~and so you get up~

~along the Kansas-Oklahoma border at 2 a.m.~

It's the early morning hours here.  I mean the really early morning hours. 

The clock on the wall reflects the fact that I have much on my mind.  While regular people are sound asleep at the 2:30 a.m. hour, I'm wide awake and already trying to tackle most of the day's problems from here at the desk in our kitchen.  I wish I could have slept but after 30 minutes of tossing and turning, there was just one option left.

Get up.

Yesterday marked the merciful end of a long and memorable (and not in a nice way either) week.  After being out of school for 3 days because of an October ice storm, we were at long last able to return. What a joy it was to finally see the kids once again, but our happiness was short lived when we found out at the end of the day we would go to a virtual setting the following week because of increasing Covid 19 concerns.  We hurriedly got our Halloween costumes on and enjoyed the special treats that had been provided for the kids before we packed up our things and went back home once again.  They will not be able to return back to school until November 9th.

What a year this has been!

This past week would have been a great one to wallow in our misery.  Here at our home, the power was out for over 50 hours when wave after wave of freezing rainstorms passed through the great state of Oklahoma.  Ice laden tree limbs and electrical lines crashed to the ground, taking the power out for huge sections of Newkirk.  For awhile being inside without heat was tolerable, but it didn't take long for it to become quite uncomfortable. Thursday night the inside temperatures hovered at about the 54 degree mark, something akin to how it used to be sleeping upstairs in an old farmhouse when I was a kid. When we saw the city crews making their way northward down our alley on Thursday in the very late afternoon hours, the entire neighborhood here breathed a collective sigh of relief.  

By Thursday evening, our endurance of the ice storm's effects was finally complete.  How wonderful it was to see the lights come on at very long last!


Today the cleanup of the yard here begins and we are so grateful to have the help of my son who will be bringing a chainsaw coupled with spirit and muscle.  I have no doubt that everything will be cleaned up by the day's end.  We are thankful for the gift of his presence here today because without the help, it would have taken forever to finish.  

In all of the bad that has been going on as of late, it would be easy to lose sight of the things that are indeed good.  We were the recipients of many acts of human kindness, ones that made us so thankful to be a part of this Kay County community.  Friends and family checked in on us daily.  Mike and I had offers of warm shelter if we needed it and the use of a generator, both from dear and precious friends who I teach with each day at Newkirk Elementary School.  Yesterday family members of one of the students in my fourth grade class here helped to drag out limbs to the curb for us.  It was such a surprise, almost a shock actually.  They knew that it was too soon after Mike's surgery for him to be messing around and doing that kind of thing.  So without saying anything, they came over in the morning and got to work.  

No one here on earth knows what the days ahead will bring us.  Perhaps it would be much easier to just stay in bed and pull the covers up over our heads until Covid 19 passes, the ice storm is cleaned up, and the election is over.  Somehow I don't think that's the answer to life's problems so instead of doing that, I think I'll just make one more cup of coffee and get this day started.

In body, mind, and spirit it is time to be up.




 

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