Dissociated Thoughts

One Weird Weekend

This past weekend was a doozy!

It all really began early Friday morning, about two or three o'clock in the morning. I awoke in a great deal of abdominal pain, clutching at my stomach as if that might soothe the pain somehow. Shortly after awakening, I got diarrhea and began throwing up as well. I just wrote it off as having eaten something bad at the restaurant my Mom and I dined at during our Thursday Mother Daughter Day Out. I suffered through it until, at about 6 am, when I began to notice blood in my feces as well. So much for getting ready for work! I had my husband take me to the hospital and called my boss to let them know I wouldn't be making it in to open the store. They ran tons of tests on me at the hospital and hooked me up to an IV to replace all the fluids that I had lost. Initial tests could not find anything wrong, so they ran more tests. All they told me before releasing me was that I have an inflamed colon and small intestine and that the bleeding will eventually stop on its own when the inflammation recedes. They sent me home with the orders to "take it easy and drink plenty of fluids".

Saturday was pretty normal, kind of. I went to work but allowed others to do the heavy lifting and other strenuous activities around the store. I dealt with the usual jerk-wad customers that inevitably come in on Saturdays to shop the sales and then went home like any other day. We had a couple of small storms roll through, but nothing like what I saw was ravaging other parts of Texas.

Yesterday decided to be another wild one. I managed to get through another day at work before everything went to hell. In fact, it wasn't until after darkness fell and the storm moved in. We were sitting in the house, trying to calm our dogs who were nervous due to the storm when, out of the window, I saw what appeared to be a fireball falling from the sky. Ever the inquisitive one, I jumped up and put on shoes and ran out into the raging storm. As I ran outside, more sparks and burning balls began to fall. I look up to where they are coming from and see that a tree limb had contacted with the electric line and had ignited. Even in the rain, the tree right in front of my house leapt with flames. I called 911 and told them the situation and they said they were sending someone out. Some strange noise sounded soon after I hung up the phone, followed by some loud popping noises and some blue-white sparks. Electricity was everywhere in the air. One huge bang later, a huge burning limb fell on top of my mailbox and the electricity in the entire area went out. But the tree continued to burn for a bit. It fizzled out before the fire department got here, probably in most part due to the pouring rain - or maybe most of the fire had been on that huge limb that fell on my mailbox. In defense of the fire departments, we do live a ways out of town and pretty far from the closest volunteer fire department.
The electricity came back on about four hours later. However, the return of electricity did not mean the return of our air conditioner. The huge surge caused by the blackout knocked out the AC somehow. We spent the entire night stuck in a hot, humid house with two very disturbed dogs who both thought they needed to be right on top of us (I assume for comfort). This morning, as my husband was getting ready to go buy another thermostat, the AC magically began working again.

Hopefully, this new day will leave the craziness of the weekend behind and life will get back to normal. What a way to herald in the month of June though!