90. Why Go Old School…Sometimes

[I wrote the following essay, as pictured in the photo above, during a power outage in August. We've been told Fall 2020 will be a particularly bad storm season. Of course it will.]

I'm writing by hand, something I rarely do outside of the letters I write to my older daughter, who's twenty-one, and pen pals, all of whom are under ten-years-old. I'm also sitting in the dark and eating a piece of leftover pizza, which is at room temperature because we left it on the kitchen island overnight. Nowhere else in the house would have been any colder or warmer. The pizza was a gift from our employer, The Hotchkiss School, on the suggestion/idea from our Dean of Faculty. The free dinner helped take the sting off being on day four of having no power or internet at our house. Hurricane Isias [check spelling when power comes back on {Yep, missed an "a"; of course I did.}] came through earlier this week, knocking enough trees into utility lines to leave over 700,000 CT residents without power. Repair crews are working, but Lakeville isn't a priority. I'm grateful for the pizza and trying to focus on that gratitude.

I know I wrote post # [check number {How's this for authenticity? You can check; if you're reading this, you have power.}] about how 2020 won't go down as the worst year ever. If you haven't read that post, you could do so now, or I can give you the spoiler version here. My point was that because George Floyd's murder happened during a global pandemic, white people had nothing to distract us from our national racism. And because we have the time to pay attention, 2020 will go into the books as the year the US started to change policies and to end social injustice. I still hope and believe that might be true.

And I don't want to be a Debby Downer, but losing power for a week [fix time if I get power within the next couple days or if, God forbid, it takes longer {Total of first outage was five days and power went out again for several hours two days later.}] has not helped me to love this year. I saw, back when I could look at Instagram without having to sit on the one spot on our hillside that gets enough service to load photos, a place I can sit only so long because of the bugs that bite me, a post saying that 2020 is like looking both ways before crossing the street, only to get hit by an airplane. That's what this power outage has been, the jetliner rolling through our airspace.

I was holding it together by focusing on my writing and class planning and cooking dinner for and eating dinner with my family and watching Netflix or Hulu at night. And this power outage said, "Nope, Carita, you can't do any of those things easily anymore. You're shut off from the work and play on your computer. Your electric stove and oven won't do anything right now. You need to throw out everything in your freezer and much of what's in your fridge."

Well, okay 2020, I hear you. I won't get too attached to getting things done, but you can't take away my pens and paper. You can't take my books...actually, I'm a little scared writing these words. 2020, I don't want to challenge you to find more to take...I'll just say, "Please, don't take any more. I've met your challenges, but I think I've had enough. I think we've all had enough." For now, I'll find a new way to stay on task, to get to where I want to be. I'll go old school.

Even with everything that's going on around us, we are a resilient people, but it turns out that the only way to find out just how resilient we are is to have to find yet another workaround. [Note, speaking of resilience, when things get back to normal, contact Tiffany about getting your favorite necklace repaired because 2020 took that, too.]

Did your power go out? Have you had an "enough already" moment recently? Have you found a workaround that helps? {Unlike my other asides, I'm adding this in on the week of posting. RBG's death is a huge blow to women's rights. If I thought 2020 couldn't throw one more horrible event our way, I was again proven wrong. I hope there are at least a few Republican senators who'll follow what they themselves said in 2016, and let the new president (fingers crossed) and new senate replace the irreplaceable RBG. And I hope enough people vote to make the will of the people heard.}

Please feel free, nay, please feel encouraged to share your thoughts in the comments. I really do love getting comments.