Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Dear Diary -

Day four without power.  I can't pretend that things are going well for me, but I seem to be limping along. 

I think a house reveals the personality of its owners, but bedside tables and dresser drawers reveal the owners' personality disorders.  It could have been worse, I could have found Fifty Shades of Gray and some *ahem* marital aids *ahem* buried in the bottom drawer of Sue's dresser; instead I found my dad's loaded .357 revolver and what turned out to be the combination to the safe in the garage.

So apparently my dad went paranoid in his old age.  In addition to the .357, I found a .45 semi-automatic handgun, a single-shot .22 rifle, another ancient-looking rifle of some sort and a 12 gauge shotgun, along with a ton of ammunition.  There's also about $100 worth of dimes and quarters along with some binoculars and some really strange books.

Dad was too young for Vietnam and a little too old for the Gulf wars.  I guess he tried to enlist right out of high school but was denied because of the infamously bad McClary knees.  It didn't stop him from being a military buff, so I'm used to seeing Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler and W.E.B. Griffin novels around the farm.  The books I found in the safe were of an entirely different kind.  There were books about home defense, canning, homesteading and basic survival skills.  He even has the official U.S. Army Survival Manual from 1973!

It's so hard to think about Dad in the past tense - I keep expecting him to walk through the door and ask me why in the heck I'm messing around with his bills and re-arranging his house.  As much as I love my dad I have a sense of not knowing him as well as I thought that I did.  Going through his house has revealed pieces of him that I never would have known, but it still doesn't make me feel any more comfortable about doing it. 

My discoveries haven't been all bad, though.  I found a scrapbook in the cedar chest that contained what must have been every newspaper article that mentioned my name, every program from every event that Dad and Sue attended for me and pictures of Dad and me that I'd never seen.  It kinda made me feel like shit, though, and got me thinking about all of the times that I'd slighted them (especially Sue) for fear of pissing Mom off.

And now I feel like a crappy person.  A crappy, confused, scared person.  Great.

S


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Dear Diary -

As promised, Alan stopped by on his way back from town.  Apparently Sheriff Thompson hasn't heard anything official, but word around the campfire is that we've been hit with either a solar flare or an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse).  I'm still not sure what that means, other than Alan seems to think that the power isn't coming on anytime soon and the vehicles are probably fried.

It was really cold today.  I'm going to have to find some warmer clothes soon.  It almost looked like it could snow this afternoon.  I don't remember the last time I saw snow before Halloween.

I need to start a list of all of the things that I need to do around here.  That should be interesting...

At least I got to eat my warm ravioli tonight.  I've re-arranged the living room so that the couch is closer to the wood stove now.  I find that I get tired a lot earlier now - probably a combination of having no electronic distractions after dark and all of the exercise that I've been getting lately.

So, SSS and all, but off to bed I go.



(Apparently the whole "Dear Diary" is harkening me back to junior high.  SSS = Sorry So Short.  Next thing you know I'll be playing MASH to figure out who I'm going to marry, where we'll live, what job I'll have, what car I'll drive and how many kids I end up with!)
 
Dear Diary -

I had visitors!  Michelle and Alan Piper walked over with their seven-year old grandkids, Ellie and Miles, from their farm a mile or so up the road to make sure that someone was taking care of Pee-Wee.  I don't know who was more surprised, me when I saw their merry band traipsing up the long gravel driveway or the Pipers when they spotted me trundling out from the side of the house with a wheelbarrow full of wood.  Pee-Wee seemed to be the only one not effected by the sudden appearances - after a few high-pitched barks she plopped down in front of the kids and let them love on her while Michelle, Alan and I talked on the front porch.

I confirmed a few things that I had already guessed - no power and no working vehicles at their place either.  No phone service, no radios, no nothing.  Alan said he's going to walk into town in a bit to maybe talk to the Sheriff to get some more information about what's going on and offered to stop by and let me know what he finds out on his way back home.  It sounds like Michelle and the kids have a full afternoon of taking care of their animals and looking for frogs, which is probably infinitely more exciting than going back into the shed in search of dad's old camping equipment.

Apparently I have a lot to learn about country living.  It turns out the logs that I had loaded up to use in the wood stove were this year's logs, not last year's, and something about seasoning and smoking and buildup in the chimney and all kinds of things that I would have never known.  Alan pointed me to the right stack (along the back of the shed furthest from the driveway) and told me to remember to open the flue or risk smoking up the entire house.  Yet another crisis narrowly averted...

I'm just excited about the chance to be warm and maybe have a hot meal tonight.  With the power still out I'm worried that it won't be too long before the stuff in the fridge and freezer starts to go bad.  Luckily I already threw that expired milk out!

I can't get over how quiet it is.  I'm used to living life with background noise - the radio in the shower, the television anytime else.  As a kid I couldn't do homework in a completely quiet room and as an adult I have a really hard time sleeping without the t.v. on.  Last night I swear the entire house was creaking and groaning.  It's bad enough to hear that kind of stuff in your own house, surrounded by your own belongings and familiar routines, but there's something ultra-creepy about hearing the same noises in a strange house.

More good news - I found some unscented candles in the buffet!  At least my date with Jack tonight won't smell like rancid flowers.  Add that to some warm Chef Boyardee and toasty tootsies and it sounds like a heck of a Tuesday night to me.  Wow.  Sure doesn't take much to entertain me, does it???

S

Monday, October 21, 2013

Dear Diary -

The power is still off and I'm writing this by the light of one of Sue's $20 gardenia-scented candles.  Good Lord but this stinks like an old lady at a casino!  I'm going to have to take some time tomorrow and look through more than dad's paperwork - there has to be a stash of nice, non-scented candles somewhere.

Despite my stepmother's stinky candles and annoying little dog, I really liked her.  She and dad had been married a little over twenty years and, although I only spent holidays and some time every summer with her and dad, she seemed to genuinely care about me.  She never tried to be my mom, either, which was good.  From what I saw she screwed up her own kid bad enough.

Mark was....well...Mark.  Ten years older than me and a self-proclaimed Big Man on Campus, he was rarely at the farm at the same time that I was.  We spent some Christmases together and between them I heard enough from Sue and my dad to gather that he had gone off to college and discovered that his BMOC status didn't transfer over to State.  He fell into drinking, maybe drugging, and from what I saw at the funeral I have no reason to believe that he found his way out.  Last I knew he lived over in Peoria, about forty or so miles away, and only came around when he needed something.

I wish I would have brought more books with me, or that my taste in books ran more towards romance (Sue) or military dramas (dad).  I have my Kindle with something like 800 books loaded on it but I'm trying not to use it until the power comes back on.   I guess I'll see what Jack Ryan is up to these days.

Good night!

S


Dear Diary -

It occurred to me that a woman of my age would probably rightfully have a journal rather than a diary, but "Dear Journal" sounds very dry and stuffy and since I've already started with the "Dear Diary" thing, I'm sticking to it.  No one ever accused me of being a proper model of a woman of my age, anyway.

A little more background - my dad, Anthony James (A.J.) McClary, and my mom, Anna, divorced when I was nine.  Mom and I stayed in the family house in Sycamore - so I wouldn't have to change schools, I guess - and dad moved down here to his parents' farm.  Mom married Phillip Lidwell right after my eleventh birthday and dad married Sue a couple of years later.  I am an only child (of my father's), a big sister (to my half-sister Samantha) and a little sister (to Sue's son, Mark).  Go ahead and try to dissect my personality based on birth order - I dare ya!

I got the call about my dad and Sue's accident the Saturday before last.  Like almost everyone else in this day and age I no longer had a home phone so I tried to be good about taking my cell into the bedroom when I went to bed each night.  I forgot to take my phone to bed with me that night which meant that I found out about my dead dad not from the nice (but very nervous-sounding) Deputy Jarrod Herrington, but from Facebook.

Fucking Facebook.  I don't know why I had an account to begin with, but after I started playing Candy Crush I was hooked.  I can't lie - it was nice getting back into contact with some of my old high school classmates and seeing the pictures of who (else) got fat - but it was those colorful candy pieces and the rush of completing another level that kept me logging in every morning.

That particular morning my account notified me that I had twelve posts to my wall which, considering it was not my birthday, was more than a little unusual.  The first one I saw was from Mrs. Dixon and simply read, "I was sorry to hear about your dad and Sue.  Call me if you need anything."  The other messages bore similarly confusing sentiments.  Only then did I check my phone to find Deputy Herrington's message with an urgent request to call the Sheriff's Department.

I couldn't call, not right away.  I guess I needed those last few minutes of not knowing for sure that something catastrophic had happened in my world, a few more normal breaths, normal heartbeats, a few more precious seconds of being the me that I had always been.  And as I sat there, trying to gather myself together enough to make the call, my computer alerted me that I had another message and then I looked and it was from Abigail Moore, one of my Grandma McClary's old sewing buddies and a very sweet old lady and my first thought was to reply with an expletive-filled rant about the misery-suckers on Facebook and how everyone seems to want to be the first person to post about a death or a sickness or a calamity of any sort and instead I deleted my Facebook account, Level 135 on Candy Crush and all.

 I never did get to speak to Deputy Herrington.  Instead my call was routed to Sheriff Hugo Thompson, who sounded grandfatherly and not nearly so nervous as Deputy Herrington had been.  Sheriff Thompson told me about the accident (late night, single car, possible alcohol involvement, dead at the scene) and that my dad and Sue had been sent to Peoria for autopsies and I should contact the coroner's office to make further arrangements.

I spent that Saturday in a daze.  I know I called mom who, for some reason, knew that dad had already pre-paid services at a local (to him) funeral parlor.  I called my friend Tara who I'd known since high school and my friend Tyson from work to let him know that I'd be taking a few days off and then I ran out of people to call.  You never realize how small your world is until you have news, good or bad, and run out of people to share it with.

I left my tidy little house in the suburbs and my tidy little life and drove the three hours down here the next day.  I spent the evening looking for the important papers and the night on the couch with Pee-Wee.  The visitation, sparsely attended, was Monday night with the funeral following on Tuesday.  I saw Aunt Victoria and Uncle Pete for the first time since Grandma McClary passed away in 2007 and re-met more second and third cousins, some removed, some not, than I ever remember seeing before.  Other than that, most of the attendees were old friends of my grandparents and a few of Sue's co-workers from the insurance agency.  I guess you could say that I come by my quiet lifestyle quite honestly.

Oh, I almost forgot.  Sue's son Mark showed up, not in time for the visitation and almost late for the funeral, smelling of stale cigarette smoke and cheap beer, rumpled, crumpled and disheveled, but he showed up.  We talked for a few minutes about the service and I told him that I planned to come back in a week or so to go through paperwork, deal with insurance policies, etc.  He pled a busy schedule and left his number in case I found anything that he needed to know about or deal with for his mom and then he was gone.  See what I meant about being the only responsible child?

Argh!  My hand is cramping up again.  I wonder which is worse - writer's cramp or carpal tunnel?  I guess maybe I won't have to worry about getting carpal tunnel if the power doesn't come back on soon.  You can count on me to always find the bright side...

S



I haven't kept a diary since I was ten, so forgive me if I'm a little rusty.  How to start....how to start.  Perhaps a little introduction is in order.

Dear Diary* -

My name is Shay McClary.  I'm 34 years old and still get zits, so that's something.  I work a dead-end, low-level job that's probably beneath my abilities, but I'm comfortable there and it pays the bills.  I'm currently living out of a suitcase at my dad and stepmom's house somewhere in the wilderness of West-Central Illinois.  They died in a car wreck two weeks ago and, as the only responsible child, I guess it falls upon me to clean everything up.  I've been here for three days sorting through paperwork and taking care of Pee-Wee, the most irritating ankle-biter of a Pomeranian that there ever was.  Things just started getting really interesting in the last day or so and with the way that my memory is, I figured I'd better starting writing stuff down.

Yesterday the power went out.  It went out the first day that I got here but it was only out for an hour or so before it came back on, so I figured that kind of thing probably happened a lot out here.  I briefly considered calling the power company that first day but by the time that I started shifting through the mountains of bills and correspondence piled on my dad's dining room table the lights flickered back on.  When the power went out yesterday morning I figured the same thing would happen, but there's no power yet and I'm beginning to think it's going to be off for a while.

On a side note, I never noticed how freaking loud a battery-powered clock can be in a quiet house. 

Tick. 

Tick. 

Tick. 

Tick. 

I swear to all that is Good and Holy that after ten minutes it seemed like the ticking was coming from inside of my head.  My dad's so-called filing system had me beyond frustrated anyway - a filing cabinet should have files, not four drawers full of bills, bank statements and miscellaneous papers.  But I digress.  The ticking, the god-awful ticking....

I figured that, rather than chucking the entire contents of dad's filing "system" into the trash can, it would be a good time to make a grocery run.  The house was pretty stocked on the basics but lacked the true necessities like milk that wasn't a week out of date and perhaps a cookie or two.  I jotted down a quick grocery list, grabbed my purse and headed out to the Jeep.

And then the Jeep wouldn't start.  No lights, no radio, no nothing, so one might assume that the battery was dead, right?  I certainly did.  It became a little more difficult to maintain that assumption once Sue's minivan refused to start.  And the four-wheeler.  Even the riding lawn mower wouldn't so much as turn over.  Surely all of the batteries in all of the vehicles couldn't be dead.

I decided that I didn't need milk so bad that I needed to make the four-mile trek into town on foot or on one of the old mountain bikes from the shed, but there was absolutely no way that I could go back into the house and face that infernal ticking.  In the end I did what I should have done straight away - I took the batteries out of the clock.  Now Sue's hideous rooster clock is stopped at 10:24 and, even without batteries, it's right twice a day.  :)

Enough writing for now.  I forgot how quickly writer's cramp sets in.

S

*As soon as I wrote "Dear Diary" it made me think of the Sad Cat Diary on YouTube.  That video was absolutely hilarious.  I'd watch it now, but as previously mentioned, no power.