Author Note: This is the last of my logs from Hurricane Harvey.
Day 2 – Saturday
I kept my phone connected to power up until it went out early this morning. After that, I turned on power saver mode. On standby, I should have a little more than a day of battery.
Water turned off today. I have drinking water so that’s not a big concern. I’m more worried about how I’m going to manage the bathroom. When I wrote my apocalypse novella, I gave a lot of thought to how to use the bathroom without running water. I didn’t include it in the novella because it seemed too gross to discuss. I hope I don’t have to enact the plan I came up with.
Later
Water came back on but there are warnings to boil before drinking or using to cook.
I took a bag of trash out. When I opened the door, a black void greeted me. I grabbed the LED lantern I have been using to light the apartment. After I dropped the bag into the trash can, I turned off the light. It was not the total darkness I had seen through the door. The corner store has lights as does the Lowe’s that is just within sight. A glow comes from the distance.
Day 3 – Sunday
Water is back off.
I took a leap of faith and went to Lowe’s to charge my phone. There was not a dedicated area for people to plug in like I hoped but an associate pointed out an outlet I could use. Unfortunately, it was behind a couple of coolers and another associate made me step out. Thankfully he led me to another outlet that was on the sales floor.
While I was standing beside the outlet, a woman passing by asked me where the portable fans were. I said no and she stood there staring at me for a moment before finally saying, “You don’t work here do you?” I said no. She laughed and said I looked official. I’m not sure if my it was my Voltron shirt or the wires leading from my purse to the outlet that made me look “official”.
I managed to get a partial charge before the store closed early for the day. I am going to be turning my phone off for hours at a time, turning it on only for a few minutes to check for messages and news.
Later
Listening to Coast to Coast for the first time. It’s filling the of void my paranormal podcasts. Many of them cite Coast to Coast as inspiration but I have never sought it out before. Tonight I was missing my podcasts but needed to conserve my phone battery. My eyes were tired of reading and just music wasn’t enough. I switched over to the AM bands hoping to find a news talk show that wasn’t conservative.
“…men in black, aliens, glitches in the matrix.” This caught my attention and immediately I suspected I had tuned into Coast to Coast. The signal was slightly broken so I continued scanning. From one end of the AM band to the other, I encountered the show three more times. The last was the clearest. The guest was talking about synchronicity in his life, coincidences that defied logic.
How coincidental that I wanted to listen to a paranormal podcast and found the show that inspired a lot of them?
Day 4 – Monday
I’ve been reading Maria V. Snyder’s Study series. I read the first two books long ago. The third book came out but too much time had passed and I couldn’t follow the story. A little while later I bought all three book and set them aside to read one day. I’ve finally dived into the series. I’m almost done with the third book and I realized there is too much to resolve in what is left of the book. I thought there were only three books in the series but there must be more.
I went to the corner store and bought a couple of egg rolls off the roller grill. and a cold Big Red. It’s only been two and a half days since my last hot meal. Truthfully I could have gone longer but the ease of acquiring the egg rolls was just too much of a temptation.
I finished the third book of Snyder’s series. She pulled off an ending that tied off most of the plot in a fairly satisfying manner. I’m disappointed that the character described as having very dark skin was the ultimate bad guy and not being mind controlled like I hoped. Most of the characters are described as being various shades of brown so they weren’t the only poc in the book but they were the darkest and no one else was described as being as dark.
Day 5 – Tuesday
I woke up several times during my night but didn’t turn my phone on until 10 am. I looked for the icon in the upper corner to let me know a message had been received. None appeared so I checked Facebook and Twitter for the latest news. I turned off the screen and rolled over back to sleep for a few hours. Around 1 pm I woke up. I read a little and then I got up to shave and shower. My plan was to go to the corner store and get something hot to eat, eggrolls, hotdogs, corndogs, whatever they had ready and hot on their roller grill.
After my shower, I was standing in my room, dressed only from the waist down, when I heard a clatter and thump from the front door. A second later, my roommate appeared standing in my open doorway. I crossed my arms over my breasts and she turned away while apologizing. I quickly found a bra and shirt. And that was the end of my solitude.