Monday: Day 7

Among the many things you don't learn about a situation like this until it happens is just how incredibly tiring it all is. While it sounds like a terrible sentence to give up every night and go to bed at 9:00 PM, the truth is, I don't have much more energy than that, no matter what time I rise. Wherever I go, I can tell most everyone else is just as exhausted. I'm tired is the refrain most often on everyone's lips.

A trip to the bank today was an unusual experience with tellers clearly overwhelmed and tempers running short, the lobby line stretched to the front door while the drive-thru line snaked down the street. I learned it was the first day they'd been open since the storm hit and everyone was in need of cash or making a deposit, or in my case, a very important transfer to cover the cost of the coveted generator for which I'd written a cold check the day before. Word to the wise: keep a cache of cash somewhere at your house. Always.

Though cell service comes and goes (and it's gone at the moment), I've managed to touch base with lots of people and it has become a past time to commiserate about our current state of continuing powerlessness. Two friends have had to actually brave the laundry mat and each has shared stories of kind-hearted ghetto people having to walk the clueless upper crust and middle class through the complicated process of operating the washing machinery, guarding their washer, which dryers are a better value, basic laundry mat etiquette, etc. Are you aware, for instance, that laundry mats no longer take quarters? They take swipe cards. Who knew?

Fortunately, I have a fairly extensive stash of clean underpanties because I have a habit of buying them in bunches and then not wearing them if they are the least bit uncomfortable. This means I'm constantly washing my starting line-up on good days, but that an extensive B team is at the ready. It's the little things that keep you going. I continue to moisturize, make-up, shave my legs, and apply high-dollar perfume. They may eventually find me dead, but not hairy or smelling exclusively of gasoline.

Lately, my movie association is back to Gone With the Wind, particularly the time when Scarlett dresses up in her Mama's curtains and visits Rhett in jail in Atlanta at the horse stable. At one point Rhett tells her, " My dear, there is much more money to be made in the destruction of civilization than in building it up."

I think Rhett just might have something there.