The storm before the calm

I wrote this a few nights after I wrote my previous blog post but never got around to posting it. Since my husband keeps asking if the video at the end has made it into a blog post, now it has...

My night:

I can't go anywhere because along with my husband 40 miles away at the beach (at a work retreat in a rented house with his department, which consists of him and 8 women, where as the only man he gets the master bedroom and bath and balcony) is our car.  Having just moved in, I'm completely stir crazy and at all moments on the point of tears because I feel totally trapped and isolated and feel like I have no control over my environment.  I'm not in walking distance of anything but a Walgreens and a vacant strip mall, where the lone holdout is a CBD store that says "Family Video" on its faded 1980s marquee but would appear to be not so much into the "family" part anymore, and after I attempted to walk the 2.5 miles to the nearest commercial area, I was halted a mile and a half in by the abrupt end of sidewalk. I've seen no human beings all day except through car windows because walking is apparently not a mode of transportation here, something I find more than a little depressing.  I have, however, seen many geese and ducks when I took a walk-around-a-lake detour in my failed shopping attempt... where not one other human was taking advantage of the beautiful scenery.  On top of feeling all day like I was in the William Shatner episode of the Twilight Zone where there are no other humans, I've also been dealing with an extremely high-energy cat who has no room to run, because my husband left the evening the movers came, so there are boxes piled so high and precariously in the bedroom I can't reach them and can't make the bedroom safe for the cat, so I've just closed the door, confining us both to the living room and my office, which are configured in such a way that he can't run without the bedroom being open.  So he howls and howls and cries and cries and has twice today attempted to free-run and fallen awkwardly on his back or stomach (once landing in his food and water bowls and making a mess everywhere) and terrified me that he might have some horrible internal injury after he just lay down and closed his eyes after his second fall.  He looks up at me and begs me to make things so he can run, and all I can do is tell him I know exactly how he feels and I'm right there with him.  Then tonight a monster storm hit, with sirens going off, the sounds of monsters banging on our front door and window (that's what my cat thinks, at least), and the lights flickering on and off.  The lights flickering panicked me because while I knew exactly where our flashlights were in our NYC apartment, my husband was the one to pack them the day we drove, and I hadn't any idea where they were now, and unlike New York, there would be no ambient light if the power went out.  Here, we'd be in complete blackness.  So I frantically called and texted my husband asking him to please tell me where the flashlights were, passionately hating that I was powerless on my own to either lift boxes and make the space livable or find flashlights to take care of myself and my cat.

So that was my night.  Meanwhile, this was my husband's (and Mrs. Robinson's?) night, as texted while I was in the middle of scooping litter.

Post Script:

My husband came home to this on our refrigerator magnet wall.

Post post script:
I have now gotten to drive and unpack, the bedroom is accessible and set up, the cat has stopped howling and can run and jump and be his crazy self, and I have gotten a theatre fix in with a quick vacation to the Stratford Festival, so I no longer feel like ripping my hair out.  However, my husband is still on litter duty.