"Ice ice baby ..."

Word to your mother.

"Worst ice storm EVER." That's what the power company is saying. Weird part was, the roads stayed completely drivable. Well, except for the occasional tree falling on your car. The storm happened overnight on Wednesday, and most of the day on Thursday. Jimmy's office closed Thursday morning due to lack of electricity, so he was home all day. We lost our power around 8 AM. At noon, we were dressed in layers and lighting candles (it was a dark day).

At 2 PM, I was smacking myself for not buying firewood in November. We were completely OUT. By 4 PM, we were all bundled in blankets, listening to a local talk radio show, where all of Greenville was calling in to say their power was out. I have to say it felt better to hear there were many in the same boat. All this time, Emilie is at work ... CVS had freakin' power.

Around 6 PM, the sanity was slipping. Let's not forget my mother is here. Oh, and PMS has been a houseguest for about a week now, too. We listened to Christmas music on the radio, and tried to resign ourselves to the fact that it might be days before power was restored.

At 9 PM, I heard the heater begin to run, and saw lights from the kitchen ... I gave a victory yell, and said "Thank ya, Duke Power Man!!!" Frances said, "What is it??!!??" I had to explain to Miss Awareness that the power was back on. Oh, my impatience with the elderly.

So anyway, we are among the greatly blessed today, since there are still many in Greenville County without heat and lights. Our cable took a bit longer to come back, and went out again last night, but we have been warm and fine since Thursday night. Adam and Brandy had some houseguests last night ... friends of theirs who were too cold to stay at home anymore with their two little ones. Hopefully, today will see a LOT of people with heat back on again.

Grandma F's power went out for about 5 hours, maybe less. She said she never got cold, but the dark really bothered her. Jimmy took another flashlight over to her ... just about the time her lights came back on.

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From the comments:
"It's easy to get caught up in all the things that are going on but you need to takes some time on your own to decompress. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to your family/friends"

I hear you, Mr. Coward. And I appreciate you taking the time to express it. After I read your words, I thought about them for most of the day ... and I realized that "doing for others" is one of the ways I cope with my world. I'm a selfish person, you see. "Selfish, selfish girl", Frances (mother) would say to me when I was growing up. (NOW, of course, she treats me like I'm Jesus Christ's sister. I can almost do no wrong in her eyes. Go figure.)

I guess I taught myself, early on in my marriage, that the more I did for other people, the less I had to do for myself. It works. Well, most of the time. Every once in a while, I do melt down and scare little children and animals. I guess that's nature forcing me to decompress, huh.

So to answer you, Mr. Coward ... I don't do much of anything for myself. 27 years of pattern-setting is a hard habit to break. But I'll try. Thanks for stopping by.

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Yesterday I told Grandma F that if she didn't let me take her to the hair salon, people were going to start thinking she was that crazy lady with the crazy lady hair. She still refused. I really should just let it go though ... I looked over at Frances last night, and she's not too far behind. Sad part of that is: Frances washed and rolled her hair yesterday. Arghh.

Grandma's cough is bad. She asked me to wait until Monday to see if it's better before I call the doctor. She still insists it's an allergy to the Orkin Man, and said that the doctor won't know anything about treating that. Don't ya know.

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Off to the races today ... the Christmas whirlwind begins. Frances is going to make sausage balls and put them in the freezer. I'm sure the effort will wipe her out for the remainder of the day. Jimmy will probably lay around and moan a lot, since he and Adam worked all day yesterday with the chain saw, cleaning up the limbs and debris in our yard. Emilie will wake up 15 minutes before she's due at work, rush out the door, and that's all we'll see of her until tomorrow. Adam and Brandy are off to NC to celebrate Christmas with her family. And I'm gonna get up close and personal with Mr. Clean. Oh, baby.