Resilience (or lack thereof) in the face of climatic woes.
The generator is still going...and so is my anxiety.
The ceiling fan in the office is still whirring on high. The generator is clacking and blowing exhaust out into the garden. It’s 9:54pm and my kiddo is asleep on his mattress that I drug out into the living room so he could sleep under the ceiling fans out there. I slept on the couch last night. My husband is out of town so we’ve been coping with this by ourselves. I mean, I wouldn’t say it is entirely by ourselves, my work place has power so that means I have access to water that isn’t powered by a tiny generator, and the air conditioner is running, and I can use a stove. One of our new neighbors came over today to fix the generator after I had issues getting the pull handle to work this morning—it refused to wind itself back up on the reel and let me start the dang thing. Tiny miracles.
I feel entirely wimpy about this situation. On one hand, I can deal with the heat and being disgusting and sweaty from working outside and just going about my day and living here at my house but then I also have to be clean and presentable, and go to work, and do work, and send my kiddo to school, and yet my mind is still constantly on wondering when the power will come back on because I need to clean my house and make it presentable for a planned family visit for Memorial Day weekend. Oh, and rewash the laundry that was half dried in the drier when the power went out on Sunday morning. And wash dishes. I can wash a few things but the generator hates it when we get too crazy with the water so it’s sporadic. Hurry and wash a few things and turn the water off. There’s no running a dishwasher or filling a sink full of hot, soapy water happening here.
It’s the half in, half out that is driving me mad.
Let’s either go whole hog on this flimsy electrical situation and find ways to appropriately adapt so I can wash laundry and do dishes, or gimme my damn connection to the electrical grid back so I can live in the creature comforts I’ve known for almost 44 years. It goes back to what I was writing about on Sunday. We can do the reverting back to a “homesteading” type life to cope with climate change but it will take a lot of changes throughout society to make it functional for everyone for today’s level of expectations for living.
I really just wanted to spend 30 minutes pulling weeds this evening. In fact, I had a lot of plans for gardening this week. But the mental energy of trying to keep some semblance of life going with this weird set-up has thwarted those efforts for the most part, save picking some ripe blackberries and tomatoes before birds and insects got to them. Instead, I had to fight with a GFI outlet that refused to stop blowing when connected to the generator, thus forcing me to deal with an old second freezer we have in a converted garage and the contents within it. No gardening for me tonight.
It isn’t lost on me how easy my life is generally and how many people are living and working multiple jobs, dealing with stressful life situations of various flavors that leave them with little ability to garden, much less spend time outdoors in nature. I saw a butterfly earlier today outside of work and thought, “Wow, that’s so nice! Look at how pretty you are,” and for a brief second I had a little bit of nature brain and things felt somewhat right in life again. All of this is temporary. I will be out hiking again and taking nature photos. I can’t even begin to fathom the true difficulties of life in places like Palestine, where genocide and ecocide are the realities being faced.
But all of this does leave me thinking about the actual (lack of) progress Texas and other states, beyond that, countries, are willing to take to adapt to climate change and weather patterns that are shifting. There will be more storms and more putting things back in order after, a proverbial Band-Aid, and moving along as we’ve always moved without addressing the fire on the other side of the door. Florida is having record setting May temperatures and this weekend is going to be a beast for most of Texas as a triple digits set in for the summer for a large chunk of the state. How many more years will we be able to keep doing this without finally just breaking down as a society?
It may be noisy as hell outside my window right now but it’s velvety dark. You can’t get that kind of darkness anymore, even in my formerly rural, exurban neighborhood. The moon is almost full so there’s a bit of a glow casting down onto the ground and buildings outside. It makes me miss backpacking and keeping tabs on how long we’d been hiking by noticing when we had returned to the full moon again.
I feel a little better having written this out. My mind was going most of the day. Maybe this would have been better for my blog but I’d already shared my woes here on Sunday, so here I am again. Crossing fingers that Centerpoint is true to their word and we’ll all be back on line tomorrow but I’m preparing to continue this on into Thursday.
Thanks to the few who commented on Sunday with their ways to counter some of the climate woes. Still thinking about that for myself.
Misti writes regularly at Oceanic Wilderness and In the Weeds. She hosts one podcast, Orange Blaze: A Florida Trail Podcast, and recently retired The Garden Path Podcast.
I feel that anxiety and I hope you have power as soon as possible. I don’t honestly know if I could cope with it.
Praise for the velvety dark and glow from a near-full moon. And praise for creature comforts (which I hope you have again soon).