The start of another month.
It's really been quite the week.
So, last Thursday, at midnight, I opened that wine. The cork turned to dust as I started to put in the corkscrew, so I didn't have much hope for the wine. But we had also capped it with sealing wax and apparently that protected it. I had to pour it through a strainer to get the cork bits out of it, but it was surprisingly good. A sweet red, still tasting of blackberries. I toasted Bob, and had a good cry.
Friday I was just sort of quiet. I had my filet, rare, and ate some cake. But did a little housecleaning, because Jeff was in town for meetings and coming to see me Saturday. It just feels so strange now to think of someone coming into my house - this is the first time since my friend Diane was here in January.
We tried an escape room. I've always wanted to try one. We were lousy at it. Both Jeff and I are pretty smart, but the clues were just sooooooo obscure. But it didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves. Then we went to lunch and had the comfortable talk that people can have when they've been friends for 20 years. About how the two of us, and our friend Gill, feel that we've lost our identities. Jeff and his husband moved to Tennessee almost two years ago, and he still has the displaced person syndrome. He telecommutes his job in Tallahassee, so hasn't made work friends. They bought a house that needed a *lot* of work, which they did themselves, and about the time they got that in order it was discovered that he had serious heart problems and needed a quadruple bypass. So he hasn't been able to establish himself as his own person there - he's just Rob's plus one.
Gill has been disabled for 6 years now. I was talking to her recently - and she said that it hit her that people that she's met in that time (she has a small but successful baking business, so meets customers, many of whom have become steady ones) don't know *her*. The person who used to be a dog trainer, could walk 10 miles a day doing it, could eat anything she wanted. Not this person who needs a cane, with multiple other issues.
And we talked about missing the Halloween Howl. Two old war horses, hearing the call of fall. We tried to remember how damned much work it was, how exhausted we'd get building the trail, and even more exhausted taking it back down again, the 12 hour a day weekends, working after our day jobs. Dealing with the volunteers.
What we remembered was the chaotic creativity, the vast possibilities - slowly narrowed down as Halloween ticked closer. The feeling that we were creating something bigger than ourselves (and it was - in those two days of the Howl, the trail would bring in some $10,000 for the museum). The nights when we would light a small fire on the trail after building all day, roasting some hot dogs amid the sets and props.
That moment when you just said you were finished - it was Time. A couple of hours before the trail opened a couple - Mischa and Maria - would show up. Maria was a great trail actress. Mischa had a wonderful sound system (he was a member of a bluegrass band so had all the audio equipment) that he would set up, and then he would also become a haunter. We knew that the Time Had Come when the dark Gothic music of Nox Arcana would begin to echo through the woods. The people waiting in line would get excited. All of the actors would take their places. There was that great pause before the line opened. (I've heard that actors who play The Phantom in the Phantom of the Opera get that feeling when those first chords come crashing down).
The trail opened, and the screams began. It was wonderful.
So Jeff and I talked of old times, and good friends, and then he had some other social calls to make.
Sunday I got a call from Suzie (at the museum). Her voice was tight. "Oh, Ann," she said. "It's Mischa."
Heart attack at 57 years old. He was fit (among other things, captain of an underwater rugby team), slender - my brother described him as the guy who was 7 feet tall and six inches across. But shit happens.
Jeff was on his way back to Tennessee by then. I called him that night. Like me - he couldn't believe it. "Mischa? Mischa Steurer? Mischa Steurer the physicist? The tall one? The one who did the Howl? That Mischa Steurer?" Because how many people named Mischa Steurer can you know?
So as well as aching for Chris, who lost her husband less than a month ago, my heart bleeds for Maria. I feel for the ones who are left behind.
That should have been enough for one week, right? But not at all.
There had been some "weather" forming south of Cuba. It became a hurricane. Then a stronger hurricane. That was aimed right at us.
I spent Monday through Thursday at the museum, putting in a long day on Tuesday (Hurricane Idalia was due to strike early Wednesday morning). All of the animals except for the farm animals and wolves had to be moved into carriers and brought inside (tricky when you're talking about eagles, bobcats, and cougars). Things had to be tied down or reinforced.
By Tuesday night Idalia was a Category 3 - and likely to become a Cat 4, and headed into Apalachicola . I finished my own preparations - lots of water (without power I also don't have water, so as well as drinking water for myself and the animals I filled 5 gallon buckets in the bathtub with water for flushing toilets). Lots of frozen water bottles in the freezer. Batteries in all the flashlights. The power pack charged up, to be used as a charging station for the phone. Food that didn't need cooking. I got out the battery operated fans and the little propane stove, and moved the yard furniture inside. I brought the cat carriers to the house in case a tree came down on the house and I would need to secure the cats and chickens.
And then, what the hell, tried to get some sleep. I had moved back into the bedroom after my anniversary, but for Tuesday night it was back on the couch, because the bedroom addition has a flat roof and an annoying tendency to cave in. I dozed off and on.
I will admit to being scared. We have weathered several tropical storms and hurricanes - but weathered them together. I remember the absolute disaster of the yard after Michael came through four years ago. I didn't want to face the storm alone, without the reassuring safety that was Bob.
5:00 a.m. Category 4 and headed to the bay. Landfall within two hours.
I woke up again at 7:00 a.m. Nothing much was happening. The storm had made a curve to the west, dropped speed, and come ashore through a lightly populated area.
Of course I feel for the people in the path. There was massive flooding in the coastal areas, and widespread power outages. But there could have been widespread catastrophic damage and deaths.
The worst of the wind and rain was over by noon, and I headed back to the museum to help move the animals back and clean the carriers and do the normal making of the diets. By then I was starting to get the shakes over the near miss, so it was good to get out among people, working and feeling like a part of the team, rather than being alone.
My normal workday was Thursday, so I did that, with some more post-storm cleaning.
Today I seem to be lounging on the couch, although in a bit I'm going to get up and undo my storm prep. The buckets and tarps and carriers will go back in the barn, and the cookstove and fans back in the emergency supply box, and get things back to normal.
Whatever that is.
