Still Dark

I got a call from Catherine at 9 am the next day. She apologized for not contacting me the day before, saying that the hurricane had caused her to have a panic attack.

"Is everything alright?" I asked, hoping that it was but prepared if it wasn't.

Catherine said, "I'm fine now, I promise. I just hid myself under the blankets and repeated a mantra that Dr. Frey taught me. I just say 'here comes the sun' over and over again and picture something beautiful, and I feel much better! I wish I knew this before hand, honestly. It would have saved us a lot of trouble."

"Hey, if you're feeling better, then everything is fine. What are you up to?"

"Me? I'm looking at the trees on the ground and wondering when the power will come back on. The same thing as everyone else."

We talked for a while and made some plans to hang out together. When it finished, I gently placed the phone down and briefly fell back to sleep. An hour later, I was finally ready to get up. I walked around the house for a while, doing any chores that I needed to do; fifteen minutes later I was done.

With the power out and nothing else to do, I took to catching up on the reading material that I planned on finishing. However, after a few hours of that it got tiring. My neck started to hurt from looking down so much. So what else was could I do? I painted a wee bit, picked at the strings on an old guitar, tried to knit but ended up just doing cat's cradle, and ate some chips. How exciting.

I wandered outside to get some fresh air. Lunagirl was back outside playing around, eating, sleeping, the usual cat stuff. For her, life continued as normal with nothing amiss at all. Cats live so simply. Electricity doesn't play a huge part in their lives at all.

Catherine showed up to my house at 12:30 just as I was doing yet another lap in our backyard pool. It had gotten so unbearably hot without the air conditioning that it was pretty much the only option. She called out my name and knelt down to give me a kiss. "So how is my little mermaid holding up without any power?"

I rolled my eyes, smiling, "I'm holding up. It's not that bad, really. How are your folks?"

She replied, "They're doing fine. Mom misses watching her shows and Dad keeps on flicking at the lightswitch. I even caught myself doing it."

I got out of the pool and got us two bottles of water from the outside cooler; we both needed the hydration badly. I can't say that the conversations that we had were anything of note. We sat in the shade and talked about simple things, like when the power would come back on and what the autumn semester would bring us.

"Well, one of the things Dr. Frey wanted me to do was put away all fo those drawings that I made in a folder, then put it in my closet and forget all about it. He said that Fear Dubh couldn't hurt me and my thinking about it like that was hindering progress."

Taking a sip from my water bottle, I asked, "So what else did he say?"

"He wants me to keep writing in my diary and focusing on the good things that I have instead. Won't be too hard, really. I have a lot to be thankful for." She placed her hand on mine as she said that.

Catherine stayed over for dinner that night, which consisted of us eating the rest of the coldcuts in the fridge. It wasn't all that bad; at least we HAD something to eat. She left after that, and I went to bed. Hey, I had nothing else better to do anyway.

On day three I woke up early to see the sun rising, walked outside for thirty minutes, and then returned inside. I read some magazines and greeted each family member as they woke up. My father opened the refridge for some milk, but he found that that all of our food had spoiled. Every last item had thawed to to the point of inediblility. And so with heavy, heavy hearts, my family and I had to toss out three refridgerators and freezers worth of food. It was so surreal seeing the usually full fridge now completely empty. It was a harsh reminder that things were getting serious.