TheBanyanTree: Evacuation

[Margaret R. Kramer]

I’m so sick of January.  Usually winter doesn’t bother me, but this winter
hasn’t been the kind of winter I wanted to be outside and I think that’s why
I’m tired of this month with its dark mornings and dark evenings.  

First, it got all icy from the Christmas storm.  Then we were in the deep
freeze for a while.  Now it’s warm, but it’s an icky cold kind of warm.  Not
the kind of warm that you want to spend any time outside.  Everything is wet
and will soon be ice again as the temperature is dropping.

And it seems so dark when I get up the morning.  I know the days are getting
longer again, but it sure is taking a long time to show up in the morning.
When I get off from work in the evening, it’s already starting to get dark.


It’s dark and icy, so I don’t walk the dogs.  I’m getting so house bound, I
might as well be snowed in.

But spring will come, it always does.  I’ll hang in there until then.

I got up early, 6:30 am, this morning.  I’m so caught up on my sleep, it’s
ridiculous.  I worked two jobs for a year and a half, and my whole thing was
trying to get enough sleep.  I’d get home at night and be so jazzed up, I
couldn’t get to sleep.  Then I’d get up at 5:00 am the next morning in order
to get a workout in before work.  I was getting by on less than five hours a
sleep a night.

Now, I get up at 4:00 am, go to the gym, and I’m home by 7:15 am.  Joe picks
me up and takes me to work.  I get home from work around 5:00 pm, make
dinner, do computer stuff, and I’m usually in bed by 10:30 pm at the latest.
I’m so rested, I don’t know what to do with myself.

I also haven’t bought gas for my car since January 4.  I rarely drive at
all.  Joe takes me and picks me up from work.  I drive to and back from the
gym in the morning.  And I drive to errands during the evening and on
weekends.  It’s exciting for me to drive more than 10 miles.  For my old,
old job, I used to drive 32 miles one way to work.

I drove to the gym this morning.  It was packed.  In fact, I don’t think
I’ve seen it packed like this ever.  That might be a good sign, people are
working out and people have money to join a gym and work out. 

I had a nice cardio workout and then I was doing my sit-ups on a mat in the
stretching area.  I usually have my eyes closed and my iPod blasting.  I was
in sit-up heaven when I heard someone say to me, “Hey, you!”

I opened my eyes and I saw a young woman who is employed by the club
standing above me.

The first thing out of my mouth is, “Did I do something wrong?”  What a
weird thing to say.

“No,” she said.  “There is a fire alarm and we have to evacuate.”

Then I saw the flashing white lights and heard the alarm.

I got right up and I was going to go into the parking ramp, when I thought,
heck, I’ll just get dressed, and leave.

So I went to the locker room and started to change my clothes.  There were
some women just coming out of the showers.  I teased one of them and told
her she should go out there with just a towel around her.

If there was a real fire, I would have perished getting dressed.  I could
see the headlines, “Woman with sweaty and stinky body dies in gym fire while
trying to change clothes instead of evacuating like she was supposed to.”

I got my sweaty body dressed and went to the parking ramp.  Firemen were
coming into the gym looking serious.  The alarms were still going off.
There were people standing in the parking ramp, but I walked by them to my
car.  I was glad I was done with my workout.  I would have hated to have to
go back in and finish it.

There were fire engines outside the gym, but I drove on to the cemetery.

No one was there on this icky wet Sunday.  I love it when I’m alone out
there.  Ray’s wreath was getting brown and I was able to pull the stand out
of the ground and take it home where it will join the other wreaths in the
compost pile.

I saw deer tracks in the snow along the outside area of Ray’s section.

I talked to Ray about the Vikings/Saints game today.  He would have loved
this – Farve as quarterback and the Vikings.  Perfect.  But he also
remembers the losses to the Falcons and the Giants, and he came to
understand after living in Minnesota, that rooting for the Vikings doesn’t
guarantee a positive outcome.

I’m now “friends” with three of his children on Facebook, so there’s been a
lot of bantering about the game.  They’re for the Vikings, because of Farve.

I baked some cheese/onion bread, have a rigatoni dish ready to slip into the
oven, and I also baked some cream cheese brownies this afternoon.  I have a
nice red wine chilling in the fridge.  Joe is coming over for dinner and
we’ll watch the game.  He’s a very verbal fan, with lots of cussing, so it
will be interesting to see if he has a meltdown if the Vikings lose.  

Then I’ll have to evacuate again . . .

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net
margaret.kramer at polarispublications.com
www.polarispublications.com
www.linkedin.com/in/margaretkramer

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a
friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire:  it is the time for home. 
-Edith Sitwell