AuburnChick's Adventures

Will someone please fess up? I can’t seem to locate the easy button; I’m convinced someone’s trying to be funny by keeping it hidden away.

Today was seriously stressful, and for once, it wasn’t my fault.

I went from being the happiest mama on earth after a 40-minute phone call with Rooster to smelling like I’d waded in sewage – all while simultaneously trying to troubleshoot a serious phone issue.

Hello, my name is Nathalie, and all I’m trying to do is put my life back together post-Hurricane Michael.

Ugh.

I hope you’re not getting tired of these posts. Believe me, I do not like to sound like a spoiled brat, but the reality of life is that nothing is easy these days.

The public needs to know that even the simplest of tasks, such as drying a load of clothes, can quickly evolve into a Herculean feat.

It’s during seemingly innocuous chores that we hurricane survivors discover more broken things – more stuff that needs to be added to our insurance adjusters’ repair lists – more delays in getting claims settled as numbers need to, once again, be reconfigured.

It’s also why I may be drinking a glass of wine as I type this.

Don’t you dare judge me.

Bless his heart, but the Mr., who I see maybe an hour each day since he’s working mega overtime to help our county recover, gets an earful when he arrives home each evening.

It used to be that I’d bend his ear about school woes. Those have paled in comparison to the travails of pulling out stinky, hurricane-rain-laden lint from the outside vent and begging a cell phone carrier to waive a data roaming limit that I didn’t know about because my carrier’s service is using another company’s towers (an hour and a half later, the company kindly acquiesced).

There are silver linings – blessings that remind me that though the easy button is not in my line of sight, God will bring it out at just the perfect time.

I ran into a couple I see about twice s year – at Publix – because we are all tentatively buying perishable food stuffs again, fearful that the power will go off as it’s wont to do while restoration of this service is still underway. We shared stories of the storm and what we expect for the future. I love seeing these people. We parented high school children at the same time. Nothing makes good friends like teenage parenting and hurricane survival. They’re about the same thing if you think about it – except that you don’t lose your cable in the process (said children might if they’re naughty).

Reaching out to my water mitigation company and asking them to arrive a few hours later than they’d originally planned so I can avoid taking leave – and the company’s owner responding immediately with a friendly “yes” and the assurance that they want to minimize my stress – well, that’s certainly a blessing.

Taking a few minutes to make a delicious new dessert from a recently published cookbook made me smile. It was a treat that I definitely earned after my hard day.

Sharing said dessert with the sweet couple who lives beside me – after they’d loaned me their wet vac to clean up the mess I’d discovered when my dryer wouldn’t run properly, and then having said couple run me up to a church to look for donations of cleaning supplies (we got there a little late) – everyone should have sweet neighbors like them.

Cooler weather has arrived – for how long, I can’t say – but after some scorcher days, the reduced temperatures are truly divine.

Learning how to clean up dog poop with a store bag without getting said poop on my hands – well, this is a silver lining too. Now that I can’t let my dogs do number two (see the rhyming?) in the back yard is somewhat of a new thing that took awhile for me to get the hang of. I may be slow, but I catch on eventually. God still performs miracles.

Just sayin’.

I’m not going to lie. I am about to start resembling a contestant on Survivor when I go looking for the hidden immunity idol easy button. Or rather, maybe I’ll just go hunting for Xfinity and Sprint repair trucks, although they seem harder to find than an idol on Exile Island (you’ve got to watch the show to understand).

If you’ve read this far, thanks for humoring me.

Today was hard. I needed to vent (get it – as in dryer vent? Yes, I actually smiled at my own joke.)

By the way, if you see that button I mentioned a time or two, would you have a little bit of mercy and slide it within arm’s reach? Remember that you’re pushing it toward a person with short arms, so put a little oomph in it.

Thanks!

Filed under: This-n-That |