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  The house was pretty stocked on the basics but lacked the true necessities like milk that wasn't a week out of date and perhaps a cookie or two.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.