Cleaning Up the Woods

It's a running joke around our house that Walter can't walk in the woods without cleaning them up. Alas, 'tis true. I take a stick with me whenever I walk the dogs. Often it's just the first suitable one I find; if I remember, it's the nice hand-carved one Ransom bought me. As I walk along one of the many paths around us, I use the stick to flick away errant branches. It makes the paths more attractive I think, but the truth probably is that it's my anal Virgo nature at work.

The last two days the walks have been longer and slower than usual because, omg, the woods are a mess! Branches everywhere! Small trees down, big trees down -- at one point I actually wandered off the path accidentally because I lost my bearings. It'll take me many more walks to deal with what I've seen in just the last two days, and there are lots and lots of other paths I have yet to trod.

There's a local organization that maintains these trails and they will have to do the heavy lifting to get the big trees out of the way. I'm going to contact them and volunteer to help because, as Shirley Q. Liquor might say, som'tin' has got to be did!

This part of hurricane life I don't mind a bit. Walking the dogs is always a joy -- well, maybe not always, like when there's a cold rain falling -- and satisfying my anality (?) is oddly fulfilling.

Not having power as we enter Day 7, not having water to shower, wash dishes or flush toilets and not having a fan to blow the August air around -- those are some of the irritants. Yesterday United Illuminating's website said that 19% of Woodbridge residents were still without power; today they brought that number down to . . . 18%! WTF?! At this rate it'll be a long Labor Day weekend.

And here's something I love: if you call UI to try to get info, their endlessly repeating, but irritatingly chipper, message says, "for faster service, visit us online."

Oh, thanks. I'll do that.

As soon as you give me some juice.

(Note: this post was done via a complicated maneuver of creating a Pages doc on my iPad, syncing it to my MacBook and syncing sgain to my phone. Uploading the picture I took today is beyond my power . . . until I have some that is).

And now we're finally up and running, so here's the pic: note the downed tree, Cassie in the foreground, Zeus behind, and my walking stick.