I can't believe how tired I still am! I put this journal down last night at eight o'clock & did my watch until midnight. I could have almost wished something had happened; if only to help me stay awake. MT was doing her journal, sitting in her usual spot by the fire with the TV on quietly in the background. Maxine had been saving up her shower/bath times & took the trouble to heat up several large kettles & pots of hot water at the fireplace & on top of the wood stove. She announced her intention to take a long hot, UNINTERRUPTED bath. She did so & 'sacrificed' one of Anne's scented candles & some of the bubble bath. Actually, I think she used some of that cheap dish soap that does such a lousy job on dishes - bad prep buy - and a few drops of some essential oil. Smelled too flowery for me, but judging by the humming in there, she liked it. The others were all either asleep or keeping quietly busy.

Safety patrol is easier now. Everyone is more mindful of the risks involved with the fireplace & wood stove & the kids especially have caught on to conserving heat. It only takes about 10 minutes now to check the whole house & I rarely find any areas for concern. I actually climbed into the attic; I'd forgotten those 2 end windows up there. Andy had earlier cleaned them off & told me I might want to trying looking out of those on night patrol. He was right; the extra 10 or so feet of height bring a lot more of the town into view.

With binoculars I can make out most of the downtown area & I saw quite a few reefer trucks heading both in & out. Those heading out were going in the direction of the 2 burial fields so obviously many are still not making it. I saw a few military trucks; not sure if they were carrying anyone or anything... but it stands to reason. I got a phone call about 10 o'clock. One of the farmers behind us, Drew his name is; anyway Anne is a friend of his wife's & he wanted to know if we could use some eggs. Even offered to drop it off on this side of the woods & call back when it was at the edge of the woods. I told him we'd take it, but not to kill himself getting it to us.

Anne helped his wife after their last baby, she'd had a pretty hard time of it at delivery & they've never forgotten. Over the years, they've given us a lot of fresh meat, eggs & milk. It was wonderful that they thought of us. I think we'll take it. He & Noreen are alone, both got vaxed & he swears they've not been off the farm & as far as they know, no one's been near them. He sees little point in continuing to dump fresh milk if others can use it. He'll deliver it in a container he says we can spray & if we're still worried, I'll freeze the milk in chunks & we can cook with it. Heat should kill any virus present.

I hate to take something like that without giving back something in return, but Drew says they're doing fine, have everything they need. I swear Noreen had enough food done down for 10 years, so I don't doubt that! Still, I asked Drew to think about it & to leave a note if he thinks of something. He'll bring it down tonight, after dark. He fears he may have to slaughter some of his cattle soon; it's just too much for him to see to everything with no farm help. His 2 labourers never did come back after the outbreak was announced.

Anyway, other than that it was a quiet shift. I had some good news for Cindy when she got up this morning. A Humvee drove by & slowed up in front of out house, just around 2300. I had heard it driving & happened to be on the front step when it slowed up. It was Jake in the passenger seat! He yelled out he's doing routine patrols, as well as taking shifts guarding the power plant. He's fine & I was able to shout back that Cindyis fine. He only stayed about 30 - 40 seconds, but it sure cheered Cindy up. She gave me hell for not asking if & when he might be by our way again, so SHE could be at the front door. To be honestly, I was so overjoyed to see him & it happened so fast, I never thought about it.

Nothing else happened & I was glad to crawl into my bed at midnight. I was very tired but still am having trouble falling asleep. I must be coming down with a doozy of a cold. My chest feels heavy & I had to half sit up to breathe properly. Danged diaphram kept hurting too; think I strained something getting up into the attic. I asked Andy to see what he can do to make that final step up a little easier. maybe a rope handle or something nailed into the roof beams...

Anyway, both men reported absolutely nothing going on when they stood their watches. Andy lucked in... an absolutely lovely display of northern lights. He woke the kids, bundled them up & took them out back for a half hour or so to watch. He had the sense to tell them to not move from the back step & he assures me he kept proper watch while the kids were oohing & aahing over the aurora. Right now, Andy is doing midnight to 4 & Sam taking 4 to 8 am. Maxine offered to take some shifts, but I think not. They're wearing enough for anyone & she's more than pulling her weight.

Sam was able to jot down some local news notes. WKLD is still doing a decent job collecting & trying to confim information. Officially, there are 14,850 cases reported in town & those rural areas which are administered by the city. Of those almost 8,000 have died. The dead are varied in their nature. Over 5000 are those under the age of 10 or those who had immune problems. The rest are ordinary folks, reasonably healthy adults who should have had the best chance to live. The city expects up to 5000 more may get sick over the next month or 2. Scary though. If they do & the current death rate holds, we'll be left with a population of maybe 15,000.

Entire families have been wiped out & the city right now, can't begin to check individual houses to see what may be inside. Currently, if anyone reports that someone SHOULD be home & there's no sign of life & hasn't been for at least 48 hours, the city is checking. In all too many of these cases, they're bringing out bodies. We have 600 known orphans right now, some survivors of the illness & others who haven't contracted it at all. Most of those were vaccinated, but not all. Who on earth is going to look after these little muffins is a mystery. About half are under 6 & most of the rest are over 12 - not sure why the mid group is so small, seems only about 100 kids are between 6 & 12. Unfortunately, Greg saw this news item repeated at bereakfast time & he's determined we should take at least 2 kids. 'After all', he says, 'we have more than we need'. He's even got one of the kids picked out; one that was in that item. I've told him we're a long way from even thinking about such things; that we have enough with Cindy & MT. I think he's going to work hard on changing my mind!

The case rates certainly don't fit what I've read where some get sick at first, followed by quite a few more 2 weeks later. What's actually happened is that a great many people got sick very quickly after the first few cases were discovered & confirmed. Nationally the station thinks over 50 million are sick with 30 million or so dead. They can't easily confirm that but have friends & family who still have sporadic phone service reporting on how many people they know or think are sick in their communities. One reporter has a contact at USAMRIID. Until yesterday, this person was giving numbers as he had them, although they haven't heard from this individual today. It sure sounds bad.

Many of the large cities appear totally out of control. Local governments have broken down as many elected & appointed officials have themselves become ill & died. New York City appears to be in a state of complete civil disorder. Some idiot bombed the Verrazano Narrows bridge; thank God no one was on it at the time. Not sure when but some helicopter shots show a lot of storefronts have been smashed. There's a huge fire in Brooklyn that no one seems interested in controlling. Hard to anyway with no water pressure in the hydrants. I only hope it doesn't spread too far - it's a heavily residential area.

LA has degenerated into a series of war zones. Strikes me as a stupid time to expand one's territory if you fancy yourself a warlord. I expect a lot of these idiots will soon find themselves sick, if they're not already showing symptoms. Of course just about any store there has been looted, including the better Beverly Hills boutiques. How anything from Ralph Lauren can help fight the illness is beyond me unless, unbeknownst to me he had a line of color co-ordinated masks & gowns.

There's little news from New England which is being battered by another snowstorm. Several truckers CB'ed to friends who have been "chain phoning" each other until they get to some form of media. Seems inland Maine is reporting up to 20 inches of snow & RI, Delaware, Conneticutt & Vermont as well as New Hampshire are also reporting unreal amounts of snow - up to 3 feet in 36 hours in some cases. Massachussetts is being stricken hard by storm surge. Seems that Cape hatteras low turned into a badly timed weather bomb. With power out, few people had warning & there are fears that some fishing fleets may be competely wrecked. I only hope no one was at seas. Don't know much about fishing seasons, but it doesn't make sense that anyone would have been out there...

The south & southwest as blessed with almost warm enough weather. Nevertheless they're having a rough time with the outbreak; too many older people getting away from colder weather caught the virus. Most have not made it & God only knows what they're doing with the bodies in the southeast. Most areas have a very high water table, so obviously bodies can't be buried. Apparently they're being stored in whatever freezers authorities can find until they can be cremated. Might take a long time.

Locally in terms of food, it's suddenly not so bad. With so many dead & rationing in place, supplies are going to hold out for a few more weeks. After that, it's anyone's guess. There are fresh crops available in warmer parts of the country & Canada, bless them, have huge amounts of grain in reserve. They've already lost 10 million people. They didn;t think they'd get hit for a time, didn't impose any travel restrictions they could enforce & were slow off the mark with vaccines. In any case, they have lots of grain & now it's just a matter of getting it here. They're "working on it".

We're all boiling water. Whenever we have our scheduled power outages, I assume the power won't come back. We all fill containers, anything we have that can hold water. May sound a bit excessive, but I'm no longer taking chances with anything. At the very least, we can use it to flush sewage down the toilet.

I ate too much again I guess or ate too fast; getting bad gas pains in my stomach again. I'll have to find the antacids if this continues. Damned kids must have jacked up the heat for MT or something. Suddenly it's really hot in here. Wish Anne were home, I'm getting cranky with having to moniter everything all the time. Know I'm getting stressed out; this gas is unusual & right now it's REALLY starting to hurt. I'd better take a brea..........