Random Blog

Read it or don’t, but please at least scroll to the end to donate or share the gofundme for my dad!!

I live on a kind of homestead with my family, my sister and her girlfriend live in the main house, my partner and I live in a trailer house behind the main house. My dad’s garage is in front of the main house, and behind that is my dad’s off-grid trailer house.

we call this the garage, but you really have to understand that that was his home. He slept in his house sometimes, but he was always in that garage. He built it himself 20 years ago. He keeps his mechanic equipment, old classic cars sometimes (one was inside it at the time of the storm), his refrigerator since he doesn’t have electricity in his house, collectible antiques (most notably glass bottles), furniture (because that’s where we gather when we hang out with him), and other personal belongings in there.

My sister’s storm plan is to just stick it out, as she has 10 cats she couldn’t possibly get all into the storm shelter in an emergency, and doesn’t want to leave them behind. The only storm shelter is next to the main house, so that’s what my partner and I use, my dad goes to his brother’s down the street

It is 5/19. We don’t tend to get big storms where we are, they tend to go around us, so even in a moderate risk with an active tornado warning, the radar looked like it was going to go around us, so everyone severely doubted this storm. The warning came in before it was storming too hard, so my dad helped us load into the storm shelter before leavening for his own and even said to us, he didn’t think it was going to hit us. The last thing he said before he left was “I’m turning the light on in the garage so you have more light over here!”

waiting it out in the shelter, I kept an eye on the lights a house I could see through the shelter door. I wanted to be able to tell if the power went out. The wind started getting heavy, the light flickered out, and the rain was so thick that I could hardly see what was right outside the door, and it got DARK. The radar made a sudden shift and now the storm was about to go right through us. I closed the shelter door. It’s poorly ventilated, so usually we leave it open unless something bad is really happening.

the vent hole in the back began to run water. We were about to be flooded out of the shelter. We kept all the fur babies as dry as we could, but we only have so many hands, and the water was rising. The wind was loud, it was so loud that I never heard a crash when the tree fell. There was a confirmed touchdown near us in our county.

when the storm had calmed, my dad got out of his brother’s also flooding shelter, and saw some damage there, but not to anything super important, so he wanted to come check on everyone else to make sure we were all okay. When he pulls into the driveway, this is the first thing he sees

by this point, I’ve opened the shelter door, and have seen that the sky is much clearer. I can hear my dad, and can hear the upsetness in his voice, but I can’t hear what he’s saying. Eventually he comes down toward the shelter and hollers for us “are you guys in there?” “Yeah!” I holler back. “The garage is GONE!” He says “It’s all gone! The truck! My refrigerator, it’s all gone!”

from the shelter, this is approximately the angle I can see

As I cannot see inside of it, and I can only see the top right corner really, I can barely tell the wall is bowed or that the roof collapsed. I believe him that there’s damage, but in my head I feel like it must be repairable. He told me to stay in the shelter, then left, I don’t know where to.

Eventually my sister comes out and tells me I’m probably safe to come out now, and we bring all the soaked fur babies onto their screened-in porch. We had heard rumors of another round of storms, so we didn’t want to go all the way back home yet.

this is when I got to see the garage and see that, no, this is not repairable damage.

we hunker down at my sister’s house and invite dad over, so we’re closer to the shelter if we need it again. My dad mentions he had just been talking about how that was his favorite shade tree, and now it’s gone, and it took his garage with it.

Eventually we go home, there’s still no power. Dad tells us its estimated to be days before the power’s back on, and that he’ll try to find the battery for the generator in the garage rubble in the morning to run refrigerators.

everyone collectively decides that we’re calling out of work the next day to help him with the garage.

still no power in the morning. Dad starts the generator on my refrigerator. I tell my sister there’s plenty of room in ours for her food if she wants to bring it over so he doesn’t have to run the generator back and fourth. She brings her food over and we all get out to work.

my dad jacked up the ceiling to get the truck out, it made it out with a barely visible dent on it

My dad’s brother is out with his tractor and his chain saw working on moving the tree, we’re all moving limbs and chunks of wood into brush piles, and some neighbors stop by to help too.

my partner and I take a trip to town to get more gas for the generator, charcoal for the grill so we can eat, and some snack foods that don’t require electricity to prepare. We also buy water bottles and a couple packs of baby wipes, because we live on a well, which means when the power goes out, we don’t have water either. So after sitting in muddy water in the storm shelter, and lugging trees across the yard, we have no idea when our next shower will be.

once the tree is off, my dad pulls the back wall off to get his fridge and freezer out. The eggs in his refrigerator were miraculously not broken, and both appliances appear in-tact. We moved his food into my fridge and freezer.

We then began going in and boxing up everything we can reach. Some of his antique bottles were broken, but a lot were in-tact. Most of his favorite tools survived, but a lot was still damaged. His favorite cooler was smashed. He had just bought a table and chair set, one chair was missing a base so he made one for it. The table was glass, and I kept telling him about how glass tables have a tendency to spontaneously shatter. The chair with the base he made was fully holding up the back end of the garage, the other chair’s base was completely crushed, but the seat survived, and he keeps telling me the table didn’t just shatter for no reason!

once we’d gotten everything we could, we called it a night. We still did not have power. It came back on early the next morning.

now we’ve been working on disassembling. Saving any tin sheets that are in-tact, scrapping those that are too damaged, keeping any screws that aren’t bent, and digging out any tools, or wires, and boxing them up.

There’s still a lot of work to do, and we have no idea if/when he’ll be able to afford to rebuild. So, I would appreciate anyone who donates or shares this gofundme!

My dad built his garage around 20 years ago and it’s been like a home to him ever since. He spends more time in it than he ever did in his own house. It truly was a special place to him, and we’re all devastated that it’s gone. It was smashed by a tree in a recent storm.

My dad has always taken care of everyone around him, and I want to do something to help him now. Funds will go to rebuilding and replacing damaged and destroyed belongings, and helping him get by during these tough times.

about a year ago, I said I was going to start reading books and reviewing them on tumblr, and the book I was reading did such a bad job at pulling me in, that after designating one whole day to dragging myself through the first half of the book, I’ve not touched it, or any book for that matter, in a year. I find it very hard to abandon a book, so rather it sits on my table as I dread the thought of reading it. I’m taking the year’s gap as a sign to put the book away. Maybe I’ll try it again some day but that day is NOT today. before I begin my review, I’d just like to say that just because a book doesn’t call to me specifically, doesn’t mean it’s a BAD book! Everyone will have their own preferences and opinions, and this is just mine! I especially can’t judge the whole book, as I only read the first half of this one

I read the first half of This Place Is Still Beautiful by XiXi Tian. It takes place in a small town during summer, and starts with a racial slur being vandalized onto the Chinese-American family’s home. This sets the tone that it’s going to be a story about inequality and racism in America, and would empower Asian people (predominantly Asian women, as the main characters are both women) to be who they are and embrace their culture. Though, reading the first half of the book, the social justice context seemed to take a back burner to what just felt like teen drama and immature romance to me. I felt more annoyed by the characters than intrigued or entertained. The characters felt one-sided to me as well. I tried to give the book a shot, I really did, and I pushed myself through half of it, it just didn’t resonate and was really uninteresting to me. I’m sure it has an audience out there that would love it, I just don’t think I’m a part of that audience. So feel free to check the book out if you want.

She said she figured they were for prescriptions since the bill was so low, but the bill was not from the pharmacy, nor had I filled any prescriptions. I asked her to show me the bills she was receiving, and none of them had a patient name anywhere on them, the only name was for the “responsible party” which was my mom. So I have no clue what led her to believe these were my bills, or for her to believe they were legitimate in any way. I told her SHE needed to call the doctors office because she was almost definitely falling for a scam. She told me she was just going to pay it.

The next month she calls me all angry again that she got another bill from the doctors office for me. She showed me the bill, and once again, my name is no where on it. I told her I had not filled any prescriptions nor been to the doctors office in months, and that my name was not even on the bill, so I had no clue why she would even think it was mine at all. I told her she was very likely falling for a scam and that she needed to call the doctors office. She told me she’d call them on Monday, and she’d let me know what she found out.

It breaks my little heart every time I have to take a name on the list because they’re no longer with us.

I had two pet deaths in 2024, my sister’s cat, Oliver, and my family’s bulldog, Gunny.

Ollie passed away in the summer, so at the beginning of Christmas shopping, I saw his name and had to take him off the list.

I had already bought and wrapped Gunny’s present before he passed away, so his name was already checked off, and now that the Christmas season is over, I went back to uncheck all the names, and saw Gunny’s and had to take him off the list.

So I’m sad now, so here’s a couple pictures of Ollie and Gunny, with a special appearance by Gunny’s Christmas present, Lamb chop, and the Lamb chop that was well-loved by him in life

This is Murphy in 2019 and Murphy today, getting old and gray

This is him when we got him in 2016, and him in his awkward growing stage too for fun

Here’s Demon in 2019 and Demon today, he’s pretty gray too.

Here’s the only picture I have of Demon when we got him in 2011 or 2012, featuring his brother Goober who we rehomed. I don’t have puppy pictures of him cause we never had him as a puppy, so I’ve only got his awkward teen years.

I don’t notice near as many signs of aging in my little girl Louise, but I know she’s the same age as Murphy, this is her in 2019 and her today

Here’s her and Murphy, not long after we got them in 2016.

Sometimes my dad will just open the door to “steal” our dogs for play dates, and they always come back so happy after play dates with Grandpa ❤️