On PTSD...

I don't wake up anymore (but I certainly remember doing it)... but the smells are what triggers me. For example, right here at the house last week, we forgot to take the garbage to the street. No trouble, just a hassle, really... until I got a whiff of one of those cans this week as we were walking them to the street. One nose full of that smell, and I could see (not literally...) the driveway at Beachview, with the pile of all my belongings heaped in the ditch, the drowned trucks, and the "kitchen" set up at the end of the porch. The flashback was almost staggering in its effect, and it (more than anything else) reminded me that we were fast approaching the anniversary of that damned storm.

I'm probably never going to be entirely comfortable in hot, humid weather again, either. Sitting on my back deck this summer, or any summer, I can enjoy myself with friends and family... but I'm going to think back and recall the same feeling of heat and humidity that I couldn't run away from in 2005... at least not for 39 days. I remember at one point after the storm, Jambo called on his cell saying he had hot water (natural gas and water pressure), and did I want to come over and shower? Back then, to get from my place to his before the storm was a 20 minute drive... after the storm (weeks after, if I recall correctly) it was over an hour because of failed bridges. I made the drive... only to find that the water had been shut off between the time that I left and when I arrived at his door. Oh well... I rinsed off in his tub with bottled water and spent the afternoon with his kids. Jambo cooked something to eat on a small pile of loose bricks made into a mini-barbecue in his driveway, and we all ate MRE desserts while the kids watched DVDs in the minivan (I think Jambo's entire gas ration was spent on giving the kids DVD and A/C during the hottest part of the day).

I'll tell you this, though... we will NEVER suffer like that again. Not here in NEPA, anyway. We are loaded and ready to go upwards of 10 days without power, and the only real concern that we haven't been able to completely address yet is how to heat the house comfortably if that outage were to occur in winter. Currently, my primary source of heat is a fuel oil furnace, but it requires electricity to operate... no power, no heat. Otherwise, we have water and food ready-to-go for all of us for ten days, with the means to cook, clean (ourselves and our belongings) and maintain our dignity for much more than a week.