Isabel report -- part 2
Oct. 7th, 2003 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniI know, I know. I said last week that I'd post more interesting stuff about what happened during and after Isabel, then I never did. Sigh. So I'm doing it now. Under cuts, 'cause I have lots to say..
The neighbor whose property borders my own along the back (I can see their back porch from my kitchen windows) never took in their hummingbird feeder. All day, Thursday, Dad and I were waiting for the thing to go sailing into the air. It never budged -- barely even swung in the wind. So much for our predictions!
There were two big trees in my yard. One fell, the other remained standing (The one that fell was injured by the builders when they put in the driveway, the other was healthy). I'd always assumed the survivor was a willow, because it had narrow, willow-like leaves. But when the wind blew a branch from the top of that tree against my office window, I saw it had acorns on it! Dad got out my Field Guide to Natural History and looked it up. The nearest we can figure is that it is a kind of "Shingle Oak," which the Guide said had laurel- or willow-like leaves. I went out the next day for a closer look, and none of the branches within sight had acorns -- apparently, they only grow on the top branches. If the wind hadn't blown down those top branches, I never would have seen the acorns. File that under "Learn something new every day!"
Ever wonder what little animals do during a big storm, while we're hiding in our "interior rooms with no windows"? Apparently, everything they'd normally do. Round about 5pm, we saw a squirrel running around on my back porch, and climbing up and down that big pine tree behind my house, as if the weather were perfectly calm...
Of course, not all humans hide out inside: a little after (or was it a little before?) Dad and I were amused by the squirrel, we saw two of our neighbors running around the cul-de-sac, and driving a pick up truck back and forth, and we said: "What are those crazy humans doing?" We found out the next day, when they, and the other guys of the neighborhood, came by to cut up the downed tree. Turns out they had a private "911" (emergency call) system going. Neighbors would call when trees were about to fall, and these two crazy humans would go out in the storm, put ladders up to the trees, get ropes around them as high as they could, and pull the trees down away from the houses. Now these trees were as tall as a 4 or 5 storey building, and were swaying in the wind as though they were blades of grass. :::Shakes head::: Maniacs! Still, I'm grateful they were willing to do that. The damage could have been a lot worse, otherwise.
Something one of them reported as part of the tree-climbing story: He came back from one such mission, and noticed a perfectly round circle of mud of in his back yard, and wondered: "What the heck?! Rain coming down in sheets all around him, and only this one circle of mud?" Just as he was calling his friend over for a closer look, a geyser rose out of the ground up to the level of his waist, and then, after a few seconds, sank back into the ground again. (!) He figures that the ground was so saturated from the heavy rains we had all summer, that the big trees rocking in the wind were putting pressure on the ground, and squeezing the water out of it, as though the ground were a bellows, or sponge. Yes. We've had a wet summer.
Meanwhile, nearly every big tree along the road leading into our cul-de-sac blew over, from the roots up. Driving down the road the next day, we saw great flat disks of the roots, sticking up out of the ground. Around here, the hardwood trees don't send their roots very deep, because we are so close to the ocean that the deeper soils are briny. So in a big wind, they're about as stable as a Christmas tree in a Christmas tree stand (and I think the wind went faster down that narrow street, before it got to our cul-de-sac, based of the direction all the trees fell in).
Also around here, it's the fashion to plant thickly-mulched "garden areas" around the base of tree trunks. So along with tipped over trees, you had tipped over rose bushes and geraniums, and rhodadendrons -- all unharmed, all perpendicular to the way they should be. Personally, I don't see the appeal of this style of planting; I've always thought the crown of a tree's roots (where the roots start to curve as they grow into the ground, or the trunk curves as it grows out of the ground), to be one of its most beautiful features. Cover that up, and the tree loses its connection to the Earth -- looks like a giant toothpick stuck in the ground. Oh, well....
Not as dramatic as fallen trees and surprise geysers, but perhaps more profound, is what I learned
First of all, I learned first hand what a strong trigger stress is for my asthma attacks -- I'd read, somewhere, longish ago, that it was a factor. But I was surprised at how big a factor. During the week leading up to the storm, while hearing reports of it being a catagory 5, trying to find information on whom to call if I needed to evacuate (The official city website said that if you're disabled, you should arrange for help evacuating, but it doesn't give any information on who could provide that help. Oh yeah, that's really useful, thank you!), worrying about that tree falling, etc., I was having several low grade asthma attacks a day. After the tree fell, and hit nothing, the asthma attacks stopped as if someone had flipped a switch, even though I was spending several days without air conditioning and all the windows and a couple doors open. From now on, I'll check my stress level before (or at least along with) mold spore and pollen levels.
Second thing that surprised me was the effect of light (or lack of it) on my brain. This was especially true after Dad went back home on the 21st, and I didn't have conversation to distract me. The fact is, I had to really fight to stay awake after the sun set. Now, usually, for the past 12-13 years or so, I've been going to bed around 2 am, or later, and in recent months, my sleep schedule had gotten very irregular. Also during these past years and months, I've had fairly regular headaches.
But when I was here alone, and even while dad was here to a certain extent, I had to fight to stay awake past sunset. I tried to stay awake at least some past dark, so as to give myself time to digest dinner first, so I wouldn't have to keep getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. But even so, I think the latest I ever managed was 9:30 -- and that was a fluke. Most other nights, I was indubiably horizontal by 8:30. And like my asthma attacks, the severity and frequency of my headaches dropped to near zero.
The upshot of all this is that I think the benefits of going without electricity, at least health-wise, outweighed the frustrations -- except for the fact that I missed my friends. So I've decided to do periodic "Weekends Without" -- electric lights, tv, radio, or computer -- throughout the year, to recalibrate my brain. Perhaps, I'll do them at the Sabbats, though I'm still too much of a whimp to turn off the heat and open the windows for the winter holidays. ;-)
And in my next entry, I'll post some thoughts on the book I read to while away those hours... :-)
The neighbor whose property borders my own along the back (I can see their back porch from my kitchen windows) never took in their hummingbird feeder. All day, Thursday, Dad and I were waiting for the thing to go sailing into the air. It never budged -- barely even swung in the wind. So much for our predictions!
There were two big trees in my yard. One fell, the other remained standing (The one that fell was injured by the builders when they put in the driveway, the other was healthy). I'd always assumed the survivor was a willow, because it had narrow, willow-like leaves. But when the wind blew a branch from the top of that tree against my office window, I saw it had acorns on it! Dad got out my Field Guide to Natural History and looked it up. The nearest we can figure is that it is a kind of "Shingle Oak," which the Guide said had laurel- or willow-like leaves. I went out the next day for a closer look, and none of the branches within sight had acorns -- apparently, they only grow on the top branches. If the wind hadn't blown down those top branches, I never would have seen the acorns. File that under "Learn something new every day!"
Ever wonder what little animals do during a big storm, while we're hiding in our "interior rooms with no windows"? Apparently, everything they'd normally do. Round about 5pm, we saw a squirrel running around on my back porch, and climbing up and down that big pine tree behind my house, as if the weather were perfectly calm...
Of course, not all humans hide out inside: a little after (or was it a little before?) Dad and I were amused by the squirrel, we saw two of our neighbors running around the cul-de-sac, and driving a pick up truck back and forth, and we said: "What are those crazy humans doing?" We found out the next day, when they, and the other guys of the neighborhood, came by to cut up the downed tree. Turns out they had a private "911" (emergency call) system going. Neighbors would call when trees were about to fall, and these two crazy humans would go out in the storm, put ladders up to the trees, get ropes around them as high as they could, and pull the trees down away from the houses. Now these trees were as tall as a 4 or 5 storey building, and were swaying in the wind as though they were blades of grass. :::Shakes head::: Maniacs! Still, I'm grateful they were willing to do that. The damage could have been a lot worse, otherwise.
Something one of them reported as part of the tree-climbing story: He came back from one such mission, and noticed a perfectly round circle of mud of in his back yard, and wondered: "What the heck?! Rain coming down in sheets all around him, and only this one circle of mud?" Just as he was calling his friend over for a closer look, a geyser rose out of the ground up to the level of his waist, and then, after a few seconds, sank back into the ground again. (!) He figures that the ground was so saturated from the heavy rains we had all summer, that the big trees rocking in the wind were putting pressure on the ground, and squeezing the water out of it, as though the ground were a bellows, or sponge. Yes. We've had a wet summer.
Meanwhile, nearly every big tree along the road leading into our cul-de-sac blew over, from the roots up. Driving down the road the next day, we saw great flat disks of the roots, sticking up out of the ground. Around here, the hardwood trees don't send their roots very deep, because we are so close to the ocean that the deeper soils are briny. So in a big wind, they're about as stable as a Christmas tree in a Christmas tree stand (and I think the wind went faster down that narrow street, before it got to our cul-de-sac, based of the direction all the trees fell in).
Also around here, it's the fashion to plant thickly-mulched "garden areas" around the base of tree trunks. So along with tipped over trees, you had tipped over rose bushes and geraniums, and rhodadendrons -- all unharmed, all perpendicular to the way they should be. Personally, I don't see the appeal of this style of planting; I've always thought the crown of a tree's roots (where the roots start to curve as they grow into the ground, or the trunk curves as it grows out of the ground), to be one of its most beautiful features. Cover that up, and the tree loses its connection to the Earth -- looks like a giant toothpick stuck in the ground. Oh, well....
Not as dramatic as fallen trees and surprise geysers, but perhaps more profound, is what I learned
First of all, I learned first hand what a strong trigger stress is for my asthma attacks -- I'd read, somewhere, longish ago, that it was a factor. But I was surprised at how big a factor. During the week leading up to the storm, while hearing reports of it being a catagory 5, trying to find information on whom to call if I needed to evacuate (The official city website said that if you're disabled, you should arrange for help evacuating, but it doesn't give any information on who could provide that help. Oh yeah, that's really useful, thank you!), worrying about that tree falling, etc., I was having several low grade asthma attacks a day. After the tree fell, and hit nothing, the asthma attacks stopped as if someone had flipped a switch, even though I was spending several days without air conditioning and all the windows and a couple doors open. From now on, I'll check my stress level before (or at least along with) mold spore and pollen levels.
Second thing that surprised me was the effect of light (or lack of it) on my brain. This was especially true after Dad went back home on the 21st, and I didn't have conversation to distract me. The fact is, I had to really fight to stay awake after the sun set. Now, usually, for the past 12-13 years or so, I've been going to bed around 2 am, or later, and in recent months, my sleep schedule had gotten very irregular. Also during these past years and months, I've had fairly regular headaches.
But when I was here alone, and even while dad was here to a certain extent, I had to fight to stay awake past sunset. I tried to stay awake at least some past dark, so as to give myself time to digest dinner first, so I wouldn't have to keep getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. But even so, I think the latest I ever managed was 9:30 -- and that was a fluke. Most other nights, I was indubiably horizontal by 8:30. And like my asthma attacks, the severity and frequency of my headaches dropped to near zero.
The upshot of all this is that I think the benefits of going without electricity, at least health-wise, outweighed the frustrations -- except for the fact that I missed my friends. So I've decided to do periodic "Weekends Without" -- electric lights, tv, radio, or computer -- throughout the year, to recalibrate my brain. Perhaps, I'll do them at the Sabbats, though I'm still too much of a whimp to turn off the heat and open the windows for the winter holidays. ;-)
And in my next entry, I'll post some thoughts on the book I read to while away those hours... :-)
