Lots o' stuff

A lot has happened since my last posting. We had suspected for awhile that my mother might not be with us much longer, and the doctor officially confirmed it last week. The bad part, obviously, is the anticipation, the sorrow, the crying, the goodbyes each time we leave her side. But for what it's worth, we're seeing a lot of family that we haven't seen for awhile, and we can stop worrying about her. We know there's an end to the timeline, and, while we don't know exactly when that will be, we don't have to wonder if she'll get worse and worse as years go by. She's 87, she's had a good life, her children are all grown, and we'll manage.

Of course, this ability to rationalize and recognize that things will get better and, eventually, easier doesn't serve to eliminate thinking about it in the back of my mind most of the time, so the last couple of weeks have been exhausting; but at least I had the temporary release of drawing cartoons every day. I have to smile when I draw a cartoon. I think it's a law. But Friday morning brought an unwelcome surprise.

I awoke in the early morning hours to realize that the electricity had gone out. There was the frightening sound of roaring winds and creaking trees, and if I wasn't so tired, I might have gotten up and moved to the middle of the house, away from any outside walls. Instead, I dozed off, knowing that our superinsulated house would stay warm at least through the night and telling myself that the odds of a tree falling on the house near me were slim.

In the morning, the electricity was still out. I decided to sleep late, then go out for a big breakfast while I read the paper, take my in-laws to the airport, and then finally go home to reality. Well, there were trees down on the way to the airport, and the road off which I had to take a detour on the way into the airport was closed off to traffic coming back. I took several alternate roads which, I discovered only after driving several miles on each, all turned out to be closed as well before I took the long way 'round to get back on the highway and head home. What would normally be a half hour trip took almost two hours.

When I got home at about 2:30, I attempted to find the inverter I'd bought after the Blackout of 2008. This inverter plugs into the car, and converts the 12 volt DC into 110 volt AC, so I'd be able to plug in our heating system. It took an hour to locate the inverter and enough extension cords to run power upstairs. I plugged in the heater and--a low hum, but no heat. Despite the amperage rating, the inverter didn't supply enough power for the electronic spark to ignite the burner. Okay--it was still warm in the house. At least I could run the computer, upload the weekend's cartoons and then deal with the evening later.

Wrong! After plugging in the computer, the modem, the wireless router, and the cable box in the basement, I still had no email or internet access. I later found out the provider was down, but, not knowing that at the time, spent an hour or so trying everything I could think of to get the system working. Not surprisingly, frustration was beginning to get the better of me.

My wife, bless her, called late that afternoon and said, "Let's go visit your mother and stay in a nice inn for the night." We left food and water for the cats---they have a pet door to come and go as they please---and drove north as darkness and cold descended.

We wound up staying in the (expensive) inn the first night and a cheaper hotel the next. Both were nice, the first one especially, and we could keep checking if power was on by phoning home: if we didn't get a message on the home answering machine, the power was still off. Finally, Sunday morning, the call went through. We spent the morning with my mother, then headed home.

Arriving home, we turned the heat to High. My wife began cleaning the refrigerator in anticipation of picking up the perishables that we'd left at my son's house on Friday. I noticed a couple of bits of dried-up dog poop in the dining room. I assumed that one of our grand-dogs, who'd visited a week earlier, had been so excited she left a few small "calling cards". Fine. No smell; dry from the cold and the passage of time. Easy cleanup with a wad of tissues. Then my wife found a whole mess of "calling cards" in the closet where the pet door is located. Well, I remembered that the dog had followed the cats into that closet when she was here, and figured she's gotten excited again. I grabbed another handful of tissue, squatted down and began picking up the stuff, and saw, two feet in front of me---a possum! Alive, nose twitching.

I didn't scream or panic--probably because the last week had been so terrible, I didn't have any energy left. Also, looking down on the nose of the thing (it was under a low shelf in the closet), I thought it looked kind of cute. I actually wondered if it was something else, because when I've seen possums out in the open, I've considered them grotesque. So I ducked lower, saw the angry-looking eyes (due to the dark color flaring out above the eyes) and long claws, and decided it was indeed a butt-ugly possum.

It took some doing, but after we blocked the internal opening into the living room, through which the cats come and go to use the pet door in the closet, and propped open the external per door, I was able to prod the animal with a stick slid under the door till it went outside. I thought my wife was right behind me, and I kept saying, "Did he go out? Is he gone?", till I realized she'd gone off to do laundry. Finally, I opened the closet and looked along all the shelves to make sure it was gone. I was a little scared at that point, because the internet was still down (grr!), so I couldn't check online to see how cornered possums act. But it had left. I cleaned up the rest of the mess, shut the door, and collapsed on the sofa.

I may reduce the size of the pet door opening so it's only big enough for our two cats, but not for awhile. I have to assume that our house has been possum-proofed. After all, what are the odds of finding a live possum in your house twice? One might say that, the way the last week has gone, they're pretty high; but at some point, things have to get better, and I choose to assume that one way this will happen is that there will be No More Possums.