Bad Weather - Whew

So the whole East Coast from Florida to Canada is being drenched. DH is on a trip to the midwest right now.

The city where MIL lived has been under tornado and flood warnings. To my knowledge, nothing has actually happened where she lived.

One good thing that MIL did for me -- make me appreciate my own situation. While it is stressful to have to practically swim wherever I'm going (OK, I'm exaggerating). It's NICE to ONLY have to deal with how this affects me personally, to NO LONGER be expected to put all that aside to rescue MIL from whatever is going on.

If we happened to have a tree down on our house and water pouring in (which we don't) and if MIL had something to deal with also, MIL would have guilted DH into taking care of her instead, no matter how major or minor her situation was. Even if there was no situation other than the nasty weather, she'd find a way to manipulate him there. She'd even find a way to get him to leave his business trip, which is important. She might would even be working on that way to get him to bring her back to our house, for good. She never openly expressed that and DH being dense denied that she wanted that, but I could see what she was getting at through her actions.

So, when having to deal with extra traffic because of the combination of accidents and slowdowns, water in the basement, etc. I know that I have TIME to deal with those things. It's actually refreshing to be able to live my own life as it comes and NOT be EXPECTED to put whatever I am dealing with aside because MIL's situation is AUTOMATICALLY more important than our situation. The good thing that MIL gave me is that I am able to relax more and realize that no matter how bad things get, they will be OK. They are OUR things and they are not all that major.


All you wet gray clouds up there, you do have a silver lining this time.

The Calm After the (snow)storm

I blogged yesterday about how it was nice that hubbie was not calling evil JB every couple hours to see how she is making out in the winter storm.

This is the first snow storm since she died.

Something else that I noticed today.

It used to be that as soon as it started snowing, hubbie was trying to shovel out. I thought it some kind of cabin fever. Digging out was never any big deal to me. I am perfectly satisfied to stay put until the roads are safe.

This time, it was almost 36 hours in before he did anything until almost 48 hours into the event. And he just did a little knocking snow around. He was not trying to dig out of the neighborhood.

Makes me think.... In the past was he trying to make sure he could get out to get to his Mama in the past?

Whatever it is, hubbie is definitely more relaxed now than he has been in any past snow storm.

Winter Weather Event is Peaceful

Today is another ahhhhhhhhhh day. We have a snowstorm here. Not horrible, but the roads are impassible. We have the things we need to get by for a couple days, even if the power goes by.

Where evil JB lived, on the other hand, they are having an ice storm and power outages. If it had been a year ago, hubbie would be on the phone with her, making sure she had what she needed, and making sure her power was on.

If her power was to have gone off, he would have likely been trying to figure out how to get our generator to her house. THat is, our generator that he has said is too big to take back up the hill that it had to go down to put in our basement. And getting it up that hill that happens to be ice covered, to get it to his truck. Then to drive to her house on roads that only a few are on and the governor has told us to keep off of, to get it to her.

He used to talk about wanting a second generator to back up the one we have. I know that he was really wanting a second, smaller generator that he could "loan" to his parents when they "needed" it and would have been left there and either ruined or sold (or both). I objected to him buying the second one and he never did. No event ever came up that caused him to want to bring them one during that time he was thinking about it.

Now that the evil ones, JB and EJ are gone, I no longer have to worry about him going to them when the weather is bad, risking his life to get there. Also leaving me here to fend for myself, but unlike JB, I can fend for myself.

So instead of a tense day of him checking on his Mom every hour and her whining about how much worse of she is than she really is, we are having a relaxing, almost boring day, snuggled in our house, looking out the window and wondering when we will get out of here again.

Ahhhhhhhhhh................

Still nice not to think of things

We had severe weather today. I looked at the weather map earlier and saw it was over JB's house. First thought, out of habit "if lightening hits her house and burns it down, I hope she dies in it so she we won' t have to deal with hubbie going to fix her problems or moving her in here with us." Followed closely by hoping the ligntening or a tonrado did get it and her with it.

Then that feeling of relief again. That's another thing that I can get out of the habit of thinking about/worrying about.

Although lightening burning down the house would still be a blessing. There wouldn't be all the hassle of SIL figuring out what to do with it and hubbie having to help her with it. I am SOOOOOO praying that SIL will sell it and get the last remnant out of our lives.

Severe Weather

Earlier, I said that one of the weights off of my shoulder is that I feel that I no longer have to plan for special events six months in advance in order to keep them for my little family. (Hubbie and me only, as we never chose to try to have children)

Another weight off of my shoulders, I don't have to include "what about MIL" in my disaster plan.

I don't mean the disaster of MIL herself, but the weather emergency plan. We live on the East Coast which means Hurricanes. Whenever getting our "kits" together and making plans for "what if", I also had to plan for/against her for my "emergency preparedness" routine. We live about 100 miles inland. JB was about 30 miles inland. The biggest damage is usually closer to the coast than JB unless it's a high category when it hits. (Usually confined to the immediate coastal area.) We were actually hit worse than she was in the time we lived here. One pretty bad one hit the coast South of her but the eye made a straight line from the coast to where we live. She just had a lot of rain, but we had trees down all over town, were on emergency power for a week, etc.

She hasn't had one that bad since before I knew her. Lots of people had trees on houses, we were lucky. Our cul-de-sac was blocked so we couldn't get out until the men cut up and move the tree, and we had water get into our basement, but no trees on the house.

We do have a generator. We had one when it was a geeky thing to have one -- before they were popular. I knew that if anything ever happened at JB's house and not at our house, hubbie would be trying to get that generator to them, even though he says that it's too difficult to get back out of the place where we have it. He'd find a way for them. For a long time, was often looking at generators and wanting to get a second one -- in case ours breaks when we need it he claimed. Yea, right! He was looking at smaller ones. We all know that it was so that if something happened, he'd have one to carry to his parents house to use. I told him no, he didn't need it and he never got a second one. Now, (I think I may test the waters and see if he still wants a second one?)

Whenever a hurricane was approaching Hubbie was worrying about her as much as us! It got much worse after evil FIL passed. When Isabel was approaching the east coast and we did not know where it would hit and thought it would be a bad one, he wanted to go get her and bring her to our house. This happened a few months after JB's evil co-hort, my FIL died. When hubbie said he was thinking about going to go get her and bring her back to our house, I told him that I supposed I could find another place to stay. He said "why can't she come stay here for a few days?" I said "she can, but I won't be here." I don't know if he came up with this idea on his own or if it was prompted by her "poor widow me" game. (It's really 50/50!)

He made the right decision. But it did drive me to drinking the next night. He was out that night at a class or meeting or something. I drink very little -- some champagne on New Years Eve and maybe one or two more drinks during the year, but more than half a drink more during the year is a heavy drinking year for me. If I do have a drink, it's usually wine or a mixed drink, almost never beer. That night, I had TWO BEERS.

When Isabel did hit land, she hit hard, but not in either of our areas. JB just got some rain, if that. It only affected me because I had a business trip to Washington DC (Rockville Maryland, actually) the next week and they were hit almost as hard as we got hit by the one I mentioned getting us earlier earlier.

Any other reasons, do you ask, besides the obvious, did I not want her to come stay for "a few days"? I had the fear that the few days would be the rest of her life.

Two side effects of this. First, whenever it comes time to get our emergency plans together, I am checking out what hotels might be available, (though I have a friend I can probably stay with).

The second side effect of this is that I realized during the approach of the storm how little I really care about my HOUSE. It's an OK house, I'll probably live here the rest of my life, but I'm not so attached to it that I cannot part with it and be happy somewhere else. And unlike hubbie, I at the time, had enough money squirreled away that I could have bought another house. I found myself thinking -- if they want it let them have the damn house, but it will be empty. The two of them can enjoy it together. Most of the furnishings are ones bought from my salary while all of his salary was spent on keeping his family together. Some others were hand-me downs/family pieces. What he had when we got married he left in his single-wide which he gave to his Father to rent out.

I even found myself making an exit plan, thinking about what kind of house I wanted if I had to live by myself, etc. It was the second closest that I ever came to thinking about divorce. All of this was the day after he said something about going to get her.

So, when forced to make a choice, he did choose me. Maybe I should have forced him more often?

As I have said before, Thank God Its Over. All of those agonizing thoughts that I had to go through mostly on my own.

Now, I don't have to include "what about MIL" in my disaster plan. How to get my stuff out of the house and where to go if she comes here. She won't be coming here.

To repeat myself from previous posts, I'm so glad it's over. The weight of the world is gone from my shoulders.