As I Prepare to Leave...

Despite months of waiting and planning, the hours leading up to my first trip for court were full of last-minute preparations and Murphy’s Law moments.

Tuesday, November 23. As I am vacuuming the family room, the power goes off. I turn, to see Matthew by the outlet that it is plugged into. He inexplicably slipped a metal belt buckle between the outlet and the vacuum plug. The result, in case you have been tempted to try this experiment yourself: the buckle is singed black, and all of the outlets in the family room, including the outlets that the TV/VCR/DVD and PC are plugged into, are dead (with outlet covers now tinged electrical-surge brown).

For the past four years of his life, Matthew has seemed to understand the dangers of the outlets and has left them alone. Today, of all days, he does this!? I explain to him how he could have killed himself, how dangerous the outlets are, and how nothing in the room now works without electricity. He cries, I hug him and tell him I would rather have the outlets break than him! Throughout the day, every time he hears me telling someone else what happened, he starts crying. When I get off the phone from Jon, he asks “Did you tell Daddy I almost died, but I didn’t?”

In the meantime, I am desperate to fix the problem before I leave for a week. Leaving Grandma without a working family room TV or computer is not an option! I open the fuse box. It does not look like a breaker has tripped, certainly not the breaker marked “family room,” but what do I know? Later in the day, our friend Bob comes up to see if he can help. In the meantime, I open up the 2nd fuse box and realize that the breaker marked “Basement – South” has tripped, but I am unable to flip it back to ‘on,’ as much as I try. (What the “Family Room” breaker controls is still a mystery to me!) I show Bob when he arrives, and he patiently demonstrates how to push the breaker in, flip it to ‘off’ and then back ‘on.’ Problem solved!

As the day continues, we progress (or regress?) from Curious Boy electrical problems, to problems of the four-legged variety…

Starting at about 9:00 p.m., we hear noises and thumps outside the front door. For months, we have had issues with animals getting into our garbage and invariably leaving a mess that I have to clean up the next morning, while muttering unkind words about raccoons under my breath. Raccoons are big rats in my book. Each time Jon or I run to the door to yell at the culprit(s), we are too late. At around 11:00 p.m., I am sitting in the living room doing last minute planning on my laptop. I cannot sleep: in less than two days, I leave for ETHIOPIA to hold my baby girl! At this point, sleep is overrated.

As I consider repacking my bags for the millionth time, I hear a THUMP at the door. Angry, I jump up and run to the door. I reach for the door knob to swing it open and yell, and then think better of it. Raccoons, small disgusting creatures though they may be, can still take a nice bite out of me: startling them in close proximity may not be the best plan.

Instead, I flip the outside lights on and look out the side window as I begin yelling. To my shock and awe, it is not a mangy raccoon sitting on the back step, but a small black bear. He is trying to get the lids off of our brand new (and, empty!) garbage cans. The thumping sound is the sound of his backside hitting the door as he ungracefully repositions himself for better leverage on the snap-on lid.

Despite having a locked door and window between us, my heart rate jumps. I stop yelling mid-breath, and run to the bedroom. Poor Jon is wakened from a deep sleep, and is scrambling out of bed before he can quite make out what I am saying. The bear is gone by this time, leaving only a lot of tracks in the snow, and Jon is trying hard not to be annoyed with me. After all, it’s not like we haven’t seen a bear before. We know they are around, and have seen them briefly in the distance, just never this close to the house.

I decide that this qualifies as a near-mauling – after all, if I HAD swung open the door, the bear would have tumbled inside the house – and am quite proud of my imagined near-death experience. An unexpected adrenaline rush is a great way to end the evening.

(The bear returns several times while I am traveling, hanging out under our deck and wandering around the house.)

Wednesday, November 24. My plan for the day is to relax and bake pies for Thanksgiving, even though I will not be around to enjoy them. I roll out of bed and immediately realize that the house is cold – 68 degrees, with the temperature dropping. The electric heat is not working. On today of all days: the day before I leave for Ethiopia and Grandma comes to spend the week taking care of Matthew. This problem must be fixed within the next 24 hours.

By 8:30 a.m., I have called the HVAC repairman, tried his self-help suggestions, and called back to ask him to come out as soon as possible. Mike arrives by 9:30 a.m. The problem is the heating coils or tubes or panels or whatever they are called. For the second (or third?) year in a row, they have inexplicably burned out. Mike will do his best to get the part couriered and installed by the end of the day, but no promises. In the meantime, the temperature outside is in the teens, and the temperature inside is falling fast. I break out four space heaters to try to keep the temperature above 65, and begin baking pies.

In between coordinating repairs and baking pies, I call Fish & Wildlife about the bear. It is obviously young, hungry, not hibernating, and not nearly as afraid of people as he should be, having been spotted many times around the community in the past few months. An officer stops by to tell me not to worry, that it is probably perfectly safe for Matthew to play outside by himself during the day. Let me think about that for a moment… NO?!. This time of year, they do not trap bears because they have no way of relocating them (the forest roads are impassable with snow). The officer will come shoot the bear if it attacks someone or causes significant property damage. In the meantime, he leaves me with a brochure on bear safety, and another on cougar safety for good measure. Awesome.

I have my pies to make me happy. They are turning out well. I plan to leave one blackberry pie for Matthew, Jon and Grandma, and give three to our friends and neighbors.

Apparently I am more tired and out of sorts than I realized. I manage to dump one of the most beautiful blackberry pies that you have ever seen, all over the inside of the oven door. The purple mess oozes into every crack of the door, even soaking into the door liner. I nearly cry. At least the pie plate didn’t break – I try to be thankful for small favors. As the final cleanup step, I set the oven to self-clean; on the bright side, this will help heat the house!

I still have two good pies to deliver, but no way to get out: our car is buried in snow, and does not have the wherewithal to manage our frozen-snow filled driveway anyways. Thankfully, Grandma comes by to pick us up to do some last minute chores at her house, and I have her swing by the neighbors to drop off pies on the way. Before we leave, Mike returns with the part. I leave him to finish repairs.

By the time Grandma drops us back at home, the heat is fixed and the house is warm again. Another problem solved, just in time.

Grandma unpacks and settles in. She is staying at our house to take care of Matthew during the day while Jon is at work; it is easier to spend the night than drive back and forth in the early morning and late evening cold and darkness.

When Jon gets home, the Rogers drop off their Suburban. They are graciously loaning it to us for the drive to the airport, because it has 4-wheel drive and can fit the 8 tubs of donations that we will try to take with us. We have the best friends.