Day 7702

I'm missing the internet quite a lot- I didn't realize just how much I use it for everyday information. I use it to check the weather, to check up with Emily's school, to keep up with friends, to check news and facts and even spelling.

Right now I need to find out if Emily has school this morning, how warm it will be today, the square root of Pi (to settle an argument from several days ago) and let Emily print off desert pictures for her poster project that is due Friday. Oh, and check with the EPB and find out how much longer before my internet is back. Without the internet, I can't do any of those things.

And then there's shopping. Just before we lost power, I had three books in my ABE basket- two leather bound Oz books (Borders Leatherbound classics) and Pride and Prejudice in leather with the Thomson illustrations. I'm seriously hoping that no one bought them out from under me! I was also looking at a House of Seven Gables charm and now I want two tornado charms- one for me and one for Emily. I'm fairly certain I've seen those... but I can't check!

I keep trying to be patient and reminding myself that it's a huge blessing that I have a house and power right now. I am not good at patient.

I fell asleep last night watching the news to try and see if Emily has school this morning. I still don't know but 80s woke me up when he got home from work with the news that Bin Laden had been killed. I can't say that I am happy about that- more along the lines of relieved. I know he was a rabid dog that needed to be put down but I still deplore the necessity of it.

Right now I'm enjoying the fact that it's 70° in here, not 50°, that my coffee is hot and oatmeal was easy and both were ready in under a minute, that I can flip a switch and the whole room is lighted and that when I go take a shower in a minute there will be water and it will be hot.

I read Secretariat last night. It is an intensely boring book- for once the movie is much better. I'm not saying that the story is uninteresting- it's a great story- but the author inserted far too much detail about the horses' pedigrees. Unless you follow racing, most of the names of the horses will be ones you never heard of and the details of horse breeding are not something I was interested in reading up on.

Day 7702 Evening

5/2/2011
Dear Diary,

What a day it's been...

No joke, that. It really has been a day.

I asked, when I took Emily to school, if the buses were running. If they weren't, I wanted to make plans for that. But I was assured that, yes, they were running their regular route. Just before I left work today... and I do mean just, I'd already clocked out... I got a phone call from Emily. One of Mom's friends was driving her to my work because the bus had put her out at the elementary school- about 5 miles from my house.

Say what?!? The bus driver just put her out, essentially on the side of the road, far from anywhere she should be. And this on a day when I have no way of calling anyone and, once I get home, no one has any way of calling me. I can see me hunting all over everywhere for my child and not finding her... and that's if she was safe. I don't want to go into the thoughts of her either trying to walk home through the tornado damaged area or, even worse, accepting a ride from a stranger out of pure desperation.

Yeah, I intend to go off on someone in the morning at the school. If I have my way about it, that bus driver will be looking for employment elsewhere and in another field of work entirely.

About work- they have me scheduled for three different departments this week, sometimes at the same time, on six consecutive days for a total of 45 hours. Now I don't mind working that... but I have already approached the store manager about the overtime because I don't want to be the one in trouble for it. I also reminded him that I don't have that cloning thing down yet and he was the one to mediate between departments as to who gets me when. Sometimes I feel like a bone being fought over by a pack of rabid dogs and I can do without the extra stress. I'm perfectly happy to do any of the four jobs they want me for... but I can only do one at any one time and paging me to floral when I'm in fruit or the front when I'm in floral just reduces the actual work I can do. You can tell me to water but you have to give me time to water- if you pull me off that to carry out or clean up a spill, the watering does not get done. If you pull me off cutting fruit to make up bouquets for people, the fruit does not get cut. You'd think they would have figured this out by now.

On the nice side of the day, I got a couple of charms in the mail.



This one is supposed to be a lacemaker but she looks like a quilter working on a lap frame to me. If you need more explanation as to why I would have a quilter charm, you don't know me and what are you reading this for?



This second one is the Hermatige- home of Andrew Jackson just outside of Nashville. I visited it quite often growing up and, while no specific memories of it come to the front, I always thought it was the ideal 'house in the country' that I wanted to have one day. Ok, I was young. As I grew up, the house I wanted shrank simply because I'm not crazy about housework and the bigger the house, the more housework you have.

The other nice thing is that the electric company sent a truck (ok, three trucks) to check and see if our power was back on. Someone had called and reported that our power was out. I don't know if that was Eliz or 80s or someone else- I didn't do it- but they came today to fix it. As it happens, our power outage was already fixed when they fixed the main lines. I did ask about phone and internet and was told that right now they are concentrating on getting everyone's power back on and fiber optics was secondary to that. He did check all the lines here going to the pole and they're all fine- the break is a lot further down. I already knew that but he said since he was already here, he wanted to be sure that when the trunk lines were back up, I'd have no trouble.

I must say, I am impressed with our power company. They're been working like dogs to fix all the storm damage as quickly as possible and they're doing an amazing job. Yes, my internet is still down... but the poles themselves got ripped up and broken never mind what happened to the wires. So not only are they having to resting miles and miles of wire, they're having to set the poles to run it on as well. I found out that my fiber optic comes out via Apison Pike and if you looked at my earlier pictures of Apison Pike you can see why I am in no mood to be critical.

Having said that, I do wish I had my internet and phone back. (Tiny private selfish growl)

Since I don't, I'm going to go indulge in a nice hot shower (at least the phone can't ring while I'm in the shower!) and then spend a little time quilting in some good lighting.