Surviving Hurricane Harvey Day Three

After a quiet night, Jean & I awoke at sunrise this morning to another of Harvey’s lulls.  No rain, no water in the street, no pesky, annoying leaks dribbling drops of Harvey’s wrath on the floor.

As I wandered around checking doors & floors & windows, I tried to remember how many chocolate covered mini-Kit Kat’s bars I will need to make the border surrounding my annual gingerbread house.

Embarrassed by the distraction, when so many are frightened & suffering & still in need of rescue. 

I am planning a fucking gingerbread house.  In August.  In the middle of a crisis.  Who & what am I ?

I started a load of laundry, grateful for the power to make that happen.  Yesterday I washed Jean’s hair.  Consumed by this seemingly mundane & ordinary act of a shampoo, Harvey still hovered on the edge of my consciousness.

When I signed on to my computer early this morning, I casually spent time chatting with my dear friend Susie from the El Paso days.  She lives in Israel & although she & her family face a different kind of threat on a daily basis, was checking in on Jean & me.

My amazing friend Marianna Steel in Colorado, knowing that I take a respite from social media on weekends, posted that it was too unusual not to see me post on a Monday morning & I needed to check in.

It is in moments like these, that I am grateful for the reconnects & new connections I have made on FB.

Throughout most of the day, the rain was absent.  Local stores were open for a few hours.  Sam’s Club suspended membership requirements.   People were able to get gas.  No one ordered us to evacuate.

Small moments, small pockets of relief.

Eventually, Harvey, the always returning bad / bastard of a boyfriend, got bored & dropped more rain.  The street in front of the house that Jack & Jean built remained passable, the water flowing down toward the drainage sewers. 

I did more mundane, ordinary tasks.  Folding laundry, washing dishes, putting together chicken & rice soup.  Always aware how incredibly blessed & lucky I was to be able to complete those tasks.

As I prepared the soup, I decided I needed fresh thyme.  My thyme patch is located in what was once the square foot vegetable garden against the back-yard fence. 

I was serious about the need for fresh thyme in the soup.

My search for my one & only pair of cowboy boots, given to me by my eldest son’s very French father, was in vain.  So, I grabbed a pair of ancient Nikes sans laces to walk across the yard for thyme.

Wondering if the socks I put on would get wet.

The yard, after days of rain, was surprisingly sock friendly.  

I saw a few pockets of waterlogged areas near the back fence, but my socks & I emerged from the adventure with three perfect stems of fresh thyme.

Mundane, insignificant moments that I have learned to treasure throughout my journey with Jean.  No wet socks, no sloshing through a small lake, fresh thyme.

Even as I write, I wonder & remember that these moments are a gift.

Especially now.  Knowing how so many are experiencing a very different moment.  Trying to remember, wishing for, a similar gift.

And, because I must truly be shallow at the core, remembered that I calculated I will need seventy white chocolate covered Kit Kat mini bars for the border around my 2017 gingerbread house.