Yesterday was an eventful day for me. I followed through on some life altering decisions which I will blog about in the next few days, met neighbors we’ve had for more than a decade, and lost our electrical power for more than 16 hours …

At about supper time, a storm blew in from the northwest, and raised some serious havoc over a rather wide radius. Trees came down all over, people died in lightning strikes, some homes caught fire when they were hit, some streets in Portsmouth accumulated water so fast that cars had to be abandoned. What an evening! We lost our power at the height of the storm, which was at about 6 PM last night, and it came back on at about 10 AM.

We were lucky. We didn’t lose anything, and although the plants in the garden were turned upside down, they all look as if they will survive.

Once the storm was over, Dougie and I took a walk down the road to where a pine tree had come down across the power lines. We took some photos, which I’ve included below. On the way home, some of our neighbors were just coming out onto the street to see what was going on. Herbie and Rita have been neighbors as long as I’ve been here, and he is Doug’s cousin. He’s been through a really terrible time medically for the last 2 years, including a trach, 14 mos on TNP, etc. I’m not clear on how it started exactly, but it initially had something to do with the absolute upper part of his spine. I tried hard to get some names from them … but no one apparently remembered any.

I hadn’t seen Herbie and Rita since before he became ill 2 years ago, and we enjoyed visiting each other. As we were talking, another couple came toward us from down the road … wanting to see what had happened. They introduced themselves as my closest neighbors. None of us had met them before. They’ve been in the house across the street since 1997. The conversation picked up steam, and became even more engaging with the extra input.

While we were all still talking, another couple approached from the same general direction. They are people who live only a few houses away. They bought the land from my Father-in-law, and built in one of the nicest spots available quite a number of years ago. They were very nice, and I was absolutely delighted to meet them.

Eventually, the sun began to set, and the mosquitoes drove each of us back in our separate directions … a little poorer from having had to break things up, but a lot richer from finally all meeting one another.

Here in the Maine countryside … and not just here, really, but in much of New England, people generally keep to themselves, because they don’t want to intrude and be seen as “busy bodies.” Also because we all treasure our privacy. However, if something goes wrong and one of us should need some help that others become aware of, everyone would pull together.

But still, even as I write this, I’m a little horrified on the inside as I realize that I never met the lovely couple who live right across the street from us until they’d been there for 11 years!

It took a power outage and a bit of excitement down the road to draw us all from our computers and televisions … out into the street … to meet the people we’ve been rubbing elbows with for better than a decade.

Is globalized communication shrinking our face-to-face world, causing us to become enclosed in the prisons of our homes? We can make friends with people clear across the country, develop warm relationships with friends in India and Malaysia … but more and more, we don’t even know the people who live right next door.

Friends, we need some balance, no?

Take time to greet someone near you this week – someone you see all the time, but have never spoken to. Even just a smile will do, if you’re bashful. If you can communicate with me across the country, or across the world, then you can also communicate with the people whose faces have become familiar to you, but whom you don’t know.

Oooookies … *gets off the soap box* … now here are some shots from last night …

A bit of extra reading on the storm:

And a saga it truly has been …

There has been a lot going on – some of which I shared with you, some of which I haven’t, but many of you are aware of anyway … and some that I’ve kept rather private …

The last time I gave everyone a real update was at the end of August when I ended up in the hospital. On September 23, I told you that there was a lot going on, and that once it was over, “I may have a real good story for you,” but that for the time being, I needed “to be a good little Moofie and keep a low profile.”

Well … here’s the promised story – plus some, since things didn’t end there. I’m probably going to have to write all of this out in several installments. Let me pick up where I left off …

Once upon a time there was a little Moofie …

… who really hated to have to leave her nice summer camp, and travel home for any reason whatsoever.

However, on Friday, September 7, about a week after my discharge from the hospital, I had to make a run home to get some lab work done. Whenever I have to go home from camp, I almost always make a day of it. If Dougie, my chef son, isn’t working, he and I will travel together, and pick up my Mother-in-law for a threesome. We then take care of whatever business is at hand, and once the duty is done, we treat ourselves to dinner in a restaurant. Home is only a minute or two from my Mother-in-law’s house, and I decided to stop there quickly to see if there were any phone messages to deal with, or mail to pick up. I was surprised to see a calling card balanced on the doorknob, and a bit wary when I saw it was from a detective from the local police department.

My first thought was: “Oh geeze! Darian’s in trouble again.” My oldest son has a long history of friction with the local police. They’ve nicknamed the “curbside lawyer,” and he’s nicknamed them … um, *cough* … never mind. I entered the house, and promptly called the police station to inquire about the card. They told me that there was a court date on the following Monday, and they wanted to deliver a summons. Darian’s apartment had been broken into, and many of his belongings destroyed earlier in the year; he was supposed to testify against the perpetrators. I assured the officer that I would give Darian the message before heading back up to camp.

I immediately went out to the barn. Yes, my son really did live in a barn. He’d made a little apartment for himself in the back of the barn, bought a furnace, a small fridge, and had things set up quite comfortably back there. During the winter, he was warmer in the barn than we were in the house. There was a big enclosed bay for working on his cars which was separate from his living room and bedroom, and a huge field just outside the back door, which was perfect for big loud parties with huge bonfires. His place was normally busier than Grand Central Station.

This time, it was ominously quiet … and empty. The door to his private area was wide open … and not a soul was in sight. Odd. Darian has a rather crippling case of paranoia; of course, he would be quick to tell you that it’s not paranoia, and that he has good reasons to think the way he does; to be sure, where some issues are concerned, he’s right. But, suffice it to say that he’s not one to run off and leave the door to his apartment wide open. I called out to him from the entry, but there was no answer. I made a mental note that he had the barn lights on although it was daytime, and felt irritation at his lack of concern for the cost of electricity.

Thinking that he might be in the apartment area asleep, I ventured into the work area … trying hard to not trip over the tools and the rest of the amazing mess which was scattered from one end to the other. He’d never been neat; in fact, my last communication with him had been a rather angry note left on what I could still find of the kitchen table, telling him to pick up his mess in the house. This was another story, however! It looked as if a compression bomb had gone off in there! I went into his “living room,” and saw that it had been ransacked … as was his bedroom. I shook my head in disbelief, and wondered what sort of party he’d had in there. It looked as if a pack of marauders had given the place a thorough going-over. Darian was nowhere to be found.

I returned to the house to write him a message, and then went back to thumbtack it to the open door. As I was doing that, I heard a car pull up to the front of the barn. Relieved, I called out his name – but a different voice than the one I was expecting hollered in reply. Darian’s good friend, Ryan, came through the barn’s large front doors, and made his way toward me with long strides. The conversation that ensued didn’t answer many questions … in fact, it only served to pile on more. Darian had made plans to meet Ryan there the night before, but hadn’t been there when Ryan showed up. The circumstances Ryan related were odd …

Darian had been working on Ryan’s truck, which sits in our yard to this day. Darian called Ryan from a store, and told him that he was in the process of picking up a brake cable, and asked Ryan to bring the brake fluid. They were supposed to meet at the barn at 10 PM. When Ryan got out of work, he went to the barn with the brake fluid, but there was no Darian … everything was wide open, things were upside down … just like it was when I saw it.

A sick, queasy feeling started rolling around in the pit of my stomach. As Ryan and I made our way out of the barn, he told me: “Don’t worry! Wherever Darian is, I’m sure it’s not a bad place.”

I replied: “Ryan, with the way Darian lives, that ‘bad place’ could happen any time.” Ryan’s eyebrows flew up, as he nodded in acknowledgment. To call Darian a risk taker … is to be mortally guilty of understatement.

We locked up the house, picked up my Mother-in-law, and ran our errands. After a nice dinner, and an otherwise pleasant afternoon, we ran back by the house to see if Darian had shown back up. Nope.

At that point, Dougie and I decided that we couldn’t leave the barn wide open, with all of the lights on. We went out there together, and started turning off the lights, as we gingerly picked our way through the disaster. As Dougie was shutting down Darian’s computer, I checked out a small box which was sitting on his bed, hoping to perhaps find a clue as to where he was. In the box was fresh food – a hamburger patty, several pieces of pie – the type you find in fancy restaurants, a loaf of bread, and a number of other ready to eat goodies. The hamburger patty was the only food item that needed cooking. It looked as if he’d brought the food in, left it on the bed, and never had a chance to eat it – or store it, although he had a little fridge in the very next room.

Fresh food on the bed, computer still running, all the lights on in the middle of the day, doors wide open … and missing an appointment he himself had made with Ryan the night before … something was wrong … badly wrong.

Fighting panic, I went back into the house and called the police. I asked if they had any information about Darian that I wouldn’t have known about (they didn’t,) and told them what I had found.

Did I want to report him as missing? No … not yet. I decided that I would wait until Monday. If he didn’t show up at court – a court we were all pretty sure he wanted to be present at – then that’s when I would report him missing.

We had a very busy week end. My childhood friend, Joanie, along with her Mum, came to spend the week end with me. Our original get together had been planned for the last week end of August, but on that Friday, Joanie had ended up in the emergency room, and had been admitted with a question of heart problems. On that Sunday morning, after a horrible night, I had been admitted through the emergency room for my own little problem. It was just one those things: our get together wasn’t meant to happen on that week end. We were both pretty wary of setting a new date, but our September 8 & 9 meeting worked out fine. On Sunday, my son, Daughter-in-law, and brand new grandbaby also came to visit … as did my Mother-in-law. It was wonderful to have them all there.

However, I couldn’t get my missing son out of my mind. A feeling of dread had settled on me like a layer of ash, dampening the joy of our little get together.

And that’s it for this installment. In the next day or so, I’ll pick up from here, and continue …

Here are some photos taken on September 9:

No, I’m not gone forever, and neither do I intend to continue only posting once a month or so …

For those who don’t know …

When we were moving home from camp this year, we were burglarized – not once, but twice! The buggers took off with everything of value that wasn’t up at camp with us … including all of our desktop computers at home. Meanwhile, between the first and second burglary, my little lap top died … so without my desktop computer waiting for me at home, I had to temporarily withdraw from school – and it was also a challenge to get online at all.

About a week ago – on the 13th, UPS pulled up to the door, and dropped off a big box for my husband. In the box was a brand new desktop computer! My son, Dougie, had bought his Dad a computer to replace the one that had been stolen. I was dumbfounded! His last day at work was that following Friday, and he was buying a computer for his Dad!

My surprises weren’t over for the day …

When he got home from work that night, he handed me a package. I opened it and found a brand new Toshiba Satellite lap top! And that’s not all he did … he had a sheet of paper in his hand on which he’d written everything he thought I would say when he gave it to me … he was right on all counts! I ran through his entire list before he handed me the paper!

I don’t really have time to blog today – since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I’ve still got to dig out the dining room so that we will have a place to eat dinner tomorrow. We’re not really going to “do” the holidays this year, because things at home are still in such disarray … but at least I’m facing the Holidays with the knowledge that I’ll be able to continue blogging, and that I’ll be able to be back in class again in January … thanks to my son.

I think I’ll keep him … ;o)

Somehow, that seems to be the theme, right now. Online communities like ours are waking up to the realization that we’re more than just faceless, often nameless, origins for the words which flow across the medical blogosphere’s monitors. We’ve become 3 dimensional, living, breathing, bleeding … warm friends. There are no ages, no sexes, no races, no cultures … we are all friends who happen to be in different places, but who are coming to know each other as well, if not better, than those we rub elbows with on a daily basis.

In Rob’s post yesterday, he alluded to the diversity of his online friends: “I have friends who are from all over the country – even all around the world. I have Hindu, Jewish, Atheist, and Agnostic friends, where I would have never had such an opportunity to get close to people across so many faiths [...]” Rob is right. Not only have we found diversity in our friendships, those friendships have developed real depth. Here, in our little corner of the blogosphere, we’ve done what the world needs to do if it wants to survive: we’ve built deep friendships irrespective of culture, race, or religion. Our differences have only been a source of wonder and enlightenment … and have expanded us beyond who we were before we stretched ourselves enough to become one thing only: good friends.

Now, I would like to think that we’re exceptional … in fact, in many ways, I do think so … but it appears as if this is a real movement which is picking up momentum as begins to span the world …

This morning, my son sent me a link to an article on SlashDot … “Over-50s Invade the Social Networking Scene“. I laughed when I read it, and quickly chased down and read the full article: “Face it – oldies want chums, too“. It made think … there’s more to all of this than meets the eye …

It’s not just an unprecedented amount of older people making a rush into Facebook … it’s people of all ages making a rush into friendship. Getting to know people … where nothing matters but who you are – not your looks, not your sex, not your age … simply who you are, and how you give yourself to your friends.

I have a sweet friend that I met in the spring of 2006. I’m sure a lot of you remember him: Dr. Hans Engel. He has the In a Doc’s Mind blog. We were in the process of developing a warm, wonderful friendship, when he had a catastrophic stroke just over a year ago. It damaged his reading and writing abilities, and since that’s how we were communicating, I was afraid that we would lose each other. But we haven’t. Our friendship continued to grow, and now we talk several times a week. We’re improbable friends … but oh, how we enjoy our little chats, and each other!

That’s an example of what these friendships are. They don’t end at the keyboard – although some of us haven’t explored them beyond that point, yet.

We’re living in an age when we no longer know our next door neighbors … we have no clue of who lives down the road … or a half dozen doors away. We’re all pressed together like canned sardines on elevators, in restaurants, checkout lines, church and temple benches … but we no longer know one another. The more tightly pressed down we are with the teeming masses in our daily walk, the lonelier we seem to become. The internet, the blogosphere, has provided a way for us to rebel against the aloneness … and here, we find that our hearts are not as solitary, and some of our deepest thoughts, loves, fears … can be shared in this little haven of ours.

Here, it’s not our bodies doing the talking … it’s our souls.

Last year, Pattie and her husband Dave, Dr. Flea, Mrs. Flea and the two little “Terminators,” and my son Dougie and I, all had a meeting in Merrimack, MA. It was great! The sun was shining, the food was plentiful, and we enjoyed each other’s company immensely!

There’s nothing like good friends, good food, and good conversation!

This year, our meeting was much, much smaller. Dr. Flea was unable to come, although he had been in on the planning earlier on, and Pattie had just shipped off her husband Dave to a far away city earlier in the same day. That left a party of … 3! Although we were lacking in number compared to last year, we were not lacking in “good friends, good food, and good conversation!”

I’m pretty sure that the restaurant thought we’d never leave! It was nearly 10 PM before we parted in the parking lot – for one more long year.

We met at “Not Your Average Joe’s” … a restaurant with a load of locations across MA, and another in VA, with more coming soon along the Atlantic seaboard. The food was really yummy, and the wait staff was excellent.

I’ve got to say that the visit with Pattie was definitely the high point of my week, plus some! Pattie lights up a whole room with her presence – she’s one of those rare people who put all of themselves into a smile. She was able to do that after having spent what must have seemed like a lifetime driving. She’d begun the day in the mountains of NH, driven down to RI, and then driven all the way back up to Medford, MA. And that was on top of all of the driving she’d done from North Carolina to NH less than a week earlier.

I’ve included a few shots of last night. For those who don’t know, that’s Pattie at the top left of the post. That’s not the only picture I have of her from last night, by the way … there’s one more, but I’m saving that one for blackmail purposes! >;o)

On the right is Dougie, looking oh-so-mischievous. That pic really captures the spirit that makes him so much fun(?) to be around … *blink* … he keeps me on my toes, because I never know what he’s going to say (or do!!!) next! Actually, I’m always telling him that he was a great kid – never in trouble, never rambunctious … he saved it all until he hit 21, and it’s been payback ever since! *LOL*

And yes, I know – I didn’t include one of myself. I intended to. However I’ve been really busy in the last week, and that’s meant that I’ve been eating things I shouldn’t (think salt *rolls eyes*) and the 2 photos Dougie took reveal a moof that looks about 10 pounds heavier than she really is. Not at all flattering. Give me a bit to get my diet back in line. You know it’s salt when behaving yourself takes 8 to 10 pounds off in less than a week.

Anyway, that’s it for this year’s meeting … hopefully next year, more of the original crowd will be there, and we’ll perhaps even have added a few people.

And – you never know who those people might be! In fact, this is how Vijay and I ended a conversation yesterday when it was time for me to leave for my meeting with Pattie:

vijay:

bye moofie
i enjoyed this

me:

ME TOO
please, let’s do it again SOON

vijay:

in person over a grateful dead or two or 3 or 4

Now wouldn’t that be interesting!!!