Day Twenty-Four

Sure enough the utilities are still down. Sleeping without the AC last night was miserable even with those little fans going. They gave out just as soon as I got good and asleep so of course I woke back up. The kids were restless all last night as well. I'm a very light sleeper and every time the kids rustled their bedding my eyes would pop open. My eyelids felt like sandpaper all day.

And our bedroom … my gracious … it smelled like a locker room for a couple of hours until I thought to have everyone take their sheets outside and air them out. At least I don't have to worry about everyone's mattresses getting sour. I use those plastic mattress protectors. And Febreeze fabric freshener is my new bestest friend. I can't imagine what things are going to smell like in this house if we can't air it out soon. The closer to lunch it got the worse the heat became. In the rooms where we were working we wound up having to open the windows; but, we left the shutters closed. I've gotten too secure having the shutters closed and locked. I do miss daylight coming into the rooms, but I like my safety better. If I want daylight I can step onto the lanai or into the backyard.

Since Scott had already planned on staying home today I had planned to go at a slower pace than usual. Or at least that is what I had hoped. Didn't actually turn out that way, but it was a nice thought just the same. No electricity = more work, not less.

Everyone was happy to use the shower bags this morning, even though there was little in the way of privacy. We are going to have to build an outdoor shower facility and James plans on doing that tomorrow. I left Scott discussing today's itinerary with James and David. While the girls took their turns taking shows, washing up, and doing morning chores I finished adding the final ingredients to the Amish Bread starter (Day 10).

Breakfast: For breakfast I made Amish Muffins (this used one cup of the starter leaving me three cups to use at some later point). I made the muffins in the Coleman Oven. It was already too hot to cook indoors so I set it up on the propane grill on the lanai. The oven isn't very big so it can be a challenge to get enough of anything baked in one shot, but it can be done with a little ingenuity. I used paper liners in the muffin tins and was very careful as I filled them so that clean up was minimal. And since everyone ate outside I didn't bother with plates, whether paper or otherwise. The few crumbs we made were simply swept outside.

Trash is going to be a problem sooner rather than later. I guess I forgot to mention it, but the garbage didn't run last week. I've got a whole garbage bin set aside just for cans and it is filling fast. Last week I was able to wash them off and toss them and not have to worry too much about animals getting into them. But this week I'll have to be more careful with our water storage. I also have a whole bag of paper trash to deal with. I have started separating paper trash into two piles – paper with food particles and paper without food particles. The paper with food particles I'll need to bury or burn. The paper without food particles I will shred and toss in the compost pile. Its not a perfect solution but it's the best we can come up with for now.

After breakfast, I pulled out the solar oven and threw a quick casserole together and put it into my black speckle ware roaster pan with the lid. I placed the roaster inside a cooking bag (similar to those used for cooking turkeys, etc.) and sealed it. The bag with the roaster pan inside was placed into the solar panel cooker. The panel cooker was then adjusted and watched though out the day to make sure it continued to face the sun directly and didn't get covered in shade. I also set up a homemade water pasteurizer to heating up water for dishes.

Scott's first task of the day was to show David and James how to set up our solar panels. First they mounted them on a tilted, rolling frame we had built from an old bed frame. The panels were then wired to a controller. The controller can then be wired to the deep cell batteries. Once the batteries are charged you can either directly feed into a DC system or you can hook them to an inverter so that you can use AC system gizmos.

We've never successfully run our well pump this way but we are able to run small items like a battery charger, smaller wattage lamps, and a few other useful gadgets. Scott is anxious to keep his cordless tools charged. The four deep cell batteries we now have will give us some storage capacity; we just need to be reasonable with our expectations.

No sooner had I finished setting the solar cooker going than I had to refill the solar shower bags, put a laptop battery into its charging system, take care of watering my plants by hand (what a pain), and do some general cleaning and prepping. I constantly had to avoid the guys who seemed to be all over the place. They were trying to measure lumber, running wires, and trying to figure out how to secure the solar panels to keep people from throwing rocks at them and breaking them. David suggested reworking a section of the enclosed walkway. If they can figure out a way to convert one section into a kind of garage door then the panels could be wheeled in and out of there each night. Some conduit could be run underground that would house the wires which would mean the controller, inventer, and batteries could be housed securely out of the elements all of the time. At that point it didn't surprise me to learn that David has been attempting to earn his degree in engineering.

Lunch: I was very tired and sweaty by the time I needed to prepare lunch. I knew it was hot but all I was up to making was some kind of soup. I made Creamy Tomato Bacon Soup with cheese crackers. I also pulled out a can of spray cheese for those that wanted it. Scott likes cheese with his tomato soup. I heated the soup in a pot placed over a small stick fire that I built in a depression in the ground. After I got the fire going, I set a grate was over it. The soup pot was set on the grate. The hole was small so it funneled all of the heat from the small fire up to the soup pot. The hole was almost too small and there nearly wasn't enough oxygen to keep the fire going. Lesson learned which led me to think of another project for the kids to do. I'd like to build a cooking pit and line it with some old Georgia bricks that we have. I've started to carry a memo pad around in my pocket just so I can write everything down as it comes to me. Otherwise I get irritated when I know I thought of something good but can't remember what the heck it was I thought of. It didn't take long for the soup to heat through and after it was removed; my camp coffeepot filled with water was placed on the grate to catch the last bit of heat.

The fire actually gave off enough heat to make the water quite hot, though it never really boiled. Some of the very hot water was poured into a dish pan so that the soup mugs from lunch could be washed. The rest was poured into coffee carafe so it could maintain its heat. It came in real handy tonight.

After lunch we were all so hot that we just lay around on the pool deck with our feet in the water. I guess we must have done this for an hour just trying to cool off. We didn't even move when a rain shower moved through soaking us to the skin. Johnnie and Bekah actually sat in the wading pool on the lanai up to their waist. After we finally got up and started moving we all dried quickly as we were all wearing lightweight clothing to beat the heat.

There are some palmettos on the far side of the orange grove and Scott let James go with David to cut some for me. I wasn't thrilled with James getting out from under my eye but the boy is nearly 16 and I have to let him grow up or I'll alienate him. And I guess going with David made him feel some better. What James didn't know was that Scott had palmed off one of the pistols to David before they jumped the fence. That little maneuver made me feel better.

The reason for the boys going to get me the palmettos was that I was going to make fans. Out of all the stuff that I've bought over the years it is simply beyond me how I could have skipped buying hand fans. I mean, how silly could I have been?! Once the boys brought them back I skinned the saws off of the sticks and trimmed the fronds until a nice, stiff "fan" was all that remained. I made enough for everyone to have their own and a couple of extra besides. Johnnie made a game of going around to each of us and fanning us a couple of times and then expecting us to fan him for twice as long.

It continues to stay light until nearly 8:30 pm these days but I didn't want to have to waste the lanterns unless we had to. I fixed us an early – for us anyway – dinner and we again ate outside on the lanai. This kept the mosquitoes off of us and out of the house.

Dinner: The Quick Casserole Supper came out of the solar cooker without too much trouble. I was a little worried about dinner so I had pulled out a jar of peanut butter and some pretzels just in case the casserole flopped. It didn't, thank goodness. The casserole consisted of canned chili (minus beans), canned pinto beans, canned tamales, and shredded Mexican processed cheese. Not the greatest, but certainly beat a cold supper hands down.

The bowls from dinner were cleaned using the water that had been heating most of the day in the water pasteurizer. It was warm enough to wash dishes with, but to be on the safe side I added a capful of bleach to the rinse water. Since everyone scraped the last bit they could out of their bowls, nothing required a hard scrub except the roasting pan and only where the cheese had gotten sticky.

While James took his turn on dish duty, I helped Scott and David bring in all the equipment that they had out during the day as well as move the plant containers back inside. I'm going to have to be careful because I think some of my plants might be getting confused because they aren't getting as much daylight as they normally would this time of year. That probably means that they need to go out earlier and come in later. Hopefully I can make the change without too much trouble.

Finally we could all just sit and relax. Yeah, it was still hot … still is hot as I sit here writing this entry … but not as bad as it was around lunch time. The news from around town was disturbing. They are finally releasing a few more of the details from the UCH fire and zombie escape. Scott surmised correctly. They were able to follow the zombie's path because apparently there had been at least two other attacks. They think that they sanitized all of the attack victims that were infected but they have issued public warnings because two household members from one of the homes are still unaccounted for. Now that just gives me the creeps, not to mention I would have liked to have known this before David and James took off into the bushes in the orange grove. I'm appreciating our metal fence and steel shutters more and more.

I used the hot water I had put into the carafe to make Orange Hot Chocolate. The hot water in the thermos carafe remained plenty warm and I'll continue keeping water warm this way from now on.

The rest of the evening's news was no better. There was a sad murder/suicide story where a man, obsessed with worry that his family was going to turn into zombies, killed his wife and three children before turning the gun on himself. The problem was he was too inept and didn't destroy the brain. All five of them were reanimated by NRS and killed the man's parents when they dropped by to bring a bag of groceries. The zombies then terrorized the neighborhood for nearly an hour until they could be sanitized by a NRSC Deputy. As self-fulfilling prophecies go, that was a doozy. I just pray there aren't any copycat killings like this.

Local charities have now distributed over 90% of their stock with no expectations of resupply any time soon. Food warehouses and major distribution points have hired professional mercenaries to guard their locations. Even local grocery stores now have armed security details.

No riots have broken out in our area but hostilities are close to the surface. Looting has been officially marked as a Federal offense, a matter of Homeland Security, and is punishable by instant execution if the looter is caught in the act by any deputized authority (from Federal troops to local law enforcement to deputized private citizens). I understand the why of this but it is still a frightening development that could easily be abused.

The only announcement concerning the power outage is that repairs are proceeding. Wow. Nice to know. A few more details would have been welcome.

The rioters in Atlanta broke through the military barricade around the CDC. The breach was quickly sealed, but not without some serious bloodshed.

The media is reporting a quiet exit from DC by most members of Congress and their staffs. Some are returning to their home states and some, along with their families, have simply disappeared from the radar all together. The President, in conjunction with Homeland Security and the NRSC, now operates from an undisclosed location. This cannot be a healthy development either.

The New England Quarantine Zone was expanded again. There is also now a Northwest Quarantine Zone covering much of Oregon and parts of Washington State and overlapping some of the Greater California Quarantine Zone.

An extreme tactical response by members of the Texas National Guard has tipped the balance in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area showing that swift and decisive action can reduce NRS infections enough that whole cities can be retaken. The model is being studied for implementation in the quarantine zones.

They are trying the strong tractical response in Miami as well. Unfortunately the large number of Caribbeans in the area who practice a religion that both fears and respects black magic is making it difficult to completely retake some portions of the city. Some of the black magic priests of this religion are using the zombies, or threat of zombiehood, to accumulate political power and spiritual control. I understand people have a right to practice their personal belief system, but that is steering off too much into craziness for me. Especially as several times a so-called "controlled" zombies break free and basically infect every one at a given religious ceremony. This has meant that sometimes entire blocks of neighborhoods have to be quarantined and sanitized within hours. Not easy as quarantines require a special judicial writ. Sad, and all because of a few megalomaniacs.

International news was just as lousy but I don't feel like citing it chapter and verse. Suffice it to say that people no long say Paris "is." They now say Paris "was."

I'm losing my light so I'll save my battery and end things here, attempting to close on a more positive note. For all the bad news, personally we are doing OK. David's wounds are healing and Scott's are no longer visible at all. The kids are healthy and at least appear to be adjusting to the new norm that they find themselves living. And David hasn't said word one about leaving. We have plenty of food, water, and a modest amount of power. We've still got nearly two full drums of fuel as well as another 25 gallons in gas cans. Our house is secure. There is money in the bank. And, we haven't had a fight with a neighbor for a few days. The way things are headed, that makes us rich as Midas.