panel blew up and the the lights went out Cashew had stood from the floor and paced rapidly around the house, whimpering and bobbing her head. I was actually in the act of telling her to calm down when the living room lit up like a christmas tree. She knew it was coming and i did nothing to protect her from the electricity. Ever since that day, if a storm was coming through, i crated her immediately before she descended into a shivering mess of ptsd. Being in a confined space seemed to help her. I left her in the crate unless it was time to get under the bed to avoid tornados. Sili, though terrified, was still collected enough to follow my commands during a storm and in the absence of her sister’s usual machisma, somehow became the brave dog.
After everything else that had happened in 2020 it only made sense for the electric fence control panel to blow up. I mean, why not? Everything else was imploding. It was only fair that the fence be allowed to join the party too.
Half of the thing was green and half of it was singed black where the electricity had come through and traveled across the board. There was a little black singe mark on the inside of the plastic cover. I contacted the guy that had installed the fence in the first place. It would be several hundred dollars for a new control panel and i would have to wire it into the wall myself, as nobody was making house calls at that time due to covid-19.
The power did eventually return to the house and i was pleased to realize that the front of the house was untouched. This meant that the refrigerator and the oven still worked! I immediately contacted an electrician to see how much it would cost to install a surge protector on the utility pole in the yard. It was imperative that i have a working refrigerator. The seal on mine was limping along, but it was working. The food was staying cool most of the time. I needed that. I couldn’t be trying to replace all the appliances at once in the middle of a pandemic. The surge protector was a must and i would feel a whole lot better once it was installed. Being at one of the highest points in the town meant that if the river flooded, my property was probably going to be okay. It also meant that my property was very prone to lightening strikes.
In the past month i had watched the majority of my favorite patients die. I had watched colleagues complain of shortness of breath, chest pain, and headache. I had fought my battle with my own 7 weeks of symptoms. I had been run from, glared at, and chased out of stores with people shouting at me because i was wearing scrubs. I was not welcome anywhere in the community because of what i did for a living and i wasn’t valued in my profession either. I had lost my rights as a human being; for the good of the people. They no longer looked at us as beings but expendables…those who would do the work no one else wanted to under poor conditions with little supplies, no sleep, no mental health, and keep trudging forward as more and more of our rights were stripped away. I tried to sound the alarm that we were still people; human beings with thoughts and feelings; valid lives…but nobody cared. We were not people anymore. Just potential threats and usable resources depending on who you asked.
In the news on the patients’ television sets and on the podcasts i listened to at night people spoke of how healthcare workers were celebrated and supported in the larger cities. At a certain time each night people hung out of their windows and banged on pots and pans to show their support in new york city. In Seattle and Austin people shouted “You got this” and “Together we stand” as nurses and doctors made their way into healthcare buildings. In Houston people parked their cars with home-made signs of encouragement in the hospital parking lot and lit up the walkway to the building with their headlights, playing music and screaming “We believe in you!” and “Thank you for all that you do!” as healthcare personnel entered the hospital. In San Antonio car parades visited the nursing homes and whooped and hollered out the windows of their very decorated vehicles as staff came out to take a break and sneak a peek at the brigade of cars that had come to keep their spirits up as they tried their hardest to swallow their own fears while helping the residents cope with the new conditions and dangers of modern day life. There was no such comradery in the country. We didn’t have any parades. People didn’t bang on pots and pans. No restaurants were delivering free take-out to our facilities to feed people who were working at the time the grocery stores were being cleared out of their inventory, and when words were shouted at us they weren’t words of encouragement. They were spiteful, ugly words spoken in fear.
One day i walked into the office after treating a patient and my supervisor handed me a bag. It was the size of a dental office goody bag; the kind they sent home full of toothpaste, brushes, and floss after each cleaning. Inside were some small snacks such as granola bars and cheezits. There was a paper that read “Adopt a Nursing Home”. There was another smaller paper with a hand written note, “We thank you for what you do and are praying for you daily.” It was from the Sisters in Service. On it they had written “Luke 12:35”. I began to cry. My supervisor looked at me. With tears streaming down my face i said, “Someone out there still thinks of us as people.” She smiled, “i thought you’d appreciate that.”
The problem with growing vegetable plants in a tent was that i lost the perk of having the bees do the job of pollination for me. Bees would always be better at pollination than humans for one reason. They visited more plants than i did. They had pollen on their legs from squash plants across town in someone else’s yard from 3 days ago. So, it didn’t matter if none of my female flowers were open at the same time as the male flowers because the bees would be bringing their own male flower pollen to the party. In a tent, i was only working with the plants i had on hand and if no male flowers were ready when the female flower opened; no squash. i quickly learned that when a male flower was ready and the female flower was still closed, i just had to tear it open and deposit the pollen on the day the male flower bloomed because if i waited too long the male flower wilted and the pollen became soggy and disappeared into the rotting flower.
I started out with these little brushes. I would brush them against the male flower’s pollen and then brush them against the center of the female flower in hopes of making a squash.
Eventually i ditched the brushes all together and decided the best most efficient way was to just take the male flower off the plant, peel away the excess bulk of the petals, and insert the center of the male flower directly into the center of the female flower, depositing as much pollen as i could before discarding the male flower or feeding the petals to the chickens.
It took me a while to learn which flowers were male and which were female. The female flowers always had a tiny squash or a tiny cucumber on the back of them. If that flower got pollinated the squash or cucumber grew. If it didn’t, it wrinkled and fell off the plant along with the spent flower.
Every day i tried to pollinate the female flowers that had matured. Unfortunately, even doing my best job as a pollinator with what i had in front of me; i was no good substitute for the honey bees.
We were all set to undergo a mandatory procedure that one of my colleagues described as “more painful than giving birth” with no pain killers. She’d had multiple children, two of them twins, and she said she’d rather do labor over than undergo 30 seconds of that procedure. Those who had it done suffered headaches, bleeding, and swelling about the face for days afterwards. Many left the room in tears due to the pain. So, when there was a test i could take that might exempt me from this procedure, you’d better believe i was going to take it! The problem was that there were no labs near me, in the middle of nowhere. I would have to drive in to the nearest major city to get my blood drawn at a lab. They had shortened hours of operation due to the virus so when i learned of the existence of this test i realized i had to hurry. It would take me at least an hour to get there. I yanked on clothes and grabbed my purse. I locked the chickens and the dogs up and set out for the city. Though it was dry in my little town, the city i was headed to was experiencing epic storms. The first clue was the white out rain. It was raining so hard and so heavily that i literally could see nothing through my windshield. I couldn’t tell if i was on the road anymore. I couldn’t tell if there were cars in front or back of me. All i saw was white. The rain was a deafening roar in my ears. My mind wrestled with the idea of turning back. Under any other circumstances it would have been a no-brainer. I would have turned back. The storm was an epic one. There was going to be flooding all over the city, and i couldn’t see what i was driving into. Driving blind was a bad idea. I should have turned back, but the stakes were so high, i couldn’t. I kept telling myself, “how bad do you want it? How bad do you want this test, because nothing of worth is handed to you without a fight.” I should have pulled over but had i done that i would have missed the hours of operation and my chance to get the test done would have been dashed. So, i stared unblinking into that white windshield until my eyes burned, catching a glimpse of the trees alongside the road every once in a while, assuring me that i was still somewhat on the road. Eventually i made it into the main part of the city i was headed for. While stopped at a traffic light the rain eased up. I noticed a mass of loose wispy clouds rotating directly above and to the left of my car. They appeared to be going round in a circular motion but the mass was so large i couldn’t really tell where the other half of it ended. I thought maybe it was just a part of the storm. I was always thinking i was seeing funnels as a kid and then teachers or my dad would point out that though the cloud was curving, it was not going in a complete circle and was not in fact a funnel at all. So i brushed the thought aside and continued driving. As soon as i left the stop light the rain picked up again, with a new force and fury i couldn’t have imagined. I was about to give up when the gps told me i’d made it to my destination. The street i had to turn onto was completely flooded and the parking lot was slanted down to the street where it was dumping loads of water. I waited until no cars were coming and then i floored it into the river of a street, just making it to the parking lot, the dash board indicating that the back tires had lost traction and the car drifting a bit before catching on pavement and lifting up onto the hill. I trudged upwards for a bit and then realized that was not going to work. I would have to go sideways. The car was sliding back down the hill of the parking lot towards the street i had just crossed to get there, pushed by the rushing water spilling over the hill and down toward the street at the bottom of the parking lot. I turned the wheel and steered the car diagonally into a few parking spots with a curb in front of them. My tires hit the curb though my foot was firmly on the brake. I waited until the rain had tapered just a bit and then i made my break for it, turning the tires and moving further sideways towards another part of the parking lot. I went around a fast food business and up towards the back of the parking lot. I saw the lab i was trying to go to. The parking lot was full of a good 2 inches of rushing water headed down the steep hill. I saw that some cars had probably been relocated by the water as i didn’t think anyone with a brain would actually park that close to another car, much less find a way to get out of it afterwards. I picked a parking spot where my car would be facing the direction the water was going and the front tires would be firmly against a curb. The water pushed the car as i tried to line it up between two cars and i ended up more to the left than i intended to be. I tried to reverse and straighten out but the car kept losing traction and wouldn’t go backwards. With each attempt i went backwards slightly and then lurched forwards, smashing into the curb with my front tires. I decided i was parked close enough to straight and put the car in park. I put the parking brake on, as if that would do any good in the current situation. Then i realized i had been holding my breath for the last 20 miles, taking infrequent and shallow gasps of air. I released my lungs and took a deep breath…stretching my aching fingers that had been white knuckling the steering wheel for half an hour. I looked out the window. I could see people waiting in the lobby at the lab. There were two of them. I needed to go there. But how? It was raining so hard that i knew, even putting my purse under my jacket, my phone, my blood pressure cuff, my key fob…it would all immediately be drenched. I knew there was a good chance the rushing water would knock me down when i stepped out the car and that would soak everything electronic on my person. It was a chance i had to take. I put my phone in my purse, put my purse under my shirt, zipped my jacket over it, and gripped my key fob in my hand. I had rolled my pants up to my knees. I stepped out of the car into the flood water gushing across the parking lot and was immediately freezing. The water came higher up my leg than expected and my rolled pants fell down and became drenched. As the wetness crept up my pants leg my sandal was swept off my foot. I managed to grab it. I locked the car door and waded through the water in the pouring rain and bone-shaking thunder until i made it to the covered sidewalk in front of the lab. I hoisted myself up out of the water and onto the side walk where i squatted to put my sandal back on. I checked my purse. The outside was wet but the inside was dry. I closed it again to keep it that way. My clothes were drenched through and through. My pants stuck to my skin and my jacket was heavy and dripping. I rung the fabric out as best i could without taking it off and proceeded into the lab. I had worn a mask and a buff over it under my jacket hood. Both were wet. I followed the instructions to sign in, sat in the freezing a/c on a blue plastic chair, and then followed a medical assistant back to a room when my name was called. They weighed me. I was 98 lbs. i had lost a few. I hoisted myself into the designated chair and the lady began wrapping a rubber tie around my arm. I tried to make small talk but she wasn’t interested. She was a pro and i had good veins. She was done in no time and it was the most painless blood draw i had ever experienced. I told her so, as i had worked alongside nurses for a long time and i knew that finding a vein, getting the needle in the vein, and holding the needle steady all required skill and that level of skill and experience would determine the level of discomfort the victim felt during the process. She thanked me for the compliment and told me i was free to go as they would bill my insurance first and then contact me with the remaining amount. I had done it. I had made it during business hours. I had managed to qualify for and obtain a doctor’s order for the test. I had gotten it done and had record of doing so. The results would be in my email in a matter of days. I felt very accomplished in that moment, but my journey was far from over. I was a long way from home, in a very heavy car with bad tires in horrific weather. I was eager to get the car out of the parking lot before the water got any more aggressive on its race downhill. The car was where i’d left it against the curb. I had to go through water that came an inch above my ankle to get to it. Once i was in i put all my things down, took my jacket off, and took a moment to collect myself. I had to try to get home. I was way in over my head but i had to get that test before they closed. I told myself “you can do this.” I said a little prayer to God and asked him to protect the car from the storm and the water. Then, i put the key in the ignition and with slippery fingers i turned the car on. I had left the radio on and there was a voice coming from the speaker “A tornado was indicated by radar in the boerne area. All individuals in the boerne area should seek immediate shelter. Move towards interior rooms. Stay away from windows. Seek shelter immediately. A radar indicated tornado is presently located on…”. It said something about which side of the highway the tornado was on but i wasn’t listening because i was busy connecting the dots that the highway the radio spoke of was the one i had seen the giant rotating mass of clouds next to. I had shrugged it off thinking it must just be some part of the storm that was curving under or something. Now that the radio spoke of a tornado in the area, i realized i had probably been watching the beginning of that tornado forming at the stop light. I suddenly remembered how large the area of sky that was churning had been. If this had materialized into a tornado, it was going to be a big one. My blood went cold. Outside the windows it was more of the same. White. I thought about finding a mcdonalds and just getting a bite to eat, waiting the storm out so that i didn’t have to drive in it. I was soooooo hungry, as i had skipped food of any sort to hop in the car and make sure i made it to the lab before they closed. I was almost to the mcdonalds but the entry ramp to the parking lot was flooded and i couldn’t get the car in. I had to turn around and try for the other side of the parking lot, located higher on the hill. I made it around but none of the cars in the other lane would let me cross. I finally gave up and drove on. I thought about looking for a different fast food restaurant but ultimately i convinced myself it would have been irresponsible. With a mammoth tornado rolling around boerne, i needed to get out of there! I put the car back on the road and headed in the direction of home. More blinding white-out rain. I couldn’t see anything. And that’s when it happened. I was driving alongside the access road to the highway, right near where the tornado first developed, when the driving part…stopped. Then i was…floating. I realized, to my horror, that i had driven right into a body of water. I couldn’t even see how deep it was. My windows were still white. I tried to steer towards the edge of the access road. I wasn’t floating anymore but i had traded floating for stuck. I had driven into the mud underneath the water. Now i was really in trouble. The kia sportage was a good car to be in if one was in an accident. It was built like a tank. It was heavy…low to the ground…little risk of rolling over… it was not a great car to be in if one was traveling through flood water. It was low to the ground and heavy. I knew i was screwed, and it was thoroughly stuck. Whether i attempted to drive, reverse, or turn, i was going nowhere. I put on my hazards. That seemed like the first logical thing to do; make sure other drivers didn’t rear end me in the blinding rain. I noticed suddenly that my hands were shaking. It was eerily quiet in the car save for the deafening roar of rain that my brain had somehow tuned out completely. All i could hear was silence and then a ringing in my head. It was as if i was trying to operate the controls of an airplane while on acid. I was trying to pull it together but i’d lost my brain somewhere in the storm and i was just kind of floating around, looking at the situation, almost as if i wasn’t me but was watching me wondering what that person down there was going to do to get out of this one. I snapped back to reality, whacking myself in the face, “pull it together!” The car was still on. That meant the water hadn’t reached the engine yet. The rain was not slacking and in fact became harder against the roof of the car. I opened the door to see how high the water was. It was right at the bottom of the car. As i looked over i recognized the problem, the reason i was doomed to lose the car. The city had been doing construction on the highway. The rain had washed all the loose dirt down the hill, which was what my car was thoroughly lodged in. To the left of my car, at the bottom of the hill from the highway, they had erected a temporary concrete wall alongside the access road. There were no holes in it for drainage. The water was at least a foot deep against the concrete wall and with nowhere for that water coming down the hill to drain, it would keep collecting at the concrete wall until it was tall enough to spill over. By then my car would be buried. It suddenly hit me. I had to get out of the car. I had to leave the car and make a break for it before i couldn’t get the windows down, before the weight of the water held the doors shut. I knew people who had lost siblings, children, cousins, friends in flash flood waters. I knew how quickly it could happen. In remote areas, often times rescue crews couldn’t get to trapped ranchers before it was too late and they were found deceased in their truck at the low water crossing the following morning, nothing but a recording of their last words on the 911 call to offer the family. As the rain poured harder against the roof, i tried to think. I placed a call to 911 as i gathered my purse, my keys, my phone, and my gps. I hooked my jacket on my head, hoping to shield my purse with it, though i knew there was a good possibility everything would go in the water the moment i stepped down. I opened the door again to look. This time the water was right at my sandal, just under the ledge of the door. I heard the woman’s voice, “911 what is your emergency?” I answered, “i’m in my car. I’m stuck in flood water along the highway in boerne. I think i’m going to have to get out.” She asked me all sorts of questions about my location. She asked what side of the highway i was on. I tried my best to tell her. She said she thought she knew where i was and was sending someone. She told me to get out of the car if i still could. I said, “i will.” She said, “someone is on the way” and hung up. I always thought they were supposed to wait on the phone with you until help arrived but i was relieved she was gone because i was going to try to get out of the car and that would take both hands. At last minute i thought to grab my car insurance card from the center console. I don’t know why. I would have been better off saving the n95 masks. Why on earth would i not think to grab those?! All 4 of them were in the sinking car. But alas, i didn’t think of them. I flung the door open and hopped down into the water. It wasn’t as deep as i thought. It turned out the kia was just very low to the ground. Good for me, bad for the kia. Dear kia, maybe make higher cars, thanks. yours truly, otherwise satisfied customer. As soon as i had stepped down into the water i realized why the car became stuck when i steered it towards the edge of the water. My foot went into alarmingly sticky mud. I immediately lost one of my sandals and had to hold my purse on my back while fishing around in the water trying to feel where it was stuck in the mud. I took my sandals off and carried them. I was trying to reach the bank, higher ground, and get out of the water. Each step was a marathon of effort. My feet sank ankle deep into the mud and pulling each foot loose threatened to knock me off balance, landing my purse full of electronics in the water. When i finally made it to the bank, the rain stopped. Just like that. Not another drop fell. I was thankful for that fact because it meant better chances for the car, but it was ironic that by the time help arrived some of the water had drained from around the car, there was no blinding rain, and people currently driving through the flood water just fine wanted to know how i hadn’t seen what i was driving into when i had gotten stuck. My brain was too frazzled to make an argument so i just stood there. Since it had stopped raining i took my phone out and snapped a picture of the car for insurance purposes later, as i wasn’t sure at this point if the water would have damaged the engine.
A white pick up truck arrived. The man rolled down the window and shouted, “you stuck?” I wanted to say, “no shit, sherlock” but as he was there to save me i thought i’d better keep my mouth shut and try to be agreeable. I shouted, “yes!” He said, “Can you get back in? If you can get back in i’ll put my truck up against the front of your car and push you out backwards.” I nodded my head vigorously. Oh yes, yes please, oh yes do save the car and not just me! The detail i’d forgotten to mention was that in four months the kia sportage would be completely paid off; no car payment; outright mine. It would be so disappointing to lose the car to flood water four months before paying it off completely. I said, “give me a minute”. He said, “take your time.” I carefully navigated my way back through the mud. The water wasn’t quite as deep now and it was still instead of moving. I made it to the car and opened the passenger door. I hoisted myself in. I knew what was going to happen.
I was covered in mud. as i hoisted myself into the car the mud from my feet and legs smeared all over the floor, the seats, the center console, the cup holders…i was depositing thick globs of mud everywhere. I couldn’t stop to think about it. I had a bigger problem at hand. I had to get the car out while the guy in the pick up was still willing to help me. He too was less than impressed with my driving skills. I wished i had thought to tell him the windshield was just a view of blinding white when i got the car stuck in the first place. I turned the car on and put it in reverse. It still turned on. That was a good sign that the water hadn’t gotten high enough to reach the engine. The guy yelled out his window, “you steer, i’ll drive.” I said, “okay!” He pulled his truck up to my suv ever so slowly and bumped it, making contact with the front of the kia and dislodging me from the mud. He didn’t seem to want to put his truck too far near the mud. He kept waving me to the right, right more, right more (which would have been my left because i was traveling backwards). I was too exhausted and frazzled to put words to why i would rather drive down the center of the road, so i remained silent, unable to even process my own reasoning and thoughts, operating on instinct, while he became more and more annoyed with me. Later i would realize that i hadn’t wanted to move more towards his right because his truck was driving and i was only steering. I could not control how fast we were going or if we could stop for a minute. His truck was pushing me and i was steering but the dashboard still read “lost traction”. I was still in the water. I was drifting to the right naturally though i wasn’t steering that way. I made a concrete attempt to steer to the left as the water pushed me to the right and his truck continued to push me backwards. I was getting dangerously close to scraping that concrete wall and i didn’t like it one bit. I had no interest in playing bumper cars with a concrete wall. So as annoyed and frustrated as it made my savior, i kept trying to steer the car towards the middle of the road. Eventually, my tires touched ground and i broke free from the hold of the truck, putting some space between our vehicles. I backed up some more and then turned into the methodist hospital parking lot. I waved an emphatic thank you for rescuing the car kind of wave and he drove off. I parked the car in the hospital parking lot and got out. I couldn’t believe any of that had just happened. I couldn’t believe i had gotten away with the car in tow! I could see a few spots where the paint was chipped and the license plate holder was broken. The license plate itself was bent from where the truck had pushed the car out. I knew i had some “ford gray” car paint in the tool shed and i was pretty sure i could find it. I would apply it upon arriving home to prevent the car from rusting where the metal was exposed. I bent the license plate back into shape. I didn’t think the holder was necessary to tinker with. It wasn’t essential so i left it flapping in the wind. Perhaps if it loosened a bit more i would pull it off. I kept a whataburger cup of emergency water in the drivers side door. Now i used it to wash the mud off my feet and hands and get the big chunks off of the seat i had to sit in to drive home. I was a bundle of nerves but outside the rain had ceased, the sky had lightened, and it was as if it had never happened. The furious storm had come and gone. It was so strange. All of a sudden it was done. I got in the car and began the long drive home, trying to ignore the symphony of unpleasant sensations happening to my body as the mud dried on my limbs and the clothes remained wet and sticky, soaking the seat beneath me.
I called my friend Monica and pulled over on the side of the road to tell her what happened. It seemed so unreal. I had to tell someone just to process it. As i was talking to her a cop car going the opposite direction threw on its brake lights. I sighed. The red and blues switched on and here he came behind me. I said, “hold on Monica, the cops are here.” She said, “the cops?” I said, “yeah, this day just gets better and better.” the cop adjusted his belt and tapped on my window. I rolled it down. He said, “car trouble?” I answered, “no, i dont have cell reception in my town so i wanted to finish this conversation on the phone with my friend before heading home.” He chuckled, “oh! Okay, okay.” He told me to have a good day and walked back to his car. However, he didn’t pull off right away. It made me nervous, like maybe there was some law i didn’t know about that made it illegal to linger in non-parking-spot places alongside the road. I hurried to finish my conversation with my friend, though i hadn’t spoken with her in a while and really wanted to talk more. I then made the last leg of the journey home. The landscape in my town was dry as a bone.
I let the dogs out and made sure the chickens had water. I went to the shed and found the “ford gray” touch up paint pen. I painted over all the exposed metal spots at the front of the car. Then i filled a bucket with water and scrubbed at the car seats as much as i could. I never got all of it off. I cleaned up the floor and the center console as best i could with baby wipes dipped in water. Then i stripped all my clothes off and took a shower. I put a pitcher on the shower floor and dunked my pants into it. I tried to stand over it so the soap and shampoo made it into the pitcher to be used on the pants. The water in the pitcher turned brown. Each time i dumped the pitcher out and filled it with fresh water it turned brown again as soon as i began churning it. It took me a good half hour of churning but i got all the mud out of the pants. This was important because at this time pants didn’t grow on trees and they would have to be worn regardless of whether they were stained. When i was finished i realized i was freezing. I was wet and the a/c was on. I got so focused on erasing all the evidence of near disaster, i forgot about getting dressed. I dressed and hung the pants out on the laundry line.
I stood at the curtains of the front door and peered out at the scene in the yard for a good hour. The dogs played in the dog run. The chickens scratched in the dirt for bugs. The car sat intact and still with us, parked in front of the porch, the “ford gray” paint still drying where i had placed it. Life went on.
With instant food in short supply i needed to try to make as much of my food from scratch as possible. I bought a yogurt maker and a bread maker. Unfortunately the entire country had a hankering for bread so the bread machines were on back order until the end of august. However, nobody seemed to have my same idea about the yogurt maker, so that arrived fairly quickly. It came with 7 jars, a programmable heated base, and a lid. i had great difficulty getting my hands on dairy-free cultures so originally i didn’t put any fruit in the middle jar and used that yogurt as my starter for the next batch the following week. Eventually i got my hands on some capsules of probiotics and i could just open a capsule and dump it directly into the box of milk i intended to use to make the yogurt. Now, i am allergic to dairy, so the yogurt i was making began with hemp milk and then later with oat milk when the health food store in town began carrying it. We had an arrangement where i could call them on the phone, tell them what i wanted to buy, give my credit card number, and then they would bag the items and leave them outside the door while i sat watching in the car. When the clerk had gone inside i then retrieved the bags, put them in my car, and drove away. Often times she waved to me as she was leaving the bags and i waved back from behind the windshield. It was a human interaction void of fear, friendly even, that warmed my cold dead heart in a way it hadn’t been stirred in months.
So i began with a base of hemp milk or oat milk, depending on what was available. I emptied a capsule of the probiotics into the box of “mylk”, replaced the cap, and shook it vigorously. i would cut up whatever kind of fruit i had on hand and place 5 pieces at the bottom of each jar. Then i would pour the mylk over it until each jar was full. I would place the jars in the yogurt-making device with their lids off, place the top of the yogurt-maker on, and set the device to heat for 15 hours. 15 hours later i had “yogurt”…non-dairy yogurt that is. Because it was non-dairy, it didn’t thicken, but it tasted slightly sour exactly as yogurt did. The fruit would become soggy and its flavors would diffuse into the yogurt. I let the contents of the fedex box decide what flavor yogurt i would have each week. One unexpected side effect of making “yogurt” at home; i fixed my gut bacteria. I was finally breaking down the food i was consuming thoroughly and efficiently. The probiotics i normally bought were not available, as they were imported from japan, so this side effect proved to be a rather useful one.
My first batch was made when i was still able to make trips to the walmart and had access to frozen fruit. I bought a bag of frozen strawberries.
There was no available counter space in the tiny house. The yogurt maker was placed on the floor behind the rocking chair when in use. It was strange making food on the floor in the back corner of the house, but it sure was tasty.
The strawberries melted into the yogurt drink and infused the hemp milk with strawberry flavor.
It was literally the best yogurt drink i had ever tasted in my life. I made a batch every time i had two days off and i ate one with a spoon every morning before going to work. After august i would make gluten free bread as well and i would have “yogurt” and “bread” for breakfast every morning.
As a healthcare worker i was no longer welcome in the grocery stores. If i made a stop at the pet store the cashier called for back-up, opened a completely different lane, and got me out of the store as soon as possible before the other customers could become riled up or united. It reached a point where it was no longer safe for me to go to the store after work. People responded to me with fear and anger, sometimes shouting or chasing me out of the store. Others cowered and ran from me. I felt like a leper. At tractor supply i had someone refuse to load my car because i might get them sick. Nobody wanted anything to do with me. Some reacted with more aggression than others but the general message was “stay away.” So i did. The problem with this was that healthcare workers had to eat too. Everybody told us to stay the **** away from their groceries so they could be safe but nobody had any kind of plan in place for how the healthcare workers were going to eat if we couldn’t go to the establishments that sold food. Nobody was lining up to drop us off any. It was as if they felt they didn’t need to think that far. The healthcare workers would just waste away or live on mcdonalds for every meal…nobody had really thought about it. They just wanted us to stay away. My mother introduced me to a service she and my other family members had subscribed to. Originally it wasn’t available in my area because i lived in a remote small town. However, during the spread of covid, the company partnered with fedex to get the boxes to more remote areas and thus service more of the US. It was a company that bought the food grocery stores rejected and then sold it to people at a discounted price. It then arrived on the doorstep weekly in a cardboard box with an ice pack. Because my box was arriving via fedex, the food always arrived a little battered and sun-baked and kept better during the cooler months. However, i was beyond glad to have it, as i had stopped going to the grocery store all together and this weekly cardboard box full of produce was my sole source of food that was sustaining me.
At the beginning of the week the website would allow me to customize a box based on what was available. Towards the end of the week the fedex man would deliver it. I had a really dedicated fedex man who knew me and all my neighbors and was aware of our schedules. Knowing what time we came home from work, if it was too early, he would make sure to hide the box in the shade. If it was close to my return time he would hop the fence and make the 100 foot trek to my front door to leave the box on the porch. He was an older man with white hair but very fit. I began leaving a “thank you” note written on cardboard and placed in a plastic bag, twist-tied to the front gate on delivery days. I really was thankful. He was carrying precious cargo. Fedex had become my sole source of food. That one delivery meant i could eat for the rest of the week.
Different things were available each week. One week there was kale, cauliflower, and mango.
This week there was a cantaloupe and a giant golden beet in the box.
Sometimes the farmer just grew more than the grocer was contractually obligated to buy from them. Sometimes the coloring of a fruit was off, the vegetable was too big, too small, too bumpy, or had scarring. For whatever reason, the produce had been rejected. However, it was still perfectly good food and all organic.
I learned to buy a little more than i needed because not everything in the basket always arrived. If they were out of something by the time they filled my box, they just didn’t put it in. Then i went hungry, as the food was not enough to stretch through the whole 7 days. Also, fedex tended to beat the box up a bit before it got to the man who took it on its last leg of the journey. The more produce present in the one-size-fits-all box, the less it rolled around during delivery. During this time i cooked everything from scratch. My days of instant and pre-cooked food seemed like a distant memory. If i wanted to eat i had to put in the work. Often i cooked at night after all the chores had been done and if i didn’t have enough present in the pan to have a good sized supper and still have enough to pack for lunch the following morning, i had a small supper.
I started spending more money on fruit than i was on vegetables. I told myself it was justified. It was the summer. These fruits would not be available all year round. I had to take advantage of them while i had the chance. There would be time to spend more money on vegetables through the winter. As the service became more popular and more customers joined, it became a fight to put things in the basket before they went “out of stock”. The shopping cart opened at 1 pm and by 1:05 everything was gone. Whatever i already had in my cart, generated by the computer, would remain in there. I then had 20 hours to watch that website like a hawk, refreshing the page every 30 to 45 minutes. If somebody emptied an item from their basket, it became briefly available for someone else to snatch up. I had to be that person waiting to click and snatch it up when someone else relinquished it. Strawberries were the hot-ticket item. Everyone wanted the strawberries. They were gorgeous and juicy and a deep maroon red. Just picking them up between my fingers the juices squeezed out and ran down my arm. They smelled fruity too. That was something store-bought berries never did, because they weren’t ripe enough when picked. Some idiot picked these berries too late and so the grocery wouldn’t take them because they wouldn’t hold up on the journey to the store. That idiot was my hero, and i’m sure so many others’ as well. I stayed up until 10:25 or 11:40 some monday nights waiting for another customer to take those strawberries out of their basket. I was counting on the fact that someone with diverticulitis or a strawberry allergy might not want the box of strawberries that had been auto inserted by the computer into their basket. I couldn’t see any other reason someone wouldn’t want them. I mean, who on earth didn’t love a gorgeous sweet juicy berry that filled the room with its sun-kissed fragrance? Those berries were to die for and i fretted over them constantly each monday, refreshing the page every 40 minutes and refusing to go to sleep until i had a box of them in the basket. When i arrived home to find the box in the yard my first and only thought was those strawberries. I would hurry over to the porch and rip into the box with my knife. I would pull out and examine the box of juicy berries, noting their condition, looking for smooshed ones that might cause the others to rot if left in. Bright pink juice would drip from the box and onto the packaging. I would tuck the berries gingerly into the produce drawer in my refrigerator, and then return to parking the car. I wouldn’t touch the berries until three days later around noon when i washed the dishes and started on the next week’s batch of oat yogurt. I would carefully select 8 of the largest berries and pull their tops off, setting them aside to give to the chickens later. I would then slice seven of the berries, arranging them in the bottom of each yogurt jar, dividing the eighth berry between all 7 jars. I would empty a capsule of probiotics into the oat milk box, put the cap back on, shake it, and pour it over the strawberries in the bottom of each jar. Then i would set all the jars in the yogurt maker, put the lid on, plug it into the wall, and set it for 15 hours. At this point i would return to the strainer in the sink where i would pull the tops off all the remaining berries and eat them one by one, savoring every mouthful of fresh sweet juice. I thought, “This is what food should be.” I was very careful with the nectarines and the apples. I rationed them, making sure i only ate two pieces of fruit per day, to make them last all throughout the week. However, the strawberries were a different story. They were not to be rationed. They were a treat. For a moment i forgot i was in the middle of a pandemic. I forgot there were riots and police with rubber bullets and tear gas in the streets. I forgot that there was an election coming up and people were afraid to vote because the government had denied them mail in ballots. I forgot i worked in healthcare. I forgot about the mortgage. I forgot about everything and i existed in one pure five minute moment of absolute joy. I didn’t know how many weeks they would keep offering strawberries but if it was on the website i was going to get me a box that week.
The carrots were a treasured piece in the box because the bottoms of the vegetable fed me and the tops fed the chickens.
The day after mowing and trimming the entire property i noticed my entire belly button was red and swollen. The area around it was crusted with an orange tinted dried liquid. It looked like someone had rubbed me down with iodine in preparation for a medical procedure. I thought, “well that’s a weird reaction to a mosquito bite.” As time passed, the bite got weirder. It would fill back up with fluid and then pop again, coating my belly button once more with orange liquid. I started keeping tabs on it and noted when it filled up like a balloon. As i popped it once again, i wondered if it was an ant bite and not a mosquito bite. It wasn’t until the following day, when i had come home from work and stopped what i was doing to go to the bathroom, that i realized what had bitten me. As i pulled down my drawers, swollen red bumps ran the length of my underwear line on each side. I yanked my drawers off and threw them in the washer machine. I threw everything in the washer machine, including the sheets, the blanket, and the pillow cases from the bed. I ran the water in the shower as hot as it would go and stepped in. I soaped up vigorously and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until the water was ice cold and there wasn’t any more point. I rinsed and grabbed a towel. I threw on a t shirt and some pj pants that i didnt care about and flew out the door and off the porch screaming, “i know why we’re itchy!!!!”
The poor dogs were absolutely bewildered as i ran about the yard, gathering the shampoo and the bath cup from the tool shed screaming, “chiggers! Chiggers! It’s chiggers! Of course!” The poor dogs had been scratching relentlessly even though they had taken their monthly flea and heart worm medicine already. i had thought maybe they were having a reaction to the oak pollen. I now knew that i was wrong. The bath tub was in the shed full of chicken poop. There was no time to sterilize it. I began taking the lock off the spigot on the side of the well house. It was 90 degrees out. The dogs would have baths under the spigot in the yard. I covered, and i do mean covered, those dogs in soap from snout to tail. They were so sudsy you could have mistook them for clouds. Sili was first because i knew she would actually cooperate. She did for the most part. Once i got her bathed and rinsed i put her in the house so she wouldn’t roll. Then it was Cashew’s turn. As an aussie, she was pure muscle and she fought me the whole way through. No way was she having a bath man, no way. After several rants about killing the chiggers and not shredding my last piece of sanity, a half hour of colorful language, pleading to cooperate, and a ****-ton of exercise holding that dog still, Cashew was also bathed and rinsed. I carried her to the house, aware that she would roll in the dirt on the way to the porch if i gave her an ounce of freedom to do so. Then i stripped off my wet clothes and put those in the washing machine too.
We were all super itchy and we finally knew why. i then broke it to the dogs that it was my neglecting of the landscape that allowed the chiggers to get to such a state.
Sili tried to take everybody’s mind off the itching with kisses. I had two wet, sweet-smelling dogs and we were all going to stay indoors for a few hours until they were dry.
when i was sick i was struggling just to get the necessities done. I wasn’t maintaining the property in my usual way. Things were becoming overgrown. Nobody was tracking the movement of the termites. Mimosa trees and yuca were popping up everywhere. The grass was getting long and the weeds ran unchecked amongst it. Once i was feeling better, it was time to regain control of the property. I set out with my sheers, my 5 blade reel mower, and my weed eater for edging. By the end of the day the grass was neat and trimmed and the weeds were manageable. Because the mower wouldn’t cut anything taller than 3 inches, this meant i had gone around and pulled all the thin skinny weeds growing amongst the grass by hand.
When things began to shut down to slow the spread of covid-19 the goodwill closed its doors. I wasn’t sure when it would open back up but i knew it would be a while before i could replenish my stock of clothes. Judging by peoples’ percentage of adherence to the lockdown orders, a long while. My laundry machine washed the clothes with salt water and they had all been hung on the laundry line at some point. This meant they faded in the sun and salt and occasionally frayed or developed holes. I knew the clothes i had wouldn’t last forever. So, i began googling online thrift stores. I found something called “Thread Up”. It was magnificent! It was a website with photographs of garments from all over the USA. I could specify what material i wanted the garment to be, how well-worn i would tolerate the item, the type of garment, the size, and the price range i was looking for. I picked “100 percent cotton” “under ten dollars” “barely used or like new” “small” and i highlighted both long and short sleeved shirts. Then i sifted through nearly 500 garments before i tired of the task and decided to call it a day. I had both short sleeved shirts and long sleeved shirts in my basket. I did this for a reason. See, i had a one-time, 50 percent off, new customer coupon that on top of the sales prices, made every garment 4 to 7 dollars each. I knew i would only be able to afford “Thread Up” once with that one-time, new customer, 50 percent off coupon, so i bought for the whole year. I put nine garments in my basket. I typed in all my coupon and sale codes. Then i pushed the button and made my purchase. The clothes would arrive in separate boxes and bags from each state i had ordered them from. Each new day i had another package in the mail. The clothes arrived in pristine condition and they looked exactly as represented in the photographs. Some were form fitting. Some were looser, but they all fit well enough. It was such an exciting concept to be getting thrift store finds in the mail from all different states. I felt thankful for the coupon. I felt thankful that i had clothes stocked up for the year and didn’t have to worry about how i was going to maintain last year’s garments against the salt, the sun, the mud, machetes, and power tools.
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