Storm Journeys and the Refusal of Acceptance.

Authors note:

To remind you, my most beloved readers, this is still excerpts from the on going dairy I kept (by hand) during the terrible snow storm that knocked out power to my house for a week and fucked up New Jersey but they aren't really important because they are not me and that's not what you read this blog for.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programing.

After the past few days of panic followed by swearing and breaking shit we decided it was time for a little socialization time. Or as I call it, going to interact with others in a non work setting so that I don't loose all sense of dignity and social relations. It's an uphill battle really.

So, we headed on down to my grandmas where we hung out with my aunt and uncle and bitched about the fact that none of us had power.

It's sort of weird to be at another persons  house who also does not have power since you would think that ingrained habit of flipping on light switches wouldn't happen at others peoples houses, but let me assure you it totally does.

We also used our car time to recharge our cell phones and then had to answer a bunch of calls and assure people that we were not, in fact, dead.

I also need to point out that coming home to a pitch black house is not fun. Also I have no idea how old timey people did things by candle light.

At all.

I mean shit. Candles don't illuminate worth a crap. I started going to bed at like nine thirty at night because the alternative was walking around with a headlamp strapped to my head looking at all the appliances that no longer worked.

Mocking me with their blank screens.

TAUNTING ME WITH THEIR POSSIBILITIES.

Ahem.

I'm fine

 

Want more sadness Storm Tales? Here's The Final Installment.

  Confused? Here's Day 1 of Power Outage Fun Time.

The Truck was a Lie.

So, remember when I said that we had fixed the headlights on the truck? Well, that was a lie. We put the truck back together, chatting happily because now we had a truck that worked and everything. So we cleaned up our work area and put the tools away and threw out the broken and damaged stuff. Scott gave the truck an affectionate pat jumped in and turned the key and nothing fucking happened.

Shitfuckmotherfuckers.

He got out of the truck. We both stared at it. We were going to have to take the steering column off again. Scott went to take out all the tools we would need, but I walked to the edge of the driveway. It was a perfect day outside. Big fat puffy clouds were chasing each other through the sky on a gentle breeze and a few early autumn leaves were drifting down into the yard. The chickens were picking happily through the grass. I stared at that idyllic country vista, the deep shade of the forest and the waving meadow, and contemplated setting the truck on fire.

I decided against it.

So once again we ripped the steering column off the truck and played around with the ignition switch thing. It was not fun. I don't even have any idea what the problem was. All I know is that when we took it apart and put it back together the damn thing worked. Problem solved!

Except now the headlights were flickering.

Ha ha ha haaaa!

Ha.

At that moment we embarked upon a great quest to discover why this was happening. And by 'we' I mean 'Scott.' He tested things and pulled wires and by passed stuff and called my uncle and cursed and cut himself and tried very hard not to get electrocuted. It turns out that the teenager that had the truck before us had wired up his running lights in some weird ass manner so that it was drawing too much power from the wrong damn thing. Luckily it wasn't too hard to fix and then we had working headlights again. Wonderful working headlights.

Except then the back up lights cut out.

At this point my uncle really did suggest setting the truck on fire for the insurance money.*

We decided against it. We had come too far to turn back now. What followed Scott's moments of grim determination was even more hours of testing and cursing and frustration at the cold uncaring universe that had brought him to this point. The words 'bypass' and 'switch' were uttered many times. So were the words 'what the fuck?'

But he fixed it.

I still have no idea how. It involved lots of wires. So he put the truck back together, everything back together and tested it. It all worked. The engine started, the headlights came on, the running lights came on and the back up lights came on. It was time to go to the inspection station. It was time.

Scott walked up to me to kiss me goodbye with his both his fingers crossed. It couldn't have been a more dramatic kiss then if he was about to shipped off to the beaches of Normandy. I crossed my fingers to. Halfway back to the truck he turned around and I lifted my crossed fingers up to show him I was still hoping and he crossed his and held them up like a salute and for a moment we just stood there starting at each other across the lawn like something momentous was about to happen.

Then one of our neighbors drove by and I felt retarded.

I couldn't concentrate so I just sort of ended up drifting about the house and reading random books until I heard the truck pull into the driveway.

It had passed.

It had only taken us a week, a full week to rip it apart and put it back together, to scavenge parts off another truck and drag my uncle into it, a week of driving around to different auto parts stores and cursing and yelling and stress.

But it's over now.

It's over.

Until next year, anyway.

*He wasn't actually serious. I least I think he wasn't.