Five Things That Could Keep Me from Ricochet

As a fifteen-year veteran of this site, I'd like to make an appearance once a week or so, at least to tell myself that I'm still part of this project. However, as in many novels, powerful forces collide to keep us apart:

1. Storms & Outages: One of those forces was last week's high winds that caused an unfortunate chain of events, especially because of wimpy trees around here that collapse onto powerlines:

MONDAY: Alarming high winds and gusts. Power outage late evening, before I could take my shower. Sometime near midnight, we confirm that the beeping noise is our carbon monoxide detector. It squawks whether upstairs or downstairs. We change the batteries, air out our house, and stay up for a while. I elect to read an exciting Kindle book that keeps me awake for much longer than warranted.

TUESDAY: Power comes back towards lunchtime. When the lights are restored, a strong smell of burning electrical components descends on our kitchen. My husband, an electronics guy, is concerned and has me call the fire department. Finally, we find the source of the odor: a fridge component has burnt and melted due to the electricity switching on and off before getting snuffed out entirely on Monday night. We'll need a new fridge. Not even he feels that it's fixable. I move all our food to a spare old fridge and a freezer, which takes me a while. There's another evening storm in the forecast, but I get a nice sleep in before that.

WEDNESDAY: The predicted windstorm comes in the morning, after a nice sleep. The electricity goes out just before 9:00 am. My husband and I come back from town after looking at fridges, and our way home on our road is blocked by a downed line (this one probably live), as firemen were guarding it. (We had driven over other downed lines on our way out to town.) After we park and I borrow my husband's hooded jacket, a fireman escorts me through a wooded shortcut and back up onto the road past the wire, where I walk the 3/4 miles home, gasping in the cold blasts of wind, and get the car for my husband so he wouldn't have to walk with his bad back. At home, we get to use our prepper stuff, so we have Internet and a generator that provides power for selected items. I'm thankful for the random jugs of water I filled that were previously just taking up space in the basement. We use the gas stove downstairs to heat food and make soup.

THURSDAY: The outage continues. I tell my family that there was suddenly a familiar feeling around the lack of showers, everything being makeshift, going around chilled, and inadequate sleep. Then I put my finger on it. It was just like camping.

FRIDAY: I pack up and drive to my younger daughter's house in search of a shower. Refreshed and trying to get work done on my Chromebook, I get a text that the power came back on at home around noon. It feels good to get home later in the evening and enjoy so many modern conveniences, even living way up a country road.

Note: We did get a "new" refurbished fridge, a returned item that its original owners didn't use long. I loved our old side-by-side fridge and freezer, but the new one, with all its bells and whistles, backlighting, and eye-level fridge shelves, is sure growing on me. It seems to be a rule lately that we make a $1,000 expenditure on a necessity around Christmas. I'm not complaining; we have much for which to be thankful.

2. My Job: With new leadership in its fourth year at the school, we just keep improving processes and adding to programs, so even with my new system where I work through lunch, I'm never really done. We're challenged right now: some student work seems tainted with varying degrees of AI reliance. This has stymied and preoccupied me, and I take time pursuing hints that the student didn't come up with the material him or herself. We're working on an effective approach to AI use, but even with our currently clear Integrity Statement, working through student writing takes hours. Whatever the answer is, it's multifaceted.

3. A Full Calendar: Until early December, I was helping with multiple activities that needed preparation. I enjoyed all of them, but had to constantly be thinking ahead. Being occupied can be good, because it keeps me from whiling away my life on Facebook. But still, it was a little too much. For example, for eleven weeks on Friday afternoons, I was providing two-hour childcare for six to twelve-year-olds during a James Bible study for ladies. This included preparing a parallel study for the kids, and I did not find James to be an easy book. But the kids and I always had a great time together. We'd start with a craft, commence our study with little vocabulary games, go outside with a snack, then come in for "quiet play" with the winning team's choice of toys: a giant bin of Legos, trains, cars, or games. Putting everything away afterward took me longer than it should have. I would certainly do it again, but it was a lot, especially when my month for Sunday School intersected with it.

4. Fatigue: I just get tired and not inspired to write. I've noticed that when my schedule is clearer, my mental space clears off for Ricochet, but I still have to catch it in the right time of day and frame of mind. Otherwise, there is nothing in my head but a great vacuum, and I can't post about that. Well, I can, because I'm doing it now and I've done it before.

5. Family: When my daughters moved out to their own places this summer, I imagined that I would have more time to focus on various projects. The truth is, while I do have more quiet time in some sense, in another sense, I'm more spread out and scattered. What helps is that I have Friday evenings for one daughter, Saturdays for breakfast with my husband and a family dinner at home, and church with Sunday lunch for another daughter. Initially, though, when the girls first moved out, I was pulled in different directions trying to give them equal time and help. I also made an unplanned trip to San Diego when my dad was in the hospital. He seems to be doing well now, and everything has settled back down.

What I'll tentatively write about in coming days: an interesting two-part Star Trek TNG episode with Worf, two or three books from my Kindle reading, and probably a couple of other thoughts rattling around in my head that I'll remember later.