Surviving and maybe voting

Argh! I've reached some kind of limit. First thing this morning, I wanted the warmth and compassion of a mother. Me? At my age? Well, that's the inner child who has certainly been pretty quiet while all this hullabaloo of 25 days has happened/

And now I want, desperately, a normal meal. One that doesn't have the work-around things like bottled or boiled water, paper plates so I don't have to wash them...just sit down and enjoy a meal. Sorry, going to get pizza yesterday were we had paper plates, canned sodas, and plastic forks...was just more of the same.

We're adapting! Damn it!

And surviving too!

But maybe I could drive 50 miles and find a restaurant with ice water, and cloth napkins...and a menu of more than 6 items. I'm thinking about it...

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Last Thursday I gladly picked up two more flats of drinkable bottled water by a church in Swannanoa. They also gave me a bucket of cleaning supplies. I could use the bucket (but not the size large rubber gloves!) I'll give away the caustic chemical cleaners.

I was actually looking for the hot free meal which was prepared by the World Central Kitchen, behind a place I'd never been, called the Burnt Pretzel. 

There was a sparsely populated parking lot and I walked from there to a couple of tents from which people were walking with a black take-home container. I walked right up and received chicken chunks and beans and rice, and supposedly potatoes and carrots, and some cut up fruit. I also got a cold bottle of water and ambled over to sit at one of the picnic tables within a little fenced area. 

One bite of the chicken and it's dryness and whatever seasoning was on it meant I chewed for 10 minutes (so it felt.) I tried one of the funny cubes of "potatoes" and it was hard...and I thought maybe they were passing turnips as potatoes, so I spit it out (delicately of course). So I just picked up and went back to the car, thinking a good nuking and adding some barbecue sauce might help things.

But first...

right down the street, as I drove closer to turn onto US 70, there was more flood evidence. 

I tried to slow down and get a photo of the repairs near my apartment in Black Mountain on S. Blue Ridge Rd. where the bridge over the Swannanoa River had washed completely away. As I drove, this is what I could get...

Then I decided to try to vote. A neighbor in the apartments said they'd voted by parking in the handicap voting slot...so I gave it a try. First there was a funeral going on across the street from the library, and the bank on the corner had someone out by its parking lot to keep voters and mourners out. A whole lot of cars had been parked on the street as people walked to either of those venues. 

I parked next to the disabled voting slot, where a big SUV was parked doing the curb-side voting.  I was in the disabled parking slot for voting...but I'd have to park and get in line.

So guess what I did.

Yep, decided I could get behind another 40-50 people later, but I needed to eat something. So home to put some of the food into a bowl and add barbecue sauce, and heat it up. Yum. Noticed I didn't even try the "potatoes."

And Friday...I went back to vote.

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The sobering photo of around my area hit by Hurricane Helene Sept 26/27, 2024