Category: Scary Things

Woodpecker, Wind, and Want of Power

The day started with a rapid metallic rat-a-tat-tat. I froze and listened. Rat-a-tat-tat, like miniature gunfire. Or something much more impressive.

Hairy woodpecker on roof, 9:09 a.m., 25 July 2022. Sadly, the photograph does not capture through the window’s screen the bird’s coloration, including the red mark at the back of its head, showing that the bird is male.

I tiptoed to the window and peered through the tulle curtain. There it was. Long toes, red cap, narrow sharp beak. A woodpecker. I was surprised to see it sitting on the metal porch roof, not a common place for a male hairy woodpecker to pause. I drew my head back because I did not want to scare it off. Could I get a video of it?

Rat-a-tat-tat.

Drat. I missed seeing him drum on the metal. I hope his wrap-around tongue provides a good enough cushion for pounding on the hard substance.

I leaned forward once more, setting the curtain to swaying, and he flew off, dipping slightly and two other winged shapes darted away from below the porch roof. I was not sure if the three were all woodpeckers, but it made sense. They were all headed in the same direction, and the flash of tail color was similar. 

Was the metallic drumming a way to signal to the other two?

How strange to see three woodpeckers not in the trees when I so rarely hear much less see one when I’m out walking trails.

Chirping brought me to another window. Birds were darting in and out of the ground vegetation, pecking on the chopped wood, swirling through the air. A couple (at different times) hit the windows. Ouch. I peeked downwards, hoping I would see them fly away or at the very least first stumble then fly. I felt blessed that so many birds had chosen my yard to stop on their way to their next destination. The family of grey jays that occasionally visit whirled around near a spruce tree. I noticed but did not wonder too much about the birds each flying relatively close to the ground. None winged halfway up a tree much less touched the treetops. Gliding and soaring were also seemingly not in their repertoire this morning.

Five hours later I started to understand why: The winds started trying to push the trees onto their sides.

There was not a bird in sight or within hearing. They had all wisely found other places to be. The winds swirled in the treetops, sending broken branches aloft and littering the air and ground with twigs, needles, cones, and leaves. Dust devils churned and gusts of winds caused dry soil to move along the ground like mist across low waves. My wind chimes played musically and at times manically. The clouds swelled and undulated, slowly rolling out curved, stretched, and bulging shapes in every grey shade. The wind rattled the treetops and snapped the weak.

A fat trunk crashed on to a main road, and vehicles stopped so their people could chunk the shattered pieces to the other side of the sidewalk. A couple people in jeans, a woman in a spaghetti string tank top and shorts, and a woman in a flowing garment and a head scarf all worked in busy coordination to clear the street. By the time I drove down the other side of the road from the three vehicles, the road was littered only with some remaining chunks of bark and broken off twigs in a brown chalk-line shadow reaching over nearly three lanes. The drivers and riders climbed back into their vehicles.

Earlier in the day, I headed to a cafe for breakfast later than I had planned. I wished I had arrived early so I could have been ahead of the wildfire hotshot crew and had asked the cashier to put their coffees on my credit card. Working 21 days on/three days off all summer long, they had flown up to Alaska to help out the local crew. As it was, the last man was collecting his coffee as I walked up to order.

Now, here too, I had arrived too late to help.

Due to the winds, my house had lost power by 5 pm., when I returned from the day’s errands. By seven o’clock, a dead, needle-less spruce had taken out three lines, which draped across the dirt road, the only vehicle exit my house has. I was grateful that someone had placed a road emergency triangle as a warning, yet was displeased that the property owner had not cleared away the trees as is their responsibility. I checked the service drop leading to my house in case I was being hypocritical. 

Zoom in to see the shattered fallen tree on the left and the still-attached-to-the-pole lines draping across vegetation on the right. Note the thick storm clouds swirling above, 25 July 2022.

Yep, all clear since my last tidy-up. There is one alder that has sprouted up surprisingly fast and so sometime this week or next I need to chop it down. It is directly under the power line and in a year or two will be able to touch it. So, technically, I admit: I haven’t maintained the 4-foot-wide path (ground-to-sky clearance) after all. Better to take care of it (safely) this summer.

The camera lens captured the sunset more brightly than the naked eye, giving a heartening light to the heavy, swirling storm clouds, 20:43, 25 July 2022.

All of my friends told me via texts that they had to eat their ice cream to keep it from melting…

A loud honking from my phone startled me. I flipped it over and read:

This was when I started to feel a little scared. Not because of the unreachable 911 system (because now I know to call the department I might need directly — I still have phone books in my house! Yay, old school!), but because the 911 dispatch system was not getting electricity. If it wasn’t, then what other important facilities could go down?

If there was a time for a criminal to commit crime, now would be the time.

At 22:38 I received another honk-alarm notification saying the 911 system was back online and people were NOT to call 911 to test the system. Really? People would do that? Yes, of course they would. And some probably still would even after receiving the alert. Sigh…

I heard a bird chirp, although it could have been a squirrel squeak. The first wildlife sound since the birds dropped to safer ground. 

22:58 The house clicks and whirrs. I forget how loud electricity is until it comes back on after a power outage. No wonder people are hesitant about being out in the world without the familiar electric sounds. Wind continues to stir the air. The sounds turn off, then pop back on. So far, they seem to be on for good. A good end to the day for me.

Hopefully the others will soon have a good night, too.

Here is a screen shot of Golden Valley Electric Association’s outage page at 23:25, 25 July 2022. 26,127 customers still affected by outages. The crews have their work cut out for them!

Ice-Rain Black Out

Rain sheets from the sky just before noon on an abnormally warm winter day. On Christmas Eve the temperature had dropped to -24ºF/-31ºC (with a high of 2ºF/-16ºC), and today the thermometer registered a high of 40ºF/4.4ºC. What a layer of ice that is going to make on the roads! Photo taken at 11:57, 26 December 2021.

4:13 p.m. Clickety-click. Click. The lights pop off. Back on. Then off again. Click, clickety-click, say the electronics as juice reaches their systems again. I shut off the treadmill’s main switch and turn off the small light in the living room. The lights flicker on and off and on again until, in the end, they stay off.

I should have guessed that today there would be electricity problems. I first noticed the rain mid morning. The sound of it on the snow was a relaxing susurration, but icicles had already started forming around the base of my truck and along the underside of telephone and power wires.

Rain should not be falling in December in Alaska, especially after a week and a half of regular snowfall. The man who plows my driveway was here on the 8th, 11th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 23rd, and even early on Christmas Day! That was only yesterday.

The snow kept on falling. I woke up at about 2 a.m. this morning because his son was shoveling snow off my stoop while he plowed the drive. I was surprised to hear him here so early (and again), but there was enough snow to warrant yet another visit. He must also have known about the predicted rainfall. My driveway is thick once again with white and with the rain on top… Plowing a thick snow layer with a hardened crust must tear up snowplow equipment. I hope he’s staying at home and off the roads today. They must be sheathed in ice.

Even though the camera does not visually pick up the drops, listen to the water streaming from sky and roof, 12:31, 26 December 2021.
Icicles have formed on the telephone wire due to the abnormal rain, 13:01, 26 December 2021.

Just like everything else — including the power lines and the spindly spruce trees.

The last time there was winter rain was about five or six years ago. I cannot remember the exact year, but I do recall that it happened just before Thanksgiving and the trees bent under the weight of the ice and pulled down power lines. A couple of coworkers who lived further out of town had no electricity for up to two weeks(!) that time.

Kerosene Lantern: Perfect light for a black-out, 15:19, 26 December 2021.

Today, by the light of my hurricane lamp, I pull my headlamp from my backpack and locate the phone book to look up the number for the power company. When there is no internet, an “old-fashioned” book will never let me down. I call in my personal power outage and pull on a sweater. 

Friends and I text to check in on who has power and who is safe. One friend is cozying under blankets. One friend, with power, says I can come over if I feel safe enough to drive. Another friend, also with power, tells me that the official outage map shows 14,000 homes without electricity from Healy to Fairbanks in one direction and to Harding Lake in the other. A lot more than 14,000 people live in that number of homes, including her daughter’s and nieces’ families (and me).

This screenshot shows the electrical outages in Fairbanks, Alaska at 20:04, after my own lights had popped back on, 26 December 2021.

As I sit here typing I realize that many people who are ensconced in their own, full-electricity, worlds may not understand the dangers of living in Alaska without power.

The boiler will not flame on until the electricity is restored, and the water pump will not work either, which will perhaps work to my advantage because if the electricity does not come on before the outdoor temperature starts to drop this evening, I may need to drain the water out through the pipes so if my house freezes there will be less risk of bursting pipes. Of course, I will shut off the pump’s breaker on the panelboard anyway if I have to take that step.

Most, like me, do not have a built-in alternate source of heat. I would love a fireplace or wood stove, but installing one would be too time- and cost-intensive for the kind of home I have. If the indoor temperature becomes too low I will dig a path into the shed to pull out the space heater and the tank of propane so I can stay warm enough this evening to monitor the house and get a restless sleep.

My Internet service is of course down at home, so I cannot access news on the computer. I have no Internet access through my phone, other than Wi-Fi services, which of course are currently reacting as if they were never invented. I opted not to install a landline in this house once I learned that all of the telephone company’s services are fully digital, meaning that when power goes out, so does my landline. Thus, once my cell phone dies I will have no way to call if I need emergency services — and I won’t be able to know if friends will need help either.

In the light of the steady glow of a kerosene lantern, the only light source around, 15:46, 26 December 2021.

The radio also naturally does not work. My mother sent me my 1990s ‘boom box’ last summer so I do have its battery-operated option for the radio if I need it, but I’m kind of enjoying the quiet without a backdrop of an electric hum.

The benefit of the rain — if I put a positive spin on it — is that the temperature is relatively warm. The thermometer outside my front door reads 32ºF, which makes sense because the sky air temperature must be above freezing for it to even rain. The house will hold its temperature so much better than it would have done eleven days ago when there was a negative sign (-) in front of that number.

I mull over the idea of driving to my friend’s house, or to see if a coffee shop is open so I can plug in my phone and have a warm meal. The rain is still sprinkling. The rain has soaked through, making the snow too wet to sweep, as I would normally have done. So, I shovel it off instead. The most recent snowfall has created a ground layer as deep as the bottom step is tall.

Water is dripping down the side of my truck, from the rain as much as from the warming-up truck. I do like autostart. The thick blanket of snow, heavy now with moisture, has started to slide off of the hood in broken-off slabs.

The crusted snow crunches loudly under my feet. I can still push the long snow brush along the top of the truck, and the loose snow falls off the other side. The hardened crust is a roof to the hollowed out snow tunnel I have made. 

The water that seeped through the snow has begun to set into ice atop the snow hard packed from repeated pressure of driven tires. Shoveling the snow away from front and back of each tire will help prevent little mounds of iced snow from turning into chocks and thwarting me driving the truck (which has happened before! I once had to chop away at the ice with the edge of a shovel in order to get moving again.) Photo taken at 17:21, 26 December 2021.

After the truck is cleaned off and the windows and headlights scraped clean of ice and slush, it’s time to shovel out the wheels. I do this already knowing that I’m not going to head over to my friend’s. The icy layer atop the driveway’s snow glistens too prettily for a safe drive.

A conical pile has developed around the fill pipe to my heating oil tank. If more snow falls, or falls from the roof above, the pipe might be buried, and if the wet snow freezes over night, I wonder if the fuel truck driver, slated to arrive tomorrow, will be able to access it. Plus, I want to reduce the chance for snow and water to dribble inside. I punch through the iciness around the pipe and smoothly brush away the light snow beneath.

Natural light, minus all born of electricity, makes it too dark to see much of my self-portrait, but this is me, wearing a brimmed hat and winter coat, with a plaid scarf wrapped aboout my nose and shoulders, 17:19, 26 December 2021.

5:30 p.m. My cell phone’s battery just died.

What time will the electricity come back on?

What to do for dinner…? I’m a little peckish, but I’m sure that I don’t actually need to eat. In 2020, 66.7% of adult Americans were overweight or obese to some degree, and surely that number hasn’t reduced much since then. I can go without food until breakfast. Then, again, there is a sense of exciting adventure to having to cook dinner at home on a camp stove.

I set everything up outside, in part because I hear tales of people who perished because they used propanes stoves indoors (although most likely in smaller square footage and more than just one meal), but mostly because I don’t often get to to sit out on the deck in winter — certainly not at these warm temperatures! It’s too bad the clouds block the starlight.

While I stare into the night and listen to its silence, the water starts to heat up in pot. Bundled up in the camp chair the only sounds are the steady whooshing of the blue flames and the intensifying, but muted roil of the liquid.

6:47 p.m. The blue tinted landscape turns a dirty golden as the light on the house across the road bursts on. I can hear the purr of the boiler from the back of my house. I reenter, turn on the stove to boil water for tea, and plug in the phone, which lights up showing 69%. Replying to texts is the next thing I do in case people were worried about why I had stopped in the midst of conversations. A wise friend asked if I have a charger in my truck. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? 

Probably because I was not too concerned at that moment about being device-less. It’s nice to enjoy the view without the hum or beeps of electricity.

Clickety-click. Click.

Two straining flickers and the lights shut off again. The boiler is silent. The cell phone rings.

The power company’s automated services asks if I have had my power restored, and I press 2 for no.

6:51 p.m. I start the truck’s engine and use the charger to boost the phone’s battery up to 100% before returning to the porch and its camp chair. I eat the yummy re-hydrated chicken breast and mashed potatoes with a bread knife and a long-handled spoon while I try to soak up the grey night.

7:23 p.m.  The bulbs brighten and the lights stay on this time, and while I am relieved that I don’t have to worry about the house, I am a little disappointed that I cannot continue enjoying the quiet of the true world. Someone opens a front door and I hear the chatter of a television show through the night. I retreat indoors, closing my own door behind me, and in a matter of minutes, I can, regrettably, barely remember the feel of a natural nightfall.

Molten Metal Fireworks

Sunday, 12 December 2021, evening: 

I breathed through my mouth through the face covering. I had learned in my first winter here that when the temperature drops below 20º below freezing (yes, more than 50ºF colder than when water freezes) that it hurts when I breathe the air directly in through my nose. Pulling air through my lips the long way to my lungs helps warm it up so it does not freeze my lungs’ alveoli or the inside of my nostrils.

Temperature in Celsius, at 23:37, 12 December 2021.
Temperature in Fahrenheit, at 23:37, 12 December 2021.

The forecasted temperature was not expected to rise, and I did not feel like waking up extra, extra early tomorrow to plug in the truck so that its oil pan would be thawed enough for the engine to turn over. So, I unhooked the long outdoor extension cord from its spot inside the house.

The outdoor socket is on the side of the porch directly next to the front steps. As I lifted the protective lid with one hand, I noticed that the cord in my other was bent at nearly a forty-five degree angle down from the back of the plug. My brain absently recognized that this might become a problem and I should think about buying a new cord. Maybe later. I plugged in the cord and let the protective cover relax downwards.

Pop! A cascade of fiery red sparks shot out towards the stairs and I screamed in shock and jumped away. My heart rate rocketed. I whimpered a little, and gingerly, yet as quickly as possible, lifted the metal cover and pulled the plug from the socket, thinking it might burn my hand through the insulated wither glove. The cord dropped to the ground, having been cut away from the plug I was now holding. The metal of the cover had completed an undesired circuit from the socket though the break in the cord’s plastic, and obviously a break in an exposed wire, out into the dangerous shower.

The thinking part of my brain said, huh, you should have trusted me when I pointed out the bent cord. It also noticed the luck of the burst spraying towards the stairs — and away from me. 

A lingering electrical burning smell prompted me to action. Heart still racing I dashed up the stairs and pushed open the front door.

A moment to pull the rubber guards over my soles so I could prevent damaging my flooring then I raced through to the other end of the house to check the breaker box. ‘Outside socket, West’ showed a little red box on the panel. I flipped the switch back and forth curiously, and the red disappeared. I breathed out. Does this mean I could still use the socket? I turned on the breaker and headed back outside. The short cord I store in the truck (and use to plug in while at work) should reach, since obviously the long one is destroyed.

Distribution panel showing the flipped (red) breaker. The circled switch number tells me that the previous owners did not keep up on their water deliveries and had to quickly locate the water pump’s breaker in order to shut it off (and prevent the pump from burning itself out while attempting to draw in water from an air-filled tank), 12 December 2021.

The burning smell was stronger. My headlamp showed streaks of soot extending like a starburst from the socket openings. A vision of the house burning down from this point up and back through the wood transformed into me speeding in reality back into the house.

I flipped the ‘Outside socket, West’ switch once more to ‘Off’ and headed back outside. My house will not burn down. Thank you to whichever electricians invented the distribution board and circuit breakers! 

I sighed. Now I have to learn how to replace a socket, and maybe (most likely) the cord from panelboard to socket. As a young child I remember helping my father rewire the house, but the extent of my experience was him yelling at me from another room to pull the wire through. “Do you see the wire?” “No!” “Now?” “I’ve got it!” “Well, pull it!” I felt so proud to be able to help him. How to actually do rewiring though I have no idea. I feel a little irritated and a little excited about the need to learn. That can wait until summer though. When it is a lot warmer!

Threading the short blue cord through the railing in order to plug in the truck, 12 December 2021.

The need to plug in the truck remained. I drove the truck to the other side of the house, nose in, and strung the short blue cord from what the electric panel would surely call ‘Outside socket, East’ through the porch railing and down to the front of the truck where the oil pan heater cord dangled. 

Plugging in the truck on the opposite side of the porch as normally, in a -32ºF temperature at 23:47 at night, just barely still Sunday, 12 December 2021.

I wondered if a moose might pass through as one sometimes does, and if it would step over the cord or push through it like through clumping grass, pulling it out of one or both of the sockets. Having not seen a moose all winter, Murphy’s Law dictated that now would be the time when one chose to visit. I could envision the cord tangling about a long brown leg and falling off somewhere where I would never find it, leaving me with no cord and only the option of biking to work. Brrr! I used a hand to help lift my snow-panted knee up and over the cord — and my leg sank into the snow up to that same knee. Teetering through the drift I stopped worrying about what a moose might or might not do and just went inside to sleep.

Monday, 13 December 2021:

On the way home from work today I swung by the grocery store and purchased a new 50-foot cord. This cold snap is predicted to be only a short one of three to four days, but I need a new cord today so I can park in my normal spot — nose out— and lay the cord across the deck rather than park nose-in on the other side of the house. I wonder if one day my truck won’t start, even after plugging it in. It will be simpler to reach the battery for a jump if the engine/hood is easily accessible. I know it will certainly be easier, and less expensive, to tow if the front of the truck is facing outwards and not diagonally where there might not be enough room for a tow truck to maneuver. As long as I (or any surprise visitor) doesn’t trip on the cord stretched in front of the door, the set-up will be just fine.

Since, I was outside already and thinking about the bad things that can happen, I decided to check the heating oil. Just my luck to run out again.

I always use the same gloves when checking the fuel: leather work gloves that are far too thin to be worn at these temperatures, but they are the ones covered by drops of heating oil. I’d have to move quickly. I slipped them on and I could feel the cold through them right away. I’ve heard tell that petroleum products can burn flesh through contact at these temperatures. I removed the padlock from the fill pipe, got the dip stick, and flipped open the pipe’s cover. The dip stick’s slide down into the fill pipe was not checked by the surface of the liquid for a long time. I hold my breath. How close was I to running out of fuel? After pulling out the measuring tool and checking the fuel’s exact level (low enough to call for a fuel delivery, but not too low for me to start to worry), I ran a hand down the stick, forcing the clinging liquid to drip back into the fill pipe. Fuel is pricy and very drop counts. Though the leather I felt burning on my fingers from my rings; I could sense the silver sucking in the cold and transferring it painfully to my skin. I hurried to replace cover, dipstick, and padlock then tossed the gloves into the porch corner and pulled on the thick winter gloves. My skin burned. I needed to take the rings off!

Stiff-jointed from the cold, I tripped over the curls of extra cord on the deck, nearly banging my head onto the storm door.

Sigh…

Maybe I should go to bed early tonight…

Sweet dreams, readers. Dreams of working joints and working houses….

Cold, Treacherous Death (Okay, I’m Being Dramatic)

I wake up in the morning chill and decide to click the snooze button. I should get up, I remind myself, and drive to the garage for my truck’s check-up…but I’m not keen to get out of bed this morning. Another hour of sleep, I think wistfully, a doze already opening its arms to me, and I’ll have met my sleep goal for the night. Having thus decided, I reach out and change the alarm to a new wake-up time. I can drive there tomorrow morning instead. Ah, the benefits of spring break…

A rare Fairbanks wind creates lovely morning music.

A tintinnabulation weaves into my sleep. I hear the sound for a while before my mind consciously recognizes it as music from the generally silent chimes hanging by my front door, just below my bedroom window. Will the wind blow in more snow?

Once out of bed, I cannot seem to warm up. Shiver, it is chilly this morning. It must be the wind licking heat off of the house. At the back of my mind I know this cannot be true. That is not how modern homes work.

I putter around the house, making breakfast, putting away the clean dishes from last night’s dinner, boiling water for tea. I start feeling my toes. I never notice they are there unless they are cold. I put on a different pair of slippers. The foot-digits’ iciness continues to spread. I add a sock to each slipper, and, suspicion tightening my throat, start wondering…

The living room thermostat says sixty degrees. The boiler should have gone on long before now. I push a couple of buttons to encourage heating. Nothing, so I walk to the utility room and peek at the little box where I can sometimes see the hot-blue flames of ignition. A little green light diagonally above the dark window always comes on at the same time.

Now, the green light blinks. It never blinks. My breath becomes a little more shallow. The light is either on or off, never blinking. Isn’t a blinking light always a warning?

I press the reset button, and the green light goes off; the boiler clicks on like it always does just before ignition — and the resulting heat. There is no ignition this time. Thank goodness an expert is coming tomorrow afternoon to do a boiler maintenance check, I think in my firmly-not-panicking mind.

The house temperature drops another degree. Upstairs the thermostat reads 58ºF. I pull on boots and a warm coat, and retrieve my leather gloves from the porch on my way to the fuel tank pipe next to the house. The dipstick goes in, down and down, and I do not feel the wood entering the liquid. When the stick touches the bottom of the tank I draw it upwards and there is way too much dry wood. My pulse beats once, twice, hotly loud in my ears.

This is the afeared problem. I stare at the moisture that coats only the bottom two inches of the dipstick. 

I wipe the stick clean with the palm of a glove, letting the residual drop fall back into the opening even though I know that saving this drop is not going to help me now.

The former house owners had not installed gutters, so the roof’s runoff each spring caused erosion next to the house, and the fuel tank tilted. Two inches of fuel would not last me long as it is, but perhaps these last two inches never will be able to flow from tank to house anyway if the tilt has caused the remaining fuel to collect away from the tank’s exit valve.

I deliberately close the hinged fill pipe cap — and not put the lock back on. Then I ring up the fuel delivery company, but they are closed!

Oh. It’s only 7:30 a.m. They don’t open for another half hour. I make myself breathe.

During my first winter in the house, when an unforeseen plumbing issue caused the main drain line under my house to freeze, and therefore prevented me from using the system at all, I absently wondered what it would be like to also lose heating. At every stretch of low temperatures and during every ice storm and power outage, I have wondered, ‘How quickly will the house freeze up without heat…?’

I have not ever really wanted to know this firsthand — and especially not from something as preventable as running out of fuel. Grrr. I have to remind myself that this is the first time I’ve owned a house, the first one I’ve lived in, since I stopped having roommates, even, that had real plumbing. So what if it’s normally twenty-somethings who have this cringeworthy experience. Sigh…

I always strive to be prepared — if only to make a what-if plan when my sometimes overactive imagination keeps me from a good night’s sleep —, so I do have a couple of hopeful (and hopefully pulse-steadying) actions to take. I close all upstairs doors and shut off the water pump in the utility room. I don’t know if closing off rooms will help trap heat in, but I do know that if the temperature drops too much, I will let as much of the water in the house’s holding tank out through the drains, then cross my fingers that this will prevent the pipes from freezing.

On the phone, I have to swallow my pride to admit that I am out of fuel. I’ll even pay an emergency call-out fee, but surprisingly there is none. I wish there were because that might ensure a fill-up today. The receptionist calls the dispatcher, who cannot contact my area’s delivery truck. Maybe the driver will get to me today, maybe tomorrow, she says. I thank her and wish her a good day, because doing otherwise would not change the fact of my own foolishness.

On my spring break to-do list I had written “check fuel”. I generally don’t have to purchase any heating oil so early in the calendar year, but Fairbanks did have 30º below temperatures this winter, as well as several additional days of -20ºF. I thought checking might be sensible. I should have listened to myself on Monday.

The outside temperature is -5ºF. Sun on the siding might help warm up the house, yet the sky is overcast like the firmament has been wrapped in layers of tulle and gauze, and the sunlight does not look like it will be able to break through. I have a propane heater, and I think a bottle of propane, too, in the shed. If the indoor temperature drops to 50ºF, I’ll dig them out and heat up the bathroom that separates the kitchen and the utility room, the two places which hold most of the pipes. At night I can move the first chair I bought for my new place, a lovely, comfortable cushioned seat, to the kitchen as my “bed” up off the cold floor. Although…Could the camping air mattress and my sleeping bag (supposedly rated to -40ºC/F) be a cozier place to sleep? It would be a good test for the bag. This is optimism poking through more than the sunlight.

My poor little toes! Yesterday, while re-organizing my camping equipment, I pulled out all of the expired hand and toe warmers left from my days of regular winter biking. (The thought of that at the moment makes me shudder even more.) I can use those warmers now, and some of them do work just enough for a chilly house.

It’s only 9 o’clock, and the inside temperature has dropped a full degree in the last hour. Where is that sun? Will the fuel truck come today? Would the sun help at all anyway? 

My bedroom is noticeably cooler than the kitchen. I try not to think about the sinking temperature. My sister once told me she had turned on her stove when her heating had been shut off. I never asked why her cooker still worked if her heat was off, but her resourcefulness comes to mind now. I bake a batch of “Jiffy” corn muffins and leave the oven door open when I turn off the dial. Moving keeps my blood warm, and the temperature on the thermostat is now up one degree. Yay! I don’t check the ones upstairs because the last time I checked, the bedroom panel read 55ºF, and I’m not brave enough right now to see whether it has dropped.

A couple of warm muffins raise my body temperature and my hopes.

I have a plan. I might not enjoy the next, possibly twenty-four, hours, but I have a plan that makes sense, and I know that if I need to get warm today, I can go in to work for a few hours, and if the house is still too cold this evening to be bearable, despite my Pollyannaish camping plan, I could beg a night’s stay at a friend’s house — even though I don’t want to have to admit the reason.

Beep, beep, beep!

I gasp and stand stock yearning still. Is it..?

I dash to the window and peer out. Yes! The fuel truck is here! I love those guys.

The truck finishes backing up into my driveway and I hear the clunk of the hose being drawn out. After a few minutes, I press the reset button under that annoyingly blinking green light, the boiler clicks on, and then… ignition!

A solid, steady, green light and the delightful, blue-hot flames of caloric ignition.

I don’t know how much fuel a working furnace uses but if I can get a few more drops of the powerful liquid out of the truck, I am all for them.

490.4 gallons and $1,452 (yikes!) later, the fuel truck driver hangs a receipt on my door and heads to his next gig. I wave thank-you from the doorway. I don’t know if he sees me in his mirror, but I want to show my gratitude in some non-contact way.

It’s 10:21 a.m. The heating registers click once, twice— cautiously, as if they are afraid to pour all of their effort into the work in case there is not enough oomph behind them to allow them to finish.

The boiler runs for 16 minutes non-stop, a light whiff of exhaust hanging like invisible ice fog in the house. I don’t mind it. The heating system is working to catch up from what I’ve put it through! Two minutes later the ignition kicks back on because the thermostat’s temperature still reads 59ºF. Six more degrees to go! I wonder if keeping my house at a more tropical warmth would have prevented me from knowing as soon as I did that potential death was on its way. (Too dramatic, I know.) Certainly I would have used up fuel faster, and perhaps I would not have known the bitter danger until I had returned from a long day of work to a cold, deadened home.

Good thing for spring break!

The boiler clicks on and off about ten more times before each room is back up to its set temperature. When I turn on the hot water faucet, warm water actually comes out. I take a long deep breath.

I am glad I had a reasonable plan that I did not have to follow in the end. Now I know what it is like to run out of fuel. Been there, done that, won’t do it again!

Dry Skin, White Hair, & Screen Eyeball

As the cold dry air sucks moisture out of the skin, my hands first they look like a cracked mudflat in a drought, and then without moisture they begin to split.

I have my mother’s hair and knobby-knuckled hands, and my father’s eyes and skin. In very dry weather, my hands tend to crack at the joints and at the edges of the tips of my fingers where my nails stop their protection. I have never had delusions of becoming a hand model. This year especially, lotion and I are waging a war against aridity and hand sanitizer.

Last week I noticed three, four, (or was it five?) gray hairs: Delicate white sitting among the mousy brown, perhaps like a ptarmigan just starting to change color for the season — but in the mirror my head did not look nearly as beautiful as a wild ptarmigan might. 

With horror I realized yesterday evening that I could not see the road signs clearly until I had approached closer — akin to that of a computer screen distance from my eyeballs. I think my brain has forgotten how to focus further than that. Thank goodness roadsigns are standardized according to color and shape. Plus, I know where to turn and what the speed limit is — and I doubted any of that information had changed since the last time I was able to read the large lettered signs. Never before have I noticed such a dramatic change in my vision, not since the day my parents took me to pick up my new beautiful red frames. When I put on those new ‘80s specs, the ground shifted. I had had no idea the floor was where it actually was.

What a year so far.

I think tonight I will rub another layer of lotion into my hands and practice not looking at a screen. Maybe, just perhaps, that will help me not see any more silver among the brown for a very long, stress-free time…

Death of Her Parents

A fictional short story inspired by world event worries:

    Black spruce in the rain.

Both of her parents died in an explosion of disease that gutted the world, but which neither of them really believed in, not even on their deathbeds.

“Your father always thinks he’s sick. He goes to the doctor all of the time,” mother said, wheezing. “He thought he would die at thirty, you know…”

The daughter nodded, remembering.

As if surviving that milestone, his fortieth birthday, and then becoming longer-lived than his own father seven years later proved that he would not die now at seventy-five, despite the machine coaxing air in and out of his lungs. Poor health was not an adequate excuse for avoiding a conversation.

Mother was not sick. She never got sick — even if she were coming down with or getting over something — she was not really sick. She ate small, healthy portions, each meal containing every food group. She jogged through parking lots from car to building entrance. At work, she always took the stairs through the doorway in the wall across the large room from her partitioned workspace.

During long-distance phone calls with her daughter, the septuagenarian rued the fact that she could no longer attend her normal socializing activities because masks meant she could not clearly hear what, for example, her book circle was saying. When the members met outside she had to be the martyr who kept her face covering on — because no one really understood how far apart six feet actually was. She had measured it, so she knew.

“It’s farther than you think.”

Even joining in the after-service receptions on Sundays fell flat. So few people showed, and then everyone was masked and separate, so it was hard to carry on a fulfilling conversation. She could not even see her other daughter or her youngest grandchild because they had to stay cloistered in the daycare room where they worked, and where sometimes the young woman’s two eldest children helped out. One by one, families decided not to attend at all, and so waving at her daughter’s family from a distance was not even possible.

Shopping was now mother’s primary avenue to be around people. She no longer went to just one grocery store: She went to three. Because purchasers were clearing out the shelves, the products she wanted were not available. The shops made suggestions, but the woman scoffed.

“Of course if someone knows they like a particular product they are not going to take the risk on something they might not like.”

On the other end of the phone line, her daughter silently stirred a creamy potato soup she would never have discovered if what she had been looking for had not instead created a hole on a shelf.

Instead of grocery shopping taking usually only an hour, mother sighed, it now took over two. Sometimes she forgot her mask and had to go back to get it. She knew how important masks were, so she did not complain about wearing one, even at work, although they were annoyingly hot and confining. Other people did not wear them correctly.

As if proving her right, someone in her cubicle-filled office space had tested positive one day, but mother assured she was safe.

“They could not say who it is, of course, for privacy reasons, just which department they’re from. But it’s okay, they work on the opposite side of the office and my department doesn’t do business with theirs.”

Mother felt lucky that she and her family (except for the far-flung daughter who did not visit anymore) lived in a county that had such low resident-case numbers. She certainly did not know anyone who had contracted the germ. A few acquaintances knew of someone in other states or cities who had taken ill — which may or may not have been due to the malady because no one mentioned had indeed died.

Mother was not sick.

“I’m just having a little… difficulty breathing,” she assured. “If I do have anything, your father gave it to me.”

Father went to work everyday, either to his fields where he escaped from duties and people he disliked, or to the shop where he and his business partners sold natural herb products, some with CBD oil, which mother was certain to insist every time that she brought it up on the phone that it was not a drug.

“But don’t ask me about it,” she added, washing her hands of any connection to the (possibly unseemly) business. “I don’t know what products it’s in.”

She had never tried any merchandise her husband had brought home to her, even before the Marijuana Legalization Act was passed. Since the wide-spread affliction had reared its head after the launch of the new product line, father’s business was deemed essential and he could continue working, possibly to the relief of them both.

Mother coughed, sweat beading at her brow, and continued weakly elucidating from whom her husband might have contracted his ailment.

“He goes to work every day of the week,” she repeated. “Did you know that?”

Her daughter, fully clothed in scrubs, booties, plastic face shield and cloth mask, gently held her mother’s bony, crepe-skinned hand in her gloved ones, and nodded. She was not sure if her mother had noticed.

“When he gets better I will tell him… again… He shouldn’t do that… He gets tired.”

“I think he enjoyed it,” the daughter posed. She was not sure if her mother had heard.

“He was at the shop at least…” The gray-haired woman continued groggily, “three times a week, and his fields the other days…. Who knew how he got it…. I thought it was just your father being your father,” she croaked. She attempted a wan smile. “He never forgets my birthday, Mother’s Day, our anniversary… I had a cough several days… before he started complaining, you know.” She took a deep, rattling breath and confirmed, “It was nothing, but I wanted him to… at least notice… I wasn’t feeling well. Maybe he will now.” She squinted up at her daughter. “When is he going to visit?”

“I just saw him,” the younger woman assured. “He’ll see you soon.”

It was not a lie. She had just seen her father, and she had no doubt that her mother would see him in only a little while. She saw no point in sharing her conversation with the doctor about hope, health, future prospects, and the sad reality of needing a bed for someone else. Breathing deeply, and benumbed, she had walked down the hallway to her mother’s room after all of the equipment in her father’s had been unplugged.

“Good.” Mother harrumphed. “He should notice… when I’m not feeling well…”

Her daughter squeezed her mother’s hand once more and listened to her panting chatter become weaker and more broken by pauses until the pause was all there was.

Contact tracing never proved who had infected whom. There had been too many possibilities. Her father’s business had had to close because two of his three co-partners had been hospitalized. Half of her mother’s office floor was now empty, and many older members of the congregation would never be returning to church. The pestilence had swept through the daycare, too, and the daughter had had to close out her sister’s house as well as her parents’. When she could not reach her niece and oldest nephew on the phone, she found them in the apartment they had rented together. Anesthetized, she placed a call to their raspy-voiced landlord.

She left a bouquet on each of the six new graves before she boarded the nearly empty airplane for home.

Back at home, the remaining daughter stared out through the glass towards the black spruce outside her window. At the end of her quarantine and closer to a second, hopefully negative test result, she did not see the wind sway the trees nor hear the rain clink againt the panes. Her eyes held no more moisture to finish washing the grief from her soul.

She still could not contact her brother. The last she had heard he was living in his car.

The clock ticked.

The daughter changed her clothes, washed her hands and face, looped the mask’s elastics about her ears, and slid on a pair of blue gloves. She drove down her muddy driveway and through the silent streets towards the clinic to stand in a subdued dashed line for her turn at future.

The Scary Bit

Welcome to my first official post on my first official author’s page.

The double-edged sword of getting my writing published.

Writing makes my heart glow.

I enjoy hammering the story out on the page. I like the challenge of figuring out how character X is going to get from A to B so that the storyline makes sense. I enjoy researching a plant, or what the name of that thing is, or how does an airplane fly? I get a triumphant tickle when I finally decipher how to solve a sticky plot point or how to get that uneasy emotional scene down in black and white. I like being surprised when a character ends up differently than I had originally envisioned. Fancifully I suspect that the people on the pages are living out a life independent of me.

I am even fond of reading draft upon draft. I consider punctuation and mull over phrasing. I get excited when I have crafted a sentence to express exactly what I want it to say or when I can distill my thoughts by striking out words and rewriting sentences that are superfluous or insufficient. My heart gets all bubbly when I find the right word. (I have never forgotten the quote Mr. Kerr pinned on his high school English class bulletin board: “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” ~Mark Twain)

For every book and story, I have mourned that very best sentence which I have unavoidably had to slash — because the absence of that beautiful, perfect phrasing makes the story better as a whole.

I revel in the feel of printing out my final draft to edit and proofread just one more time. The tingle of concern I have when I give my story to a friend to read is balanced by my hope of receiving commentary that can make my writing even tighter, more appealing, and as polished as I can make it. I love writing, and my books deserve to be read.

What fills me with distress, agitation, and dread is promoting. I don’t want to talk about myself! I stumble over my words if I talk to more than three people at once, sometimes even blushing red with the attention — especially if the people are not my closest friends. If I spend too much time away from people (say, at home because I can’t safely go to cafes or stores anymore), when I do go, for example, to the grocery store, it feels like I’ve forgotten how to interact. I mumble, blink blankly, and cannot express myself succinctly.

If I can’t talk to people, how can I promote my books?!

I want to focus on the writing.

I want someone else to direct the marketing. I have so little knowledge about (or courage in) this aspect of the publishing business. How can I do it myself?

The kicker is that in order to get published, many agents and publishing houses look for authors willing to stick by their books, which means authors already have to be doing that before sending in a query.

This in fact is how I’ve come to view the whole promotion thing: It really is sticking by and up for one’s books, for my books. And my books are good. They will grab you, urging you to read on, to find out what will happen next. My books can make you laugh, cry, and ponder. Whether you are reading a small chapter book to your six-year-old granddaughter, or you are a ten-year-old boy flying alone on an airplane for the first time, or you are a young adult (or a full adult) reading about a girl who is trying to find her path in life, the book of mine you choose will transport you to another, enthralling, world.

Not only will my fiction fantasies take you away from your present and give you an escape into another setting, but through their similarities to real life and its real problems they might be able to inspire in you a way to tackle your own. Do you feel like your parents don’t want you, or that you can’t find your path? Read Zeka’s two-part story. Afraid of flying, or are you fascinated by clouds? Lucas and the Sky Spies would appeal to you. Do you want to reinforce for your young children the benefits of following directions? Spend time reading Alone in a Storm to them. . At the back of every book or series there is also an explanation of the real scientific facts that helped shape or inspire the story.

I love writing, and my books deserve to be read. And this is why I have started this blog: I want you and yours to know about my books, about me as a writer and person. I want you to be at least a little intrigued in finding out more about this scaredy-cat who loves to write strongly enough to start sharing her life with complete strangers.

Welcome into my world.