We survived the week of the Quakenadocane!

The storm moved in yesterday afternoon and lasted through the night.  The rain is mostly gone now, but the winds  are still wild out there, making the trees dance in a beautiful and dangerous way.

My mother called me last night to tell me there was a tornado in the town where Honeybunch works, and headed west towards us.  We turned on the radio, listened to the emergency broadcast, and gathered up the cats and skunk in our central living room.  Our basement is literally cut into the stone of this hill, and our walls are one and a half feet thick hardwood logs.  I felt pretty darn safe.  The wind was fierce, but no tornado.  We went back to sleep after listening to Thistle and Shamrock on NPR. 

At 0430 we woke up to flashing lights and the sound of a police radio outside.  Apparently a tree split in two and dropped one half across our street and into our driveway, narrowly missing the power lines, barn, and our friend's car.  The firemen were out there cutting it into pieces with a chainsaw to clear the road.  After assessing the situation and seeing that no damage had been done, I allowed myself to think, "score!  Free firewood!"

This morning there are lots of downed branches, and a newly formed pond in the yard.   Our stream is a surging river, and we have about 1/2" of water in the basement.  Our greenhouse is in tact.  All of the birds weathered the storm well, and the repairs Honeybunch did to our kitchen roof held.  We didn't lose electricity, though it flickered once or twice.

 It's a pelvis!!

 I'm SO glad we took down these two trees... they used to lean WAY over the greenhouse and I'm certain they would have dropped limbs and broken more panes in this wind!

This is Shelab.  She is about 3" across from leg to leg, and she lives in the greenhouse.  She was very grateful that we replaced the broken panes and took down the threatening trees before the storm moved in.

Almost ready...

I've got tequila and lime juice, bottled water, a clean house, a clear yard, and a Kindle. 
If Honeybunch gets home in time tonight, we'll take down those two trees... if not tonight, bright and early tomorrow morning.

I think the groundhog has left the basement.

There is something reassuring about being in a 200+ year old house when a storm moves in... there's a certainty that the house has seen worse, and survived it, and will protect you. 

Storm's a-coming.

Well, I'm sure our house has seen worse storms in its 211 years of life... but I have to admit, I'm feeling a little nervous.

We have two trees that need to come DOWN before Irene hits here.  They threaten the greenhouse... which, it just so happens, Honeybunch just replaced panels in. 

We have no bottled water... gotta remedy that tomorrow.  Up until this point in my life I lived on municipal city water that pretty much always ran from the tap, no matter what was happening outside.  I haven't yet gotten it into my head that no electricity = no well pump.  A non-electric backup pump is on our preparedness wishlist... but for this weekend, it'll be gallons of bottled spring water for us.  In the meantime, I'm trying to get ALL of our laundry done in the next 24 hours so that if we lose power for a few days we'll be okay.

We have no sump pump for the basement.  We do, however, have a groundhog in the basement right now.  But that's a story for another day.

Storms excite me... but it's our first big bad storm in our new old house, and I'm just crossing my fingers that our lack of experience with storms in rural areas doesn't make this storm exciting in all the wrong ways!

Focus.

That's what we call it when an earthquake shakes our area enough to crack a major bridge... and I don't notice at all, because my head is entirely wrapped up in my job.  Every coworker I talked to felt it.  I didn't feel a darn thing.  I'm kinda disappointed :-/

Shower time!

Yes, it is raining out there... and yes, I just got out of the shower after spending about an hour mowing the lawn.  But those aren't the kind of showers I'm talking about!

My sister and mother threw me a downright classy shindig in honor of the fact that I will soon be an old, married woman.  It was awesome.

 

Chocolates in the shape of beehives and honeycomb.  AWESOME.

 And the favors?  Homemade beehive cookies and jars of lavender tupelo honey.  AWESOME.

 Homemade lingonberry tarts?   AWESOME.

 Freshly picked figs and white peach sangria and fancyschmancy glasses?  AWESOME.

 Brie, roasted red pepper and greens sandwiches on croissants?  SO AWESOME.

 Lemon pound cake with black raspberry jam filling and swiss buttercream icing, IN THE SHAPE OF A FLIPPING BEEHIVE?  AWESOME AND DELICIOUSOMG.

 Flowers and ammunition as a gift? Carol and Pete are AWESOME!!

 And the most delicious thing I have ever tasted:  toasted brioche topped with ricotta cheese and lavender honey, sprinkled with lavender buds.  Seriously.  It was food heaven.

 My mom gushed.  It was adorable.

And a good friend gave me a Fat Chicken.

It was truly wonderful to gather with friends and family and enjoy an afternoon of girly delights.  My people rock.  I'm excited to write the thank-you notes!!

All photos are the work of my friend Doerthe, who was kind enough to attend, give me super duper special presents, AND take great photos the whole time!

Winter warmth.

I'm sweating as I sit here to type.  It's been a rainy, hot, muggy weekend here, but one that we spent planning for the brutal cold of winter.  Yesterday we got an estimate from a local place for getting a chimney and stovepipe installed.  We essentially have 8 weeks to come up with $3500 if we want to have it in by the end of October. 

I was naively hoping that we'd also be able to get the woodstove I'm lusting after:
http://jotul.com/en-US/wwwjotulus/Main-menu/Products/Wood/Wood-stoves/Jotul-F-400-Castine/
...but it's quite clear now that won't be happening this year.  Luckily, Honeybunch's parents have a stove in their garage that they offered to lend us until we can get the one we want.

I'm not allowed to work overtime while I'm on orientation at work... so I'm going to be pinching pennies and trying to pimp out my hoopdancing and jam-making skills for some extra cash flow.  This has to happen this year, or else we'll end up putting nearly that much cash into the oil tank this season anyway!  That money-guzzling monster in the basement is old, inefficient, and likely to break down within a couple of years as it is.  Having a high quality woodstove and a few cords of seasoned firewood stacked in the barn means that we can watch that boiler die and not give a damn.  Independence.  That's what we want.

We weeded the garden!!!!

Finally!!

The work of a nurse and a homesteader...

I was nearly two hours late coming home from work last night.  My day became a 13.5 hour one when the ambulance fellas brought in a very pale grey woman (about whom they knew nearly nothing as far as history goes) around six in the evening.  Within minutes, we were manually ventilating her with a bag valve mask.  We intubated her, tested her for blood in her stool (she was not bleeding from her bowels), drew lab work, and whisked her off to CAT scan within twenty minutes.  She was not bleeding in her brain.  Her hemoglobin was 3.8.  Her belly was getting larger and firmer as time went on.  She was bleeding into her abdominal cavity somewhere.  And then her heart rate slowed, and she lost her pulse, and we began the two-hour-long ordeal of trying to resuscitate her. 

We poured units of blood and plasma into her, using pressure-bags to squeeze the fluids in as quickly as possible.  We gave her every ACLS drug under the sun, multiple times.  We took turns working up a sweat doing chest compressions (which got a little bit easier after her ribs cracked on the first cycle), and as I pushed I saw the blood we were transfusing into her coming right back out around her femoral catheter in time with my compressions.  We defibrillated her. We cooled her core body temperature to 33 degrees Celcius to try to reduce the oxygen demands of her vital tissues. 

In between tasks, I ran out into the hall a few times to update her only family member, her brother, about what was happening. 

"She has stopped breathing on her own, we have her hooked up to a machine to breathe for her." 
"Her heart stopped beating, but we gave her CPR and medicines and it is beating on its own again." 
"She is losing a lot of blood, we are giving her donated blood now." 
"Her heart has stopped again, we are doing everything we can."

We tried very, very hard... several times we managed to get a pulse back, once or twice we even got a blood pressure.  But when the blood started coming out of her ears, and the heart monitor showed asystole, and no matter what we did no pulse returned... we had to stop.  She was gone.  It was time.

Her brother came out of the family waiting room, and in broken English asked me what was happening.  I was stunned, given that the physician had just spoken to him.  He didn't seem to have grasped the gravity of the situation.  "Her heart stopped beating, and we were unable to start it beating again.  She has died.  If you want to see her, now is the time.  We did everything we could, I am so sorry."

Throughout the code, as I pushed on her chest, pushed syringes, spiked bags of blood, started IV lines, wrote notes on paper towels.... my hands were steady.  My whole being was calm, collected, analyzing, thinking, working with my team, trying to save that woman's life.  After her brother left, and I sat down at my computer to begin charting everything that had happened over the past three hours, my hands started to shake violently.  Someone brought us all water to drink, and I became aware of the fact that my hair was disheveled and my face red and my scrubs soaked with sweat.  It took hours for the adrenaline to wear off. 

We do what we have to for those that we serve.

I came home and attempted to drain an abscess on the foot of Bambi, one of our Ameraucana hens.  She's a favorite of mine, always comes when I call her, lets me pick her up and cuddle her... a good-natured kind bird who never picks on the new chicks who are added to the flock.  I cleansed her foot, lanced it with a sterilized Xacto blade, then squeezed out as much pus as I could until only blood came out.  I applied an antibiotic ointment, dressed it, and she slept on a towel in the bathroom overnight. 

Today when I came home from work, the drainage coming from the wound was cloudy, and the foot was still very swollen.  It was time for a visit to the vet.  So, $100 later (exam, debridement, oral and topical antibiotics), I have hope that she'll be fine.  I don't know anyone who would pay $100 for a chicken, especially one that they have no intentions of eating.  But I love her.  She's one of the first four chickens we got, and she's a sweetheart.  It's not practical, and I certainly don't have money coming out of my ears to spend on birds, but I love her.  That's all there is to it. 

We do what we have to do for those that we love.

Tonight I'm going to take a shower, drink a glass of wine, maybe even eat some ice cream.  I'll smoke one of my favorite filtered cigars on the porch and talk with my fiance about our dreams.  Tomorrow I'll sleep in a little bit, before tackling the endless work of caring for animals and this beautiful place we call home.

We do what we have to for ourselves.

A most dreaded feeling...

...failure.

This is the thing I fear most.

When I went into work this morning, I felt okay.  An hour later, it was clear that I was NOT okay, and that I'd attempted to re-enter the workplace while still quite ill.  My head was foggy, my voice was leaving me, and I was hacking up green stuff.  I left two hours into the shift.   This, irrationally, feels like failure to me.

Now I am home, "resting", while I look around the homestead and see a million things that need doing, that I simply don't have the oomph and stamina to do right now.  That too, feels like failure.

I'm frustrated with myself.

I know it's silly, because I can't help being sick... but this is the fourth day of this business, and I've grown weary of it.  I have things I need to do, and they're not getting done.  Meanwhile, I see superhero humans like Honeybunch working their tails off.  While I lie in bed, feeling pathetic.  I can only hope that another day of rest will have me feeling 100% again, so that I might tackle the harrowing world of the ER and the almost-as-harrowing world of the farm with renewed gusto.  I don't feel like myself when I'm living the life of a house cat (eat, sleep, eat, sleep, stretch, bathe, eat, sleep...)

My house cats, however, seem thrilled to have me around to scratch their ears and cuddle them while they lounge on my bed all day long.

A bad start.

This morning I woke up with a wicked sore throat.  I should have known it was coming... I'd been feeling tired and slept in WAY late on my day off on Friday... and I've been caring for a ton of Group A Strep folks in the ER.  Sure enough, I have redness and a few little white patches in the back of my throat.  And of course, my doctor's office isn't open on weekends.  Lovely.  Looks like I'll be suffering through until Monday when I can get over there and get a prescription for penicillin.

 So I crawled out of bed and went to pour myself a glass of orange juice.  A wasp landed on my foot and stung me, making me scream like a wuss and drop the carton of OJ to spill all over the floor.  Wasps are getting into our kitchen somehow, and we have yet to find their entry point.  It's been an on-going war, but one that we'd been winning up until this morning.  I hope the little bastard thought it was worth it, because I crushed him GOOD after that.

So I can't taste anything, I can't talk, and my big toe is swollen and red and painful to walk on.  If ever there was a day to lie in bed and read A Dance With Dragons, today is that day.