[FICTION]Tom & family go for their vaccines...

[Backdraft]

Great Story!!!!!


Starting to get the shakes and cold sweats. Must be withdrawal.

[CanadaSue]

Sorry, have a sick kid, 3 'research' projects on the go & 2 out of 4 cats squalling. Need my wrist cast changed too, getting tichy as all get out underneath it all & my hand HURTS.

Soon, SOOOOOOOOOOOOOON...

lol

Seriously, as soon as I can get back to it.

[seraphima]

aaaargh! What was on the news?!

BTTT!

[CanadaSue]

It took me a few days to decide where I was going to go with this one. There are so many 'wonderfully dismal' possibilities. I decided to keep it 'national' as much as possible only giving international events as they affect the US & as interesting side bars.

The logical place to go now is breakdowns & failures... of all types, at all levels.

Hand is now recasted - rebroke a minor bone & doc said rest it; he doesn't have kids, cats & a spouse!

In the morning, it should be set hard enough for protracted writing.

[CanadaSue]

evening, January 2/03

Have you ever felt helpless in the face of events; truely utterly helpless beyond the realm of even what your faith can bring you? May the Lord forgive me but I find myself feeling that way now. I'm no longer sure of my capacity to absorb events, to analyse & react to them in a sane way. I don't know many who can.

I'm glad Cindy called me in to watch the news. She'd been monitering the endless speculation & analysis of what might happen as a result of the nuclear detonation over Bagdhad when the anchor broke in with a story from California. It was difficult to confirm details as they were having to rely on ham radio reports. As best we could make out at the time, California's very few power corridors had been taken out, by explosives it would seem. Reports were spotty & dependant on trying to figure out which caller was closest to what facility. All in all, most of the state is without power tonight, afternoon now, their time. There's an El Nino storm about to hit the coast, a monster from the looks of things and next to no co-ordination between civil authorities at state level & the federal level. All efforts have been going to fight the outbreak & while FEMA is deployed; they're deployed in aid of the vaccination campaign & at various field hospitals & other medical facilities jury rigged to deal with the outbreak.

We hadn't been watching this long when similar reports began coming out of New York State. If those who called in on cell phones & who were able to radio in to those tv stations who moniter shortwave are to be believed, a number of power plants & major switching sites have gone down too; judging by the timing & the number that went out at once, it had to be deliberate. New York City is out, watertown, Syracuse & Buffalo; all the large cities. Some seemed to be holding but as the system tried to switch around the increasing number of problems, they had a major cascade failure. Reports from northern Canada indicate that the large generating plants in the James Bay region which fed power to the northeast of the US went down too. They do have a few left, but are reserving power for their own use. I can't say I blame them. As bad as winter can be here, I'm sure it's colder in Canada & they've been hit hard as well.

Reports kept coming in of major transformer sites, stepping sites & generation sites going out. It has to be sabotage. Many reported major explosions & with the current crisis, few were witnessed by any police or military. Chicago is gone too & I thank the good Lord we have local generation capacity. The main network feeds out of the large cities are all out & local stations from various areas are doing an heroic job trying to cobble together a general picture for those of us who still have access to TV.

We've already experienced several brownouts & Andy just yelled in that we'll be experiencing rotating blackouts. Everyone must be so tempted to crank up the thermostats in order to heat homes before the rotating 2 hour blackouts begin. I'm so thankful we have our fireplaces & that currently, we're all healthy. his is going to be very, very bad - if not for us then for huge swathes of the country.

Every generator available in most areas had been bought, borrowed or otherwise procured in order to power the many buckshee hospital setups that various communities have cobbled together. Some miserable souls have been trying to recover in tents. In winter, even "insulated" tents need a powerful lot of help to keep half way warm & there simply hasn't been the manpower available to do it. The cold will kill off many, especially the very old & very young.

Worse, there's little or no water now in many large communities & no sewage treatment. How will factories produce food; we're just getting into the coldest part of winter. This may grind the vaccie & medical equipment shipments to a halt, unless someone can figure out alternative ways to pump gas. I've seen a few video clips of people using cobbled together hand pumps & the like to fill transport trucks, but that's just not a long term workable solution. The military is already stretched beyond thin; they can't take on another major job right now.

What are we in for? I fear the worst. If not for me & my family, for the nation as a whole. There has been very little right now from the government except for repeated statements, disseminated through what media is left to 'keep calm'; that the government is currently doing its best to evaluate the severity of the circumstances & to determine the nature & extent of the damage that's been done. Until that occurs, they urge people to use their heads; to dress warmly if they're without power & to make sure their homes are closed up as best they can manage.

There have been suggestions along those lines; staple any plastic you have to windows, hang extra blankets over windows; that sort of stuff. There have been several warnings about using extreme caution in using other types of heaters, especially kerosene, parrafin, etc. I don't doubt we'll soon start hearing of fires & how will the fire departments cope? They can't use the hydrants without power & even the pumper trucks need fuel fed into them using electricity.

There have also been a number of statements by all levels of government about conserving water; filling containers you have, if you still have water & being judicious in its use. They haven't even touched sewage concerns yet.

We the adults, are all stunned; not sure how to react, how we SHOULD react. We all want to keep a calm mein for the childrens' sake, but that may prove difficult. They're not babies & they know something is seriously wrong. They have access to the radio which has gone "all news, all the time" for now. They've looked fearful since they first heard & I, we; have no answers for them. All we've been able to do is reassure them that we as a family can hold out fine for a good, long time, even without heat. We have the fireplaces & can all bunk down in the livingroom if we have to.

They helped fill extra buckets with water. I'm not sure that's necessary with the barrels I've already filled & the pond out back, but it gave them something positive to do. We've told them that between the fire places & wood stove, meals won't be a problem. Some things may not be as perfectly cooked as we'd liked, but they WOULD be cooked.

I feel so terribly badly for the President & the government. They've stated they have not had any claim of responsability yet, but right now, I should think that hardly matters. What is of paramount importance is determining just how bad this is, what - if any areas have been spared & how to start getting things fixed. I fear hearing much of the damage may be beyond repair of a simple nature.

Right now, our phones aren't working & that's a frightening feeling. We feel somewhat cut off although that's ridiculous. We have the CB radio system up & working & I can cobble together something with the old ham set Andy used to play with. Right now, curfew be damned, I'm heading out into town to see what there is to see, to pick up what information I can. The others aren't at all happy, but I can't sit here like a baby, helpless & not knowing.

May God be with me...

[CanadaSue]

Still feel cold & tired after last night, hope to get some sleep a little later this afternoon. There's more snow falling but thankfully it's not too cold. I waited until about midnight last night before heading out to see what there was to be seen. I always like to believe the local news gives us the truth, but this is too serious a situation to make such assumptions. As well, who knows where they're getting their information from, how reliable it may be. Before leaving, I took my usual shift. Andy had offered to take over so I could nap, but I almost felt beyond the need for sleep. It was a quiet evening, the only sound being the rising wind as the front came in. Thankfully it was a warm front; 'stealthing' around in the dark in winter means lots of time holding perfectly still. Chattering teeth don't help. I ate a good meal & Maxine filled 2 canteens with hot water for me.

I travelled light, not wanting to be slowed up by dragging around too much stuff. I debated bringing the rifle. On the one hand I wanted the "insurance" but on the other, any police oficer or military types spotting me might decide I was up to no good & shoot me on sight. I finally decided to bring it. I'm not a young pup anymore & there's no way I could bring someone down by hand, not without causing myself some problems I'd pay for later.

Sam, Andy & I went over the local maps we have & tried to figure out the best route. We finally decided I'd best skirt the edge of the field behind the house, cut through the woods, then travel through Rob Johnson's back field to where it's cut by the old county road. That put me within a half mile of town with lots of cover along the road, should I need it. It would also let me see the power plant & the intersection with the overstate. Apparently the army was using the truck stop there as a staging area. If there was anything to see, it would be there. There's also the old dry wash which cuts through some back streets, leading right to downtown.

It was eerie stepping away from the house & I had a bad case of the willies. Everything I needed to keep me safe & warm, everything I hold dear, was in the house... and there I was walking away from it. I really had to fight the urge to turn around & walk back to safety. For the first 5 minutes or so, it seemed the farther I walked from the house, the more exposed I felt, the more frightened. In some ways I felt huge & ponderous, visible to anyone within a few miles. There were times when that froze me in place for a bit. In other ways, I felt insignificant, the smallest thing on the face of the earth.

It took me a good half hour just to make my way to the woods. The fence line from our property to the woods isn't that long, but it sure seemed that way. I was thankful the wind had scooped out the drifts to make a partial tunnel along the fence. By keeping low, I was able to keep out of sight for the most part. I took my time entering the woods when I got there. They're pretty thick & you can't see very far; I didn't want to stumble into any unpleasant surprises. There was nothing in there, other than deer & small game. Should it come to that, there seems to be no shortage of deer in there & it won't be too far to get the meat home.


It was hairy going through Rob's back field. It's pretty flat & somewhat raised up above the surrounding ground. It gave ME good sight lines, but no doubt anyone looking my way would have had a clear view of me at times. I had to duck down by the country road, hiding behind what's left of an old hay roll. The road is more or less ploughed & while I hunkered down, several military trucks went by. They were loaded, could tell by the axles; but the loads were covered by tarps & I had no chance to make out what was in them. A few hundred yards past me, they left the road & headed straight for the truck stop. I was glad I brought my old binoculars. I could se a number of troops at the truck stop. Looks like they've set it up as some sort of barracks. There also appears to be a supply depot, mounds & mounds of barrels, crates, piles of stuff covered with tarps & well guarded. I couldn't make out what any of it was, just that it was well guarded.

The power plant also appears to be well guarded. I could see troops patrolling, about one pair every 200 yards or so. The outside of the plant sure was well lit. It was reassuring to see obvious signs of it working full out. The parking lot is full of cars & judging by the snow on them, many have not moved in days. There were guards at the front gate. Probably at the back gate too; but I couldn't make it out from where I was standing.

I had a scare heading down the dry wash towards downtown. It curves & bends quite a bit & while it offers great concealment, you also can't see what, if anything, is coming at you. I was about halfway down when a doe burst out from around the corner & flew by me. I swear she flew right over my head. Wouldn't have been hard seeing as I hit the ground as soon as I saw movement. I stayed on the ground a few minutes, trying to get my heart rate down. Thankfully, nothing else moved through & I was able to come out onto George street, right behind what's left of the pharmacy that burned down.

The town is eerily quiet. I didn't see too many signs of life on the streets. A few military patrols drove by along Center street, but there was no movement on the side streets that I could make out. Many houses are dark & quiet, looking as though they're closed down. I hope many were simply away for the holidays & not ill. Usually though, people come home to HERE for holidays, escaping the city for the holiday period. The silence I observed didn't appear to be the usual peaceful quiet of Christmas. Maybe the cold was making me fanciful, but the houses almost seemed huddled in fear in the snow; trying to escape notice.

I moved a bit through the side streets right behind center street, keeping to the alleys & shadowed areas. Very, very few footsteps to be seen & most appeared in pairs, probably military or police patrols. A few homes showed possible signs of life, garbage bags piled up on back porches, front porches in some cases. A few chimneys trailed smoke & I'd forgotten how sharp wood smoke smells in crisp winter air, especially when it's not competing with the smell of car exhaust.

I managed to make my way closer to downtown, over a period of about an hour or so. The closer I got, the more signs of activity, an increased number of patrols, more lights & noise. It made me nervous, especially the lights. Most street lights in town are out; guess in an effort to save power.ity Hall is humming, lights on in most offices & while I watched there for a while, I saw food being brought in. Guess staffers there are living in. It makes sense, they must be run of their feet with work. A more ominous sign; a reefer truck pulled up right in front of city hall & 2 what looked to be body bags were brought out. The driver opened the back of the truck & it was getting on to full of body bags. Guess the death count is starting to really mount. I can't imagine what it's getting to be elsewhere.

I didn't stay too long, felt too exposed & frankly, I'm not even sure why I wanted to go out. Guess it just feels better to see things for yourself, even if there's little to see. Most of the town that I could see from where I walked & I didn't go too far, seemed like a ghost town. Nothing but Center Street & a few other main streets seem to be ploughed. Most stop lights are not working & most street lights are out too. I suspect that's deliberate. Store fronts are darkened & in many cases, boarded up. I suspect some shop owners are inside, guarding what they have left. The only real signs of life were at the 2 vaccine clinics I moved by as well as 1 of the care centers, the library. I'd love to report that the clinics were busy & the care center quiet, but just the opposite was the case. A military truckload of citizens dropped by one of the clinics; must have been about 30 people making their way inside.

The care center was busy with citizens being brought in, some by relatives or friends, I'd imagine & others by military members & polics. In the 15 minutes or so I watched, perhaps a dozen people were brought in. I made my way around to the back, working back to more minor streets & circling around, then moving up. There were 2 smaller trucks parked back ther, one just about to pull out as I arrived. As it left, the other backed up to the door & body bags were lifted into it. I counted 7 being brought out.

I'm beginning to wonder if we're being told the entire truth about this outbreak. Am I being fair? There's so much going on, I expect it's hard to keep track of the numbers accurately & the power outages spreading across the country won't make that any easier. It won't make obtaining information of any kind easier for anyone.

Last numbers I heard spoke of close to 50 million ill, almost 30 million dead. That's a huge jump in what is really only a few short hours. Is it due to slow reporting? I suppose when there's a crisis of such extremity, counting cases & deaths doesn't seem to be such a priority. After today's earlier news, it would seem even less significant. But that represents about 20% of the population, leading me to think that people were able to infect others before they themselves showed signs of illness. If that's the case, who's safe? Will the vaccine truly protect us or simply slow down the incubation period?

Nothing is sure anymore & I found myself this morning wondering if the sun was going to bother rising! I haven't spent enough time in prayer the last day or 2 & I haven't slept enough. My chest hurts this morning, probably from when I hit the ground after that deer flew by me. I'm aching everywhere & tired. Oh not, the aching you get with sickness, just exertion you're not used to. And my age, I'm not used to sneaking around in the dark anymore. I must try & get some sleep, then hopefully get some up to date information. I wish Jake would call.

[CanadaSue]

A bit of sleep certainly helps. I took Maxine's advice & took some Benadryl. It helped me relax enough to fall asleep for most of the afternoon. Bless everyone, for stepping up to the plate & keeping the noise down. I must have been more worn out than I thought, for I slept like the dead until Sam woke me up at four thirty. In spite of our self mandated water rationing, I woke to a full bath of steaming hot water & a good hot chocolate waiting for me, as well as some light reading. Reader's Digest I think it was - I almost dosed off again in the tub!

We had a good supper; a bit of fun for the kids as Maxine had taken out various sized containers of leftovers from the fridge. The made a game of it with the kids. They drew straws & in turn, according to what they drew, they were allowed to choose 1 meat dish, either potatoes, pasta or rice dish leftovers & 2 vegetables. We'll have to remember that one for "down" days. The kids thought they were really getting a treat & Max got to open up some room in the fridge. For dessert Mother Thomas put together an old fashioned bread pudding with caramel sauce; something I haven't had in years. It sure is filling though, I'd forgotten that. I'm full, clean & frankly, looking forward to going back to bed at midnight. Sam is doing the 8 to midnight shift, Andy prefers the midnight to 4 am & as long as I get to bed by 10 or so & can nap a bit in the afternoon, I'm fine to get up at 4.

Maxine spent the afternoon cooking meals ahead for the next few days of eating. She has been looking exhausted & was frank in telling us she needs more rest over the next day or so. I can understand, she's been doing yeoman's work in the kitchen & keeping track of what's in the freezer. Cindy & Mother Thomas will see to meals with Annette's help the next few days & the boys will do dishes. As long as they still think this is something of an 'adventure', we might as well take advantage of it! Oh we've told them about the power outages, but with the 2 boys, we didn't really get into the implications of that. They can think about it, absorb it at their own speed & come to any of us with questions as they think of them.

Cindy has been pretty quiet since yesterday. I feel for the poor woman; expecting her first child & Jake off doing whatever the local Guard unit has him doing. I'm sure he's fine, we all are; but it would be so good if he could call us & let us know. I noticed Cindy didn't eat much at supper. I expect she's more upset than she's showing, although it doesn't take much to see she is just holding on at times.

Mother Thomas kept the kids busy this afternoon. She supervised their schoolwork when we had our 'scheduled' blackout this afternoon - I was oblivious to it, being sound asleep & when they got restless, she kept them entertained with tales from her childhood, when she used to visit her grandparents' farm. Later she showed them how washing used to be done the 'old fashioned way'. Thank goodness she only washed about a dozen pairs of socks! Just as well she showed the kids how that was done. If the power situation stays dicey, it may come to that.

Sam had some nervous energy to get rid of, so he topped off our water barrels & did some exploring in the attic. To our delight, he found some old family photo albums, some from my parents' childhood I'd forgotten I had. He also had very old school textbooks, primers, health & science texts, as well as history & geography. The kids are fascinated & appalled at how much kids were expected to learn back then, even in the earliest grades. There were a lot of old childrens' books too, the sort of adventure stories that have long since gone out of fashion. The kids will have fun with those & certainly they're wholesome reading. A good balance to all the grim news around now.

And now for that news...

Grim wasn't an exaggeration; I wish it were.

One of our local stations is doing a fantastic job of pulling together reports from various sources across the country. I can't imagine how they're doing it, but they are. From what they've gathered, New York City is in chaos. The entire city is without power, save for the most 'essential essentials'. Several parts of the city resemble war zones with people rioting, looting & otherwise taking advantage of an already horrible situation. It doesn't help that the weather has turned somewhat mild in the northeast; it brings out the crazies...

A number of supply convoys were highjacked & there are rumors of food & medical supplies being sold for unbelievably prices. And people are paying; with jewelry, furs; whatever they can come up with. Several of the clinics in NYW were overrun & it got ugly when they ran out of vaccine. Unfortunately several of the clinic staff were killed; the exact number & how they died is unclear, but dead they are. Many others were injured, including some people waiting for vaccine. Stores are being lotted of the most unlikely things... televisions & other electronics, designer clothing. If I were inclined to loot, under the circumstances, I'd choose useful things; warm clothing, footwear...

Most other major cities remain fairly quiet other than sporadic incidents. The west coast cities are lucky in a sense, weather is terrible with this fierce El Nino storm, but it's not cold enough to injure most people. Several communities have opened shelters but you must be able to show a recent vaccine mark to enter them. This is helping increase the number of people at west coast clinics.

In the midwest, the stormy weather is hampering the vaccine effort. Many who had chosen to wait or to not get the vaccine appear to have changed their minds. There is still a fair bit of vaccine available, but people are having trouble getting to clinics.

Our station managed to reach the CDC somehow & was told vaccination rates are approaching 50%. There HAVE been problems with adverse effects among those at risk but interestingly, HIV positive people are not reacting at a significantly higher rate than the general population. Those on immunosuppressive drugs such as transplants patients are having a tougher time. Deaths are running at about a rate of 6 people per million shots, according to their latest data. The station did advise that such data was no doubt running late.

Food stocks across the nation are not so easy to determine. The big cities in the ast generally have enough available or nearby enough to hold out for 2 or 3 weeks. People are being urged to ration not so much for quantity eaten, but for the calorie value of the food they eat. Who would have thought chips, pretzels & other junk food could be valuable? Yet in some areas where most of the population is already vaccinated, it seems they've become somewhat of a currency.

The extent of the damage to the power grids is slowly being pulled together. The entire west coast is out, save for those small pockets of population that rely on local generation. The southwest is holding on for the most part & the midwest is hanging in there. Some areas are experiencing blackouts, but this isn't lasting more than a few hours, even unplanned blackouts. The Gulf Coast is spotty as well, but the weather isn't bad & people are simply making sure they wear warmer clothing. The east is in serious trouble. They have multiple generation & tranmission redundancies, but whoever planned these attacks knew something about power grids. Anything brought back online manages to trip out again very quickly. Fires are beginning to rage in larger urban areas. It won't be long before we begin seeing people freeze to death, I'm afraid.

Everyone, no matter where they live is being urged to be very careful about the water they use. Those with power are urged to boil it before drinking. Those without have been given the amounts of bleach to add to their water to purify the water. Unfortunately, there have already been some bad chemical burns as some people misheard or misinterpreted directions. I hope everyone will be more careful.

It's coming on to 8 o'clock & I still feel very tired; think I'll grab a few hours of shuteye before my shift starts. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Hopefully, it will be quiet.

My house is doing fine. Banking the snow around the foundations & walls seems to be helping. Andy & Sam moved 2 of the vehicles close to the side of the house that gets the prevailing wind, the west side. It's pretty open there & the rooms on that side always seem a tad chilly anyway. They parked the vehicles about 2 feet from the house & are slowly filling in the gap with snow. That's one commodity we have no shortage of! If the spring melt is fast I'll have a bit of flooding to worry about in the utility room, but there's along ways to go before we have to worry about that. The kids covered my 2 wooden meat lockers with snow; all except the top which I made of double thickness of plywood. Cindy helped them take Mother Thomas's advice; to ice up the snow by carefully pouring water over it. That's working well & I hope it will buy us extra frozen time come early spring. By then, we should be able to move anything left out there to the house freezers.

[rb.]

bttt

for when CS has time...

[CanadaSue]

It's been about 2 days since my last journal entry & I feel rather badly about that. Nevertheless, it's difficult to write about what you don't know. I want this little book to go to the grandkids & their children eventually & pages of worry, wondering & generalized angst would probably not be helpful. Oh I can't help but write down my feelings & impressions, but information, a historical record from my point of view is probably going to be more useful in future years.

First, it's proving very difficult to get accurate & timely information from anywhere else but the local area. Oh I'm not blaming the local radio & TV stations. After all they can't report on what they don't know. They've been very good about passing along what they know and adding their evaluation as to the accuracy of the information. Funny, in this day of 'instant coverage', I'm used to being given a maximum amount of information in the shortest possible amount of time. This reminds me more of when I was a child, when news from overseas often came to us in the form of newsreels when we'd go to Saturday afternoon matinees. Most of it was a week or more old; at least the film was, but that was all we expected & we thought ourselves lucky to get that.

Lately, we can't even claim that degree of 'fresh'. Even reasonably local news is hard to verify, according to the news reporters & I can sense their growing frustration at being unable to quickly substantiate rumors, phone calls & news service items. I don't think the domestic news services are running anymore. I've seen nothing with their dateline. We are getting Reuters; sort of; but even their news, or what's being passed on to the public, seems spotty.

Nationally, it seems pretty bad. Most of the west & east coasts are without power. It seems generating plants, high tension transmission lines & junction points between regional grid systems were taken out. Andy has worked hard trying to explain it to me, but that's a serious gap in MY preps; an absence of real understanding of how it all links up. Andy finally gave up, telling me all I really need to know is that because of the way everything is linked up, unless EVERY plants & system disconnects itself from every other, even if something gets up & working, it's almost instantly so heavily overloaded with demand, it breaks down again, Andy explained that would be tough enough to manage even if all plants & transmission sites which were down, could immediately deploy full repair crews & synchronize their timings. I'm having trouble grasping that one too, but he explained it this way...

A local power generator makes more power than it needs just for the local towns. It usually sells its extra power to the regional grid. At the same time, if it ever needs extra power, it can buy it back from the grid. If that plant was down, then manages to get working again, it may be that the local community needs every bit of juice it can produce. If it's still hooked up to the regional grid, it can either short out or trip out or something - still not clear what Andy's getting at. He said what he means is unless everything gets fixed & turned on at once, it may take months to even get bits of the country powered up again. I'll take his word for it.

The local tv station, WKLD says that up to 80% of the nation's power generation & trnasmission capacity has been taken out. Dams were bombed as were towers supporting high tension power lines. Power stations were sabotaged or blown up. Switching station, (whatever those are - something to do with these grids, I think), were also bombed. There were witnesses to the explosions, but very few as many of these operations are not near residential areas & in any case, few are out & about. More than a few of these plants, lines & stations WERE guraded by military, but nearly as many as last week - the manpower just isn't there. A few soldiers report that whatever these explosions were, they saw no one in the vicinity immediately before the explosions. One wonderd if these bombs, whatever they were might have been planted well in advance. If there's any expert out there who might know something like that, well we haven't heard from them on local news & here at my house, we're monitering the tv 24 hours a day save for the 2 blackout periods.

Those blackouts have settled out, in our neighborhood - to between 3 and 6, both morning & night. That's really not too bad. Everyone is alseep that early, save for the person on watch. By the time most are getting up, we've had the heat on for an hour or so & the house is fairly comfortable. We have breakfast right away & a late morning snack followed by our heavyist meal of the day just before 3. We have a mid evening snack after the power comes back on; sometimes the women plan a fairly heavy meal, other times it's going to be question of using up leftovers.

I thank God I have so much food put by. Even so, we're being very, very careful as we have no idea how long we may have to live on our reserves. It may be quite a while; maybe through early next summer when we can start harvesting a garden. But I'm getting way ahead of myself here... Maxine had a long talk with the kids about food & eating throughout this crisis. They must eat every bit of food on their plate at meal times, so they have to be realistic about how much they really need. The boys blew that one for a few meals straight. She made them stay at the table until every bit was gone! She only had to do that twice. Asking for & getting seconds is fine, but overloading their plates through greed no longer cuts it. She's told them there's always a little something available for a snack, especially if they've been working hard & there's some time to go until the next meal.

Cindy & Mother Thomas are exempted from the food rules which apply to everyone else. Now that Cindy's morning sickness is passing, she's hungry pretty often & can't eat much at once. She's looking pretty drawn & thin, so we've told her, in front of EVERYBODY so they all understand the need, that she's to concentrate on gaining some weight for her & the baby. Mother Thomas is also emaciated after her prolonged chemo & her appetite isn't what it used to be. We've told everyone to make sure she doesn't stint on her meals. It struck me she wasn't eating enough & I took her aside & asked her about that. It seems she didn't realize how much food we really do have. I walked her to my pantries & store rooms & could tell she was relieved. Now, if we can just get her appetite up again.

I worry the most about her. She'd been making comments about not 'pulling her weight'. I talked to the other adults & we "assigned" her the chore of making sure what clothes everyone put in the laundry really DO need to be washed. She's still making the kids keep up with school work. She's disgusted with the progress or lack thereof Greg has made in reading in second grade. I listened to him read & she's right. The boy is poor with any word over a syllable. She's making him work! Annette is discovering a liking for math. I've assigned her the job of figuring out how much food we need for every meal. It's not tough - if you're used to it, but she's not. Most of the time now, she's getting it right. Mother Thomas showed her how to make biscuits. They make a great snack warmed up with butter or honey & the problem now is stopping her! Cindy will teach her how to make oatmeal raisin cookies tomorrow. They'll keep well, if they last that long & aren't difficult to do.

It's turned bitter out & the wind hasn't stopped howling for almost 2 days. It's un-nerving late at night. I keep thinking I hear things & it doesn't do the old ticker any good to 'jump in fear' so often. I'm very glad now we shovelled the snow up against the house. It's sure helping it hold heat. The one mistake I made or rather, we made, was in not packing it down better. The wind has taken a lot of it away. Once it dies down, we'll go out & bank it back up against the house & this time; we'll pack it down & water it so that some of it freezes enough to form some kind of 'wall'.

I feel for the troops on watch & patrol out in this weather. I hope they're doing short shifts. The few times I've been outdoors the last few days, it has been bitter. I'd hate to be standing watch at night when the temperature is dropping to below -25 or thereabouts. I know Jake will be fine; he's always had a good cold tolerance. It's been tough on the kids. They still have energy to burn, but it's too cold to stay out too long in that wind. Poor Sammy, by the time the women finish bundling him up, it's a wonder he can move at all. After 15 or 20 minutes, they've all had enough & are ready for a hot chocolate. Buying that powdered milk wasn't a mistake!

Andy seems to be getting restless. He's always been high energy, much like Sammy & is finding being confined to the house & immediate area tough to stomach. He admits his temper has been short & he's offered to go out on the next reasonable night & try for a buck. I wouldn't be sorry to have more meat around. I can hang it in the garage until we clear out some freezer space. It wouldn't hurt the kids to see where meat comes from either. Andy can rough dress the meat in the woods or edge of the field, whereever he bags it, then bring it back here. If it's big enough, I suppose he can leave it for a bit & come back for Sam or me to help. We can finish dressing & hanging it in the garage until it's ready to properly cut up.

I had a very quick phone call from Anne this morning. She sounds absolutely worn out. Case loads here are well over 2000 now with half or more dead - she didn't have the exact count. She hopes the case rate will drop soon as most people are staying home. She has heard, through the hospital grape vines & from various delivery drivers, some pretty awful stories of people trying to cope at home. A number of homes she thinks, are full of the dead & who knows when anyone will be able to check properly. Not much anyone could do anyway; the 2 local fields dug up toact as graveyards of a sort are filling fast. They're burning the bodies or burning them as much as they can before burying the rest. It's to be hoped that what they have been able to burn is enough to kill the virus. Chlorine supplies are doing fine, but for how long?

The state isn't faring too badly; oh bad enough, but not as badly as other areas according to WKLD. The larger communities are in very bad shape as a rule. No one was ready for this & the state is offering litle at this point except 'encouragement'. Our mayor appeared on the news & said for all intents & purposes, he & city council are assuming we're on our own. He admitted the situation is pretty bad but figures if we can get through the next few weeks, the epidemic should peak, then pass.

I like the man. He's always been a no bullsh*t kind of guy & I for one appreciate the blunt truth. He says we may lose some of the military assistance we have, but he hopes that enough people will have proven to be immune because of the vaccine by then to offer to help out. He said some people seemed to be starting the long road to recovery, but it was really too soon to tell. He said too that our local power supply was holding out well & encouraged people to be reasonable in their power use. He's encouraging people to wait 2 weeks to make sure they're not going to be sick, then get together with neighbors & consider sharing homes until we get through the wrost of the crisis. he reminded us that we're a rural community in our roots, that we had a tradition of working together through tought times & this was as tough as they come.

I hope people listen. I've heard few reports of any real trouble & I suspect those most likely to instigate that sort of nonsense are sick or dead by now. Good riddance to them I say! We'll need every ounce of strength & courage we can muster this winter & these 'wastes of rations' are better off not in the picture at all. That may not sound too Christian, but God helps those who help themselves... then their families... then their communtiy. There, I've said it. It may not be correct, but it's what I'm using to get by hour to hour, day to day.

[Lei]

CS this is a really great story. I think you should finish it and try to publish it.

[CanadaSue]

Tired, I am SO tired. I've just been leafing through this journal, which is almost filled up & can't believe this only started two & a half weeks ago. In some ways it feels like yesterday, in others it feels like forever. Yet the dates in this journal tell me this began 18 or so days ago. It's hard to grasp how much we've been through already & I quail at thought of what is yet to come.

How quickly the focus of one's life can change. I was looking forward to having the whole family for Christmas. I had finished a successful first term of teaching & Anne had a good holiday schedule. We'd shopped, cleaned & baked, had plans to take the kids to several special events & then the outbreak began.

I have no way of telling how many people by smallpox. News from outside the area is scarce & scant. Until the power outages, it was looking increasingly like a bio-engineered form of variola. You would expect a number of initial cases, then 2 weeks or so later, a 'second wave', followed every 2 weeks or a bit less by subsequent waves of infection; each getting larger until vaccinations were well under way & taking effect and/or people accepted a policy of self isolation.

Instead, the last "sure" numbers we heard spoke of several millions of cases already in America & countless others across the world. Either the release was enormous; widespread with many initially infected or... the strain being used has been bio-engineered so as to cut down incubation time & also it would have to be spread easily well before victims have any idea they're incubating a killer. That was suspected anyway...

I know here in this part of the state, with only 26,000 citizens in town & surrounding farms & villages, we're already seeing at least half the population affected with a great many deaths. The extremely frightening part of this is that most here were more than willing to get vaccinated & I THINK, more than 3/4 of the population HAVE been vaccinated.

In retrospect, I wish Mother Thomas had decided to get vaccinated. I understand why she didn't, in my brain, but my heart is a different matter. I'm terrified she's somehow going to contract the virus. I'm being irrational as Louise is the only neighbor home. Joe hasn't returned home since this started, so she's on her own. The folks across the street & the Greens on the other side of us had already left town to visit their kids for the holidays when the outbreak hit. They've not returned & I can't imagine when they'll be able to do so. We've seen no sign of anyone out back; in the field or the woods beyond. The 2 farms well behind us are still operating, as far as I can tell. I can smell woodsmoke & Andy heard tractors a few times.

The one big mistake I made in terms of considering how to handle any kind of crisis, especially infrastructure failure was communication with others in town, especially neighbors. I feel like an idiot. Louise is no fool. She's putting up 'signs' on her side door window. The one we're relieved to see is the simply; a big black checkmark on a white piece of cardboard> She puts that one up several times a day to let us know, I'm assuming; that's she's fine. 3-4 times a day, she puts up another sign with: "you guys okay?" Then we put up OUR checkmark. The kids spent part of yesterday, drafting, then writing several signs. The phones are dead most of the time now & even when they're not, I don't like using them. Surely there are people in desperate straits with a far grater need than we have. I wish Anne would call though - haven't heard from her for 4 days. I'm sure she's fine but I would love to know that for a fact.

I'm still sending the kids out 3 - 4 times a day. The rule is, they don't leave the back yard & if they see anybody, ANYBODY at all, they're to come straight in before that person or persons gets anywhere near them. I'm having growing doubts about the efficacy of the vaccine & in any case, with MT having refused it, I'd hate for so much as one stray virus particle to come in. MT is doing fine, actually looking better than she was at the beginning of the holiday period, but I don't feel like taking any risks. She's proving utterly invaluable with her memories of the "old days'. Her tales are keeping the kids entertained & her memories are proving useful in terms of resurrecting old techniques for many things. And last but not least... she reminds me so much of my Anne. I never quite appreciated how similar they are, calm, funny in a quiet way & utterly pragmatic.

MT proudly announced this morning that according to the bathroom scales, she's put on 2 pounds. And wonder of wonders, she says her arthritis - she's had it in her hiops for years, doesn't seem to be as bad. That's a pleasant surprise as she usually finds winters here horrible in terms of pain. She has been going to Arizona for years after the Christmas holidays & staying there almost through Easter as the climate eases her pain. She couldn't go last year after her diagnosis & between side effects from the chemo & the weather, she suffered a great deal. I can't quite figure out why the change this year as we haven't lacked for cold these past few weeks.

I suspect I know what it may be though. We've coddled her something dreadful the past 5 or so years, rarely letting her do anything we thought was too much for her. In retrospect, I think we goofed. She's been doing a fair amount of work since we all became isolated together. She's not only making sure no laundry gets into the wash pile that doesn't need doing, but she's supervising & helping the kids hand wash most of our smaller items. It's actually quite funny. Annette fills a plastic bin full of very warm water & laundry soap, then dumps in a dozen or so pairs of socks. MT, strips off her socks, rolls up her trousers & starts "stomping" on the socks! She claims the 'exercise' does her hips good - lots of motion & she can do it sitting down. She told me the extra warmth keeps her feeling toasty. After a half hour or so, the kids take over, dumping out the dirty water & rinsing the socks, then using my janitor's bucket to "wring" them out. Annette & Greg rigged a drying line by the fireplace & another by the woodstove & it takes no time to dry the stuff. Between MT & the kids, most socks, underwear & smaller items of linen are washed in this fashion & the kids have found lots of ways to amuse themselves while they're doing clothes this way.

Annette is turning out to be quite the little teacher & is making learning a game for the 2 boys. She has a cute game she plays with Sammy. He closes his eyes & fishes an item out of the wash. He has to spell whatever color it is & what sort of item it is. He's getting them right more & more. Greg isn't doing too badly either. Annette also has them telling ridiculous stories where one person starts with a few sentences & others in turn, continue. The boys especially try & get more & more startling with there story lines; lots of "suddenly he heard a huge explosion", type of thing. Every once in a while, I hear shreiks of laughter which warms my heart.

Greg may be a lousy reader, but he's discovered a fascination for geography. I had asked him, when he whined about being bored, to go to my good Readers' Digest atlas & find me 5 countries. They had to be very small & countries he figured no one would have ever heard of. He came up with Tuvalu, East Timor, Bhutan, Andorra & Dominica. Annette asked him to write down 3 things he liked or found "neat" about these countries. I nearly died laughing when I saw the main reason he picked Dominica - their flag. I've seen some odd flags in my time, but never have I seen one with what I swear is an inebriated parrot as the center of the flag. Anyhow for whatever reason; he's now digging up arcane facts about these countries. Being at the age he is, he's fascinated at the thought that Tuvalu is in danger of dissapearing, being only a dozen or so feet above sea level. He's curious too, if they've been struck by the epidemic. I helped him print out some world maps & we spent a few hours looking at countries where we know smallpox has hit. He's now looking up how close these nations are to others, how easy it is to travel from one place to another & how that could affect transmission. Do I have a budding epidemiologist here? He's really getting into this.

Sammy is feeling - what's the buzzword - "empowered" by his budding readin abilities. Frankly, if I hear: "Grampa how do you spell that?" one more time today, I may scream! I've had to tell him to go easy on paper as he's keen on practicing his spelling. Annette tells me when he was outside this morning, he was tracing out different words in the snow - smart kid! The backyard is the world's biggest blackboard or white board, right now.

Annette has grown up all of a sudden. I know Maxine & Sam have mixed feelings, she's their oldest & has been very much a young girl until now. Overnight, it seems she's verging on near adulthood. The added maturity is wonderful, but we all regret the circumstances. She's become very patient with her brothers & has grown very close to Cindy. She announced she was going to learn everything she needs to know to help Cindy with her pregancy & Maxine caught her reading up on complications of labor & delivery. She wasn't happy about that, but MT spoke with her later, Maxine that is & told her it wasn't a bad tyhing for any young lady to know exactly what's involved in birthing babies! I suppose not, I'm just not used to thinking that way.

Cindy is a little too quiet for my liking lately. She's no longer nauseated early in the day but is still not eating enough for my liking. It must be worry about Jake. They've never been separated more than a few days & never when they couldn't call each other. We have no way of knowing what he's doing or when we'll see him again. She may be worrying she'll never see him again. I'm just happy she's only 4 months pregnant. Surely he'll be back home well before her due date & before that, be able to get in touch with us.

Maxine is looking somewhat more rested. We've made it clear to the kids, more than once; that this is not the time to act in that infuriating way many kids have these days, especially young teenaged girls it seems; of acting as though it's 'cool' to pretend to be years younger than your age. Annette was starting to drive Sam & Maxine nuts, Sam's told me more than once he's had to fight the urge to give her a good backhand - & he's never been the type to hit the kids. Anyhow, the kids are pretty much doing their assigned chores properly & on time. Sammy is now doing ALL four bathrooms & bless him, making sure the front windows beside the front door are kept frost free. He solemnly told me he wanted to make sure we could see who was coming up to the step; "bad guys or uncle jake or Grandma. I wouldn't want you to shoot THEM!" Greg sweeps, keeps the playroom clean & makes sure woodchips & sawdust doesn't pile up near the woodstove or fireplace. He also folds a mean pair of socks!

Annette is taking on more & more food preparation. maxine is teaching her to cook some simple things, so is MT, but she's far more useful peeling potatoes & other vegetables, cutting up bread & keeping the fridges cleaned out. Maxine is showing her how to maintain the logbooks for the freezers. I'm letting her "take up" the boys' school work; I keep them all doing class work for roughly 4 hours a day & she's doing very well in her own coursework. She's always excelled at school & frankly, I think she should be taking higher grade level courses. Right now, she's fascinated by biolog, especially human biology. I found some of Anne's old basic texts in chemistry & biology, the prep courses she took before doing her nursing degree & Annette is reading those - almost for FUN!

Goodness, I was speaking of Maxine wasn't I? I get so easily distracted these days. She is more rested. She's getting meals down to a routine now & I refused to let her do the heavy laundry. She has enough planning meals, preparing them & dealing with leftovers so we don't lose them. She takes her "breaks" keeping an eye on the kids when they're outside. Our big concern there is making sure they don't accidently bring in any virus. We're not sure yet about the vaccine & in any case, MT chose not to take it. I'd hate for enough to get into the house to make her ill. I doubt she'd do well, still too frail, really. She's also keeping an eye on the state of the rest of the house, whatever the kids aren't keeping tidy. I'm not letting her do much housework either, I figure she has enough on her plate with meals & being the mother of 3 energetic kids.

Sam is doing the heavier housework as well as washing the linen & larger items of clothing. He's been trailing a headcold for a week now, so I'd just as soon keep him inside. Anne would shoot me, she's always felt cold fresh air is the best remedy for bad headcolds. Well, she's not here & I am. So... Sam isn't "allowed" out... except to take out garbage.

Andy is keeping an eye on the outside of the house & the back field. He's rigged all sorts of tin can alarms out back along the hedge & is making sure the snow we banked up along the house walls is staying in place. It's too high now for the kids to manage. He got lucky the other night when he went hunting. I was angry with him actually, He shot a nice fat buck, then shot at & killed a doe. We didn't strictly NEED 2 deer to butcher & I've been nard pressed to find places to put the meat. Hie reasoning was that soon, there may be few left to shoot. That's difficult to argue with but still... I was raised to not shoot more than you need & frnakly, we never needed much. One good buck or 2 small ones always got us through the winter. It was a lot of work dragging them home, then hanging them.

Annette was a trouper. She turned pretty green when we did the butchering inside the garage, then had to clean up after Greg, who ignored his mom's warnings that breakfast might better wait until AFTER he watched the process! Sammy actually "helped" cut some steaks off. (Maxine says she's going to break out the old meat grinder!), & he announced he wants to go hunting "next time". In any case,this dressed out to 150 pounds of meat & we certainly won't go short for a while. Greg "hates" deer, he says, but I think that's more a factor of not enjoying the process of turning Bambi into steaks. Annette is neutral & Sammy loves it.

I've suggested to the others they might want to keep a diary too. They'll find over time they forget what happened & how they felt about it. Annette has already started & MT tells me she's been keeping one all along. Maxine is going to record hers on cassette for now; she finds she's too tired at the end of the day to want to take the time to write. Sam said he'd keep one & the boys are going to try.

I've really got to go to bed now. The last few days, I've been extremely tired. I must have eaten too quickly, I've got an awful case of indigestion. My stomach is giving me hell & I feel like there's a lead weight on my lungs. Hope I haven't caught Sam's cold... I may have a fever, it's so hot in here... unless someone cheated with the thermostat. Muct check before I go to bed.

[CanadaSue]

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..........

[Halffast]

CS,

Great job. I am really enjoying this. Please keep it up. Thanks.

David

[CanadaSue]

Eight thirty, January 11/2003

Poor, poor Thomas. I feared the strain of such a heavy burden of responsability was weighing on him too heavily. He's been looking very tired and sad - missing my Annie no doubt and I very much fear he's had a mild heart attack. He's been looking rather unwell for several days now and while I hoped he was just overly tired, it seems the strain has proven to be more than he could easily bear. That doesn't surprise me at all. He's the type of man who's always taken his responsabilities seriously and while he's always decried his own ignorance in many important matters, he's never been one to shrik from learning about matters he feels might be important to the well being of his family.

He's tried to handle too much on his own since this crisis began almost three weeks ago. He worried about everyone but himself, but he's always been the type to do that. He's terrified for Annie even if he won't admit that to us, but I'm not the only one that sees the sadness and strain in his eyes when he looks at Annie's empty place at the table. Annie's tougher than she looks and I know she'll be fine. Sam is a fine young man and has been wonderful today; keeping the children calm, shaking some sense into Cindy when she looked like she about to erupt into a fit of hysterics and making sure Maxine got some rest. For that matter, young Andy and Maxine were wonderful today, getting Tom to the couch with Sam's help, then making him as quiet as possible.

I'm grateful I have my nitroglycerine tablets and so many of them too. I rarely need them but always carry several small bottles with me and they were a God send today. It took two to make much of a difference but shortly after the second tablet, Tom's color improved and he had a great deal less pain. I was more concerned about his mental state affecting his heart than the heart itself.

When he dropped his journal, he was sitting in a chair right next to me and I could see right away he was in some distress. He had said something earlier about indigestion and I'd been watching him. He's almost always had a cast iron stomach. He was pale and sweating most of the day yesterday and complained of being overly warm, even though he only had on a light shirt. It seemed every time he walked more than few steps he was breathless, but downplayed this, caliming he was coming down with a head cold. I didn't think so.

He was terrified when the pain struck so quickly and with such intensity. Being an 'old lady' has its advantages. My doctor sends me for heart tests regularly since I developed angina some years back and if anyone knows heart attack symptoms, it's me. It didn't appear to me as though it could be anything else. Sam and Andy helped him lie on the chesterfield, half sitting as that seems to ease his breathing. I gave him my nitro, two tablets within about half an hour and shortly after the second one, it did ease off. Maxine had given him a healthy dollop of brandy too by then and I'm sure that helped. I also insisted he take one aspirin tablet. My doctor and cardiologist have always told me that's the best thing to do.

We managed to keep him on the sofa the rest of the day. I wanted to be sure he didn't have a repetition of his earlier attack. It did seem to help. He repeatedly told us he felt much better and he's still not convinced it was anything other than a bad gas cramp. No one is allowing him to take any chances. He silly young fool is still refusing to take to his bed - where he belongs, so we negotiated a compromise. Andy brought out one of the old folding beds from the back shed and cleaned it up. It's all made up in the dining room so Tom doesn't feel as though he's cut off from everyone else. He can keep an eye on everyone and more importantly, we can keep an eye on him.

I've told him he's staying there for at least three days. I may be much older and quite a bit smaller than he is, but over the years, he's learned not to quarrel with me when I get a certain look in my eyes! He's not allowed to get up to use the toilet until at least tomorrow and under no circumstances will we let him do anything but rest. He's chafing at these restrictions but as Sam pointed out to him, he's of no use to anyone until he gets to feeling consdierably better than he is now. He didn't want to admit it, but he's still feeling weak.

I'm afraid I had to pull a bit of a fast one on him with Maxine's help. I have some sleeping tablets left over from when my chemotherapy prevented me from sleeping. I gave one to maxine and she crushed it up to put in some soup. I tasted it and to my delight, I wasn't able to detect the medecine at all. Tom didn't either and he's been sleeping like a baby since shortly after 6 o'clock. I hope he sleeps through the night.

Andy was all set to double up on the guard duty shifts the men are insisting are necessary but I told them I will replace Tom for a few days. I don't get to sleep until after midnight anyway; I haven't needed much sleep for a few years and I told the children I was more than able to make sure doors and windows were locked and that the fireplace and wood stove were safe. I cut my teeth on wood heat after all! They must imagine me as almost totally helpless at times. It's frustrating but I'll admit at not quite five feet tall I don't cut an imposing figure.

So that's what I'm doing now; watching Tom, keeping an eye on the house and prepared to yell for help if there are problems. I'm a little excited actually to be doing this. I finally feel useful and I know once the boys get used to my doing this, they'll learn to rest when they're not on watch. Silly young fools will probably both stay awake until midnight, just to make sure "old MT" doesn't run into difficulties.

The grandchildren were understandable quite upset. Little Sammy sat by the French doors to the diningroom and couldn't seem to take his eyes of his grand dad's chest. I finally asked him what he was doing. Poor little mite - he imagined that if "grampa's heart broke some more" it would start bleeding right through his chest. He solemnly told me he was watching for that to call us for help; "in case it happens when Grampa's sleeping". It took a little while to explain to him that nothing like that was going to occur. He more than a bit relieved. The lad HATES the sight of blood.

Annette kept the boys occupied most of the rest of the day, once the big excitement had passed. She insisted Grampa would want them to keep on with their schoolwork and set them to doing some reading. Admittedly, they had trouble concentrating, but did manage to put in some quiet time reading and generally keeping the noise level down. Andy took them outside once the power outage came and they "helped" him bank up more snow against the house. I finally convinced Sam to get some rest, asfter he spent some hours trying to ring through to the hospital where Annie was working. I know she's working elsewhere, but we hoped to get a phone number where she could be reached. He was forced to leave a message and I hope it's passed on to her. There's not much she can do from where she is, but she deserves to know what's happening.

My goodness, almost quarter part nine already. I'd best do my next round, then make sure the children are asleep and Thomas doesn't need anything. Maybe I can convince one of the children to make an entry for Tom next. I told him... no writing for a few days. He needs to rest!

[CanadaSue]

I'm in grade too and I'm riting this cause my grampa is sick. He 's relly sick. Mum sed he's gonna be all rite but he is lieing down in the dinning room. He slept ALLLLL night and he never dos that. He must be relly tiyerd.

I want grama home. She alwaze nows what to do when we'er sick. I think gramps misses her a lot. He keeps looking at her chere where she sits to wach tv.

Daddy's scared too. Grampa is HIS daddy and I'd cry if daddy was sick. I think daddy cryd last nite. he went to the bathrum and didn't come out for a long time. He was making funy noyses in ther and his fase looked funny when he cam out.

I hope grampa gets better soon.

[CanadaSue]

Three o'clock, January 12/2003

It's just after three and the power is out for our twice daily scheduled outage. I was a bit worried this morning. I'd woken just before six, quite thirsty and thought I'd 'cheat' and heat a cup of water in the microwave. The power didn't come up until almost a quarter past six and for a good half hour or so, it didn't appear to want to stay on. I'm glad we've picked up the habit of unplugging most everything before going to bed at night. I'd hate to lose an appliance because the electricty company is having problems.

Thanfully, Thomas slept through that. As a matter of fact, he slept right through, from just past six yesterday evening until almost seven o'clock this morning. He already looks much more comfortable but expressed surprise at how long he's slept. I simply told him it was proof that he was over tired! I reminded him was NOT to try to get up at all today,; that we'd allow him to sit up for a time in the morning and after lunch, but that he was to REST!

He was most concerned with how we'd made out overnight especially with me doing the early watch. We hadn't told him about that aspect of it before we sent him to dreamland last night. He would have been horrified and in fact, he wasn't at all happy about it. I told him if I found it too tiring, Cindy was more than capable of walking around a few times between eight o'clock and midnight. The girl is pregnant, not terminally ill. What is it about men that makes them so prone to treat us like babies in diapers the minute we announce we're expecting?

I made sure he ate a good breakfast, some tea, buttered toast, light on the butter and a bowl of yoghurt. The man needs to lose about thirty pounds and I told him so in no uncertain terms. He also needs something else to focus on other than the state of the world right now. We're all scratching our heads, trying to come up with ways to keep him 'busy' while he lies resting. For now, he'll spend half an hour a few times a day quizzing the boys on the basic math and mental spelling skills. We've also tols him he can moniter the news for us for now; that doing so will free us up to do other work. In a few days, assuming he continues to improve, we'll look at letting him get up for more than going to use the washroom. Even that we're refusing to allow him to until tomorrow.

I warned him too, not to try and lie to us about feeling worse, if that should happen. I've had enough friends who have had heart attacks and lost several, may God bless them and I hope I made it quite clear to him that we ALL need him well and whole, even if we can do without him for a few days.

The grandchildren have been wonderful. I wouldn't have thought it possible for those three to be able to keep so quiet for so long, but they're doing a wonderful job of doing just that. It's endearing to watch Greg solemnly tiptoeing through the living room so as not to wake his grandfather if he thinks Tom is asleep. He snapped at Sammy for sneezing too loudly earlier; it was too funny!

Annette has been working hard trying to take up the slack left by Tom's not being able to work. Sam & Maxine were worried about the children "growing up too fast" under the present climate of crisis. I sat them both down today after lunch and gave them a lecture on that very topic. I don't think parents today have any idea how lucky they were and how lucky their children are today. Compared to when I grew up, even when Tom and Annie grew up, Sam & Maxine's generation and that of their children, are spoiled rotten. All this play time, so little time spent doing school work. It's no wonder children get into so much trouble today.

I'll be honest, I certainly don't miss that trash that's been passing for television programming these last several decades. If I'd been caught so much as looking a drawings of that these little girls get away with wearing today, my father would have tanned my hide! By ten, I could and often did; cook meals, clean the kitchen, start the laundry, peg it up and iron it later. Change diapers and feed babies and see to the cow and chickens. I don't feel as though I was robbed of any childhood and I told Sam and Maxine not to be silly, their children still have lots of free time available to them and the work they're doing now consists of work they'd eventually have to learn to do to live on their own.

Annette is not doing anything any girl her age in my time would have done. And if I have anything to say about it, when Cindy's time comes, Annette will be right there holding her hand and helping her out. I helped my mother with her last three and if there was one thing that ensured I didn't get into trouble before marrying, watching babies being born was it!

As for the boys, if they think they're working now, wait until spring. They'll soon learn what hoeing and hand pulling weeds is all about and if I can figure out how to get hold of some chickens... let's just say there are worse things than changing a baby's diaper! Some honest work will make them appreciate their food and warm beds.

I really must sit down and have a firm talk with Cindy. I find myself increasingly annoyed with her. I appreciate she misses Jake dreadfully, but she must learn to stop moping around with a trembling lip and long face. I swear she's on the verge of falling apart much of the time. I'm taken aback at her attitude. I found her offputting when I first met her as she was too much the hard charging young executive. I remember finding her abrasive and almost aggressive when she wanted something - the exemplification of that quaint term: yuppie.

I'd be relieved to see that 'take charge attitude' from her again. Lately, the girl seems to have lost all her gumption. Oh she works hard enough - when given work to do, but she doesn't seem able to do anything without specifically being told to do so. It's almost like dealing with a not - quite - grown - up child & I'm getting really fed up with her passive attitude. She's not the only one missing a loved one right now and she should be grateful Jake is working, not dead.

I'm proud of how Tom and the family have been pulling together. Honestly, I think the entire nation has collectively lost its common sense. Before the power went out over so much of the country, a lot of air time was given to interviews of people whining that they wanted the government to "do something" to halt this terrible outbreak. Yet these same people were the first to bleat the minute they were asked to lift a finger for themselves. When truck drivers fell ill, where were the people volunteering to drive food and medical deliveries to where they were needed? Many HAVE had their vaccines and appear to be doing fine, even if they have been in contact with other people. Operating modern canneries is not, as Sam would say 'rocket science'. If they were short staffed, others could have stepped in, been taught waht to do on a section of the production line and just gotten down to it.

It disgusts me to see so many people willing to sit around on their duffs, criticize anything anyone tries to do and expect miracles to be performed. These people don't know the meaning of work and from all appearances, have no intention of doing their part. This nation wasn't founded by boatloads of whiners and it didn't become great because we whined our way into international prominence. During both world wars, most soldiers came from farms, from families and were high school students. They had to grow up quickly, become men and they did so. Most in my opinion, came home the better for it!

I've been listening to the local television station - WKLD and those young people must be making their parents proud. They'rw working hard to keep us as up to date as they can and aren't afraid to tell us when they don't know something. Now, they even have a call in hour where people are free to ask questions about what's going on locally or nationally. They promise to try and find out answers within twenty four hours and in many cases are doing so. They're also featuring stories of local people doing what they can to help out. Here's a fine example. A bridge club consisting uniquely of retired telephone exchange operators volunteered to work at the city hall switchboard on six hour shifts, freeing up the younger folk to do heavier work. The local veterans' association has begun checking out homes, going door to door to see if there's anyone within the homes needing help. In a few instances, they have found people needing care and have stepped in to do it themselves.

Two well known local gardeners have offered to videotape a short series explaining to people how to start their own truck graden this spring. Farmers have voluneteered to provide seed to any townsperson who wishes to garden. Mr. Peterson, who;s been rattling around in that old mansion on the edge of downtwon on his own for years has told the mayor that as long as he can have a bedroom sitting room and bathroom, he's willing to turn over his home to be used as an orphanage. He thinks a good fifty to sixty children could be confortably housed there, providing persons to care for them could be found. Goodness, I'd love to spend time in such a place, reading to little ones, helping them with thwir reading. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Even the mayor was 'caught' shovelling snow from the back steps of city hall. He explained he needs some exercise and that a stationary bicycle seems foolish when so much physical work still needs doing. Some derided his work as publicity seeking, but if that were his intent, I expect he'd have been shovelling the FRONT steps.

A great many retired people are coming out of retirement here and in other communities across the state. Retired policemen are offering to walk beats again and retired teachers are offering 'homework help' via telephone. The phone company is trying to make sure these able people can answer incoming calls from children wanting to try and keep up. I hope some do; this crisis is no excuse to stop learning. My three great grandchildren are proof of that.

Greg still needs a lot of work with his spelling as I noted when I read his entry in this journal. Still for a young man who prefers swimming and basketball to schoolwork, he's coming along beautifully. Now, I must rest for a time. I don't want the kids thinking I'm too old or tired to manage another shift this evening.

[CanadaSue]

My goodness, what a day. For once we've had a genuinely GOOD day & we couldn't be happier about it. I had meant to update this journal earlier this afternoon, but we've just all been too happy & too busy spending time together.

I was up with Sam this morning, shortly after five o'clock. We were heating up water on the woodstove for tea when we heard some thuds on the front door. I thought MY heart would act up. Sam sent me to the kitchen, (HMPH!), & told me to make sure the back door was locked, then he picked up the shotgun & carefully went to the front window. Someone was throwing snow at the front door.

It was ANNIE!

I got so excited, I almost went through the front door. Sam held me back & reminded me Anne has been nursing smallpox patients & that I did not take the vaccine. In my excitement, I'd forgotten. After making me promise not to wake anyone & to stay indoors, he put on his coat & went out to see her. They spent a few minutes trying to figure out how to get her inside the house without bringing any virus with her.

Finally, she decided to strip off as much as she could bear & kept her eyes tightly closed while Sam psprayed her down with warm water & bleach. She had to have felt half frozen to death. I was made to wait upstairs while this happened & while she came into the livingroom to the fireplace. There, she stripped off & liberally washed herself again with water & bleach, then dried off & changed into a set of sweat clothes Sam rummaged out of her drawers. The 2 of them bundled up all her clothes, sprayed everything down & tidied up as best they could before letting me come down.

By the time we had some tea into her, Greg was up & he had the entire house up within about 5 minutes. I swaer, this was the medecine Tom needed; his Anne home. Everybody looks happier & relieved, even Cindy & it sure will be nice to have an extra adult in the house in these trying times.

As much as we all wanted to see her & hear about her experiences & why she came home, I insisted she spend some time alone with Tom in the diningroom. I had to swat Sammy's bottom twice, he would NOT leave them in peace!

They had some time together, the we all gathered & listened to her for an hour or more. She's had enough, more than enough & when she got the message Tom had become, to her mind, seriously ill, she simply packed up & left - without telling anyone she wasn't coming back! She says she left a note at the nurses' station explaining what was happening & reminding them she's not getting any younger. She certainly isn'y! She's 54 now & judging by the looks of her, these past few weeks have agewd her 10 years.

In my opinion, she's done her share for now & I don't want my Annie getting so worn down she takes sick herself. She's my only child & if wanting her safe makes me selfish, I'll answer to God & God only on that. I know she's not happy with her decision, but as Sam pointed out, there's a lot of heartbreak to come, many more to fall ill & she can return to work later. I know my Annie & I'm sure she'll do just that. She tells me that right now, they're really not short of staff at the childrens' care center she's working at & she's been hearing more & more rumors that staff were soon not going to be allowed to leave the building at all. She wasn't waiting for that to happen.

She had some awful tales to tell & waited until the children, the boys at any rate, had gone to bed. She had us all in tears. They're losing almost all of the babies who get ill & most of the very young ones. Unfortunately, most can't sleep at all & they so want their mommies when they feel so dreadfully achy & itchy. There's no end to the stream of little ones being brought in. Many are being found all alone with their families dead or nearly so. Whoever unleashed this, if it was Iraq has much to answer for. Well, I imagine they've been pretty busy lately explaining their actions to God. There's nothing they could say that would explain it to me, especially after hearing Snne speak of what she'd been through.

She's lost track of the babies who've died in her arms. There's so little they could do for them except try & keep them as comfortable as they could & most of the staff were determined no little one would die unless he were being held or cuddled. Strictly against policy of course, but the staff wouldn't be gainsaid. Very few have become ill & those there are willing to take their cahnces rather than let the babies die uncomforted. Where they get the strength from, I don't know. Surely God has His hand upon their shoulders. There's a special place in heaven waiting for them.

We let Anne talk it out & cry, as much as she should. There are bitter tears yet to shed, but that will come in time. Right now she's in bed, asleep I hope. Sam carried his father to his bed - they deserved to comfort each other & Anne especially needs to be held too. I'm afraid she's in for a rough time as she gets some rest. There surely must be many things she put aside to think through later. We will try to keep her busy over the next few days, busy enough so that she doesn't break down under the weight of her experiences, but not so busy that she can't rest.

Sam will speak to the children early tomorrow, explaining to them that Gram has been through a very rough time & needs peace. Annette; poor thing, hearing her grandmother speak of what she saw & heard was almost too much. She's still young & this is a little too real, too horrid for any young person to easily accept. At my age, I can't accept it. I've spent many a long hour with my Bible. It comforts me at times yet at others makes me angry. I never thought I'd have a crisis of faith at my age. My God has always been a comfort to me but right now I find I can be bitter & angry, especially when I see the effects of this scourge on those I love. My daughter distraught. My son in law who'd had a heart attack. His son, off working the crisis & 2 other sons, trying to keep everything under control. Maxine is bowed down with worry about her children & as for them, right now they ARE being robbed of a childhood, no matter what I've told their parents! These trials were I thought, a fact of our primitive past; not a current reality.

Perhaps I'm simply growing too old to easily deal with difficult times. I DO feel as though my life has been turned upside down. Goodness, I looked at the calender today & I should have been warming my old bones in the south with Mary, Louise & Pauline. And now... I don't know if they're alive or dead. And worse; I have no way of finding out. All were going to spend Christmas with children & I was going to be calling them right after I got home. I don't have their numbers now, even if I felt free to use the phone just to check on them.

I'm ashamed to say we spent almost no time worrying about the news today. After weeks of being concerned with seemingly everything, with trying to second guess every decision taken by the President, the gocernor & the mayor, it's a relief to think about only family for even a few, short hours. The rest of the world can wait. I'm tired of tension & of praying for the bodies & souls of every blessed person on this planet. I'm sure God won't mind if I take a few hours off from worrying about it.

[CanadaSue]

Andy here...

MT convinced me it was my turn to write at least an entry in what is turning out to be the Family Outbreak Journal. I only hope that 5 - 10 years from now, some of us are alive to read it. I can't imagine myself wanting to come back & read this. I don't see how I can forget one single damned detail of this nightmare. Sorry, if anyone reading this in the future doesn't like 4 letter words. I don't use them often, but sometimes, I need to.

I'll be blunt. My life & everything in it has been turned upside down. I get up in the morning, remember what's going on & want to bury my head until it all goes away. So, that sounds pretty three year old. Right now, I don't care how immature that makes me sound; it's how I feel.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was finishing end of semester exams, had my master's application in & had been told I had a great job for the summer. Lots of bucks, some travel & time to see the sights. I had the world by the short & curlies & life looked good. Problems, what problems? Okay we all have them, right? But mine seemed pretty minor, nothing I couldn't handle easily. As for the rest of the family, they seemed to have thing well in hand. Jake's got a great job, Sam & Max are doing fine & the kids are great. Mom & Dad were healthy & looking forward to retirement. The house is paid off & they were looking forward to doing a bit of travelling. I think they were waiting to make sure I was "okay" with my life. I keep telling then that, but... you know what parents can be like. If anyone reading this is a kid I hate to tell you this, but your parents, (weird to think that might be ME), will still be in your face & on your case. If you're lucky, they'll be like mom & dad; kind of quiet about it, but still THERE. That's good & bad, it's nice to feel you have a safety net, but can be irritating when they find ways to tell you, without really telling you, that they're not happy with what you're doing.

But anyway, life was good, very good. Going home for the holidays sounded like a fantastic break after a tough semester.
I was staying through until after New Year's, then going skiing with several friends; a trip we've been planning for about a year now. I'd planned to spend March break with Sam, Maxine & the kids. Mom & Dad were coming down too & Jake was going to try & get some leave at work. Just... life, you know? Ordinary, reasonable, predictable with just enough unknowns to keep it interesting. Dad & I used to love to argue about that. I love unkowns & he'd gotten to the point where he liked things predictable. He & mom often said predictability made them feel safe. I didn't understand, I really didn't.

I do now. Was it only 3 weeks ago that I almost sneered at the concept of safety? Dad used to love to repeat that it was a factor of my age; that in your early 20s, safety isn't as significant as taking risks. I simply thought he'd turned into an old fart, which I expected at HIS age. I mean, when you're getting to the end of your working life, who wants to take too many chances, you know? I found the whole concept pretty boring, but figured Dad was entitled to think any way he bloody well wanted to. He & Mom have worked hard all their lives, raised the three of us, struggled sometimes to kep on top of things & make sure we had what they figured were the right values. We all thought they'd succeeded & I think all 3 of us were happy that they were getting into their retirement years reasonably healthy, having enough money to not have to worry about their own furtures or, God forbid, ours. All 3 of us have good jobs or in my case, in a field where the future looked bright.

I keep slipping & saying "have" when I probably should be using the word "had". Nothing is the same anymore & speaking for myself, I'm scared sh*tless. When I'm not freaking out in fear, I'm suprememly p*ssed off. Know what the problem with that is? I don't have a clue what or who I should be angry at! And that is perhaps the most terrifying, anger causing factor of all. Who or what exactly, did such a great job messing up MY life? And how dare they do that! Yeah, sounds narcissistic no doubt, but I defy too many people to tell me they're thinking any differently, if they have time to think at all.

Man, Dad is going to kill me. I think this is supposed to be a diary of events, not a 'tell all confessional' about how I feel about all this. Well, why not, though. I mean, when I was studying history, I was always fascinated by pesonal recollections as opposed to dry renderings of straight facts. Names, places & dates are important, but when it comes down to it, it's how it affects everyday lives that makes history most significant. And I'm certainly living in & reacting to a major, major historical event.

I guess I should talk about the family first & the news as we have been hearing it. First, dad seems to be doing much better. Mom is insisting he take it easy for a while. Right now, he's spending a lot of time on the sofa, whcih we dragged into the dining room. Mom lets him get up for about half an hour at a time 3 - 4 times a day. He goes no further than the living room; to his favorite chair & even if he won't admit it, that's about all he can handle right now. I'm glad mom's home. She knows him well enough to see through any bluffing he's likely to try. I don't think he's inclined to try any time soon though; he looks very, very tired all of a sudden & old. Mom keeps telling the rest of us that as long as he gets proper rest & we can keep him from worrying too much, he should make a full recovery. The rest is easy enough, it's keeping him from worrying that is going to be the big battle. Dad always spent way too much time thinking about things he can really do nothing about. But that's dad.

We're all glad to have mom back home. Dad may have been the strength of the house, but she was the heart. I'm just sorry she has to be both right now. She's been through an horrific time of her own, way worse compared to what we've lived through & yet she manages to cope; to stay serene especially in front of the kids. I know she's had her bad moments since coming home. She probably feels pretty badly about abandoning her post; her words, not ours; but she's only one woman & was carrying a heavy burden looking after all those kids. She was worried about dad, about her own mom & especially her grandkids. Maybe she'll go back later & do more nursing work but with Jake gone & dad out of action for now, we consider ourselves lucky to have her back home - as safe as anyone can be right now.

A lot is falling on Sam with dad sick; both Sam & me. I don't mind, I really don't. I can go a long time with only 3 - 4 hours of sleep a night & Sam is remembering how to do just that. Actually, it shouldn't be that bad. Cindy has got to start taking up more of the load. I'm really disappointed in her. She was fine at first, scared; but we all were. It seems everyone has grown into the new challenges - except her. Since Jake left, she's become more & more childlike, whiney even. I even caught Annette snapping at her this morning & Annette used to worship her aunt Cindy. Now I swear Annette is doing twice as much as Cindy who spends her days with a long face, never far from tears. Sure she's pregnant, sure she misses Jake, but for God's sake, can't she just get ON with it? She's not having any problems with the baby as far as anyone can tell & mom has asked her pretty directly, no doubt about that. She's four months along now, well past the early danger point. She's eating & sleeping well & isn't the least bit sick. Somebody is going to have to talk to her soon & she'd better hope it's not me. I'm sick of her taking any excuse to complain or cry about one thing or another. We're all in the same boat, for God's sakes!

Sam now handles pretty much all the 'thinking work'. That makes sense. With a wife & 3 young kids, he's used to juggling; even if he's never had to juggle anything on this scale. He's taken over control of the food along with Max. Makes sense; she's planning most of the meals & he knew dad's system for storage & rotation pretty well. It's taken him a good 2 days of poring over the lists & freezer books & walking through the pantries & store rooms. Honest to God, Dad has food stashed in the strangest places. Cases of canned goods under the beds, okay. But I nearly died laughing when Sam came & told me where he's been storing extra staples. Seems when he put the addition on the back of the house, he hid some store rooms between 2 courses of brick. I had Sam show me, then took a good look around the room & outside. I don't know how he did it, but if you didn't know where the entrances were & if you didn't measure carefully with a tape measure, you'd never know there was anything there. Yet he's managed to hide a series of storage areas within the walls & attic space. He also did some pretty decent retro-fitting of the main attic too & stashed a whole bunch of stuff up there.

Sam tells me he has over 30 rifles, shotguns & hand guns squirreled away up there, greased & wrapped. Sam can't begin to count how many rounds as well as reload kits. We'll have to learn how to use those; it's not something Sam or I ever bothered with. There are simply gallons of gun oil, cleaning fluid & old, cleaned rags stashed away too.

Sam says we have food for 18 months, even if we don't shoot anything else or take our rations. We ARE taking the rations though. And I personally don't feel the least bit selfish about doing so. Yes, dad spent years preparing for any disaster or emergency we could envision, although he was probably the only one of us who pictured anything this huge. But he made many sacrifices & we did as well, as children. Much of any spare money mom & dad had went, instead of to big family vacations, supplies "just in case". With mom & dad both growing up in the 'duck & cover' days, I think preparedness came pretty naturally to them. If other families chose otherwise, well that ultimately was their decision.

They've always had a garden & we grew up on canned goods & preserves that they did themselves. We all spent hours helping them wash & blanch vegetables, cutting, packing, etc. At the time I thought it was a major pain in the butt, but now, I am sure glad we did all that.

Dad taught us all to hunt & fish. I'll admit, I'm a lousy fisherman but I'm better than the other 2 at hunting. Jake & Sam can catch fish in a wash barrel, I swear. Jake's the better gardener although I'm probably the most patient weeder. We're going to be busy teaching the kids this spring, how to do all of that.

Sam is also keeping a tight grip on the kids, to give Maxine a break. They're used to coming to her for all kinds of things & both she & Sam are trying to get them to use their brains & work out things for themselves. If they make minor mistakes at this stage, it's no big deal. They soon learned, especially Annette, what DIRTY meant when it comes to laundry. Having worn a pair of jeans twice does not mean they're dirty. MT let that pass a few times, then we all blithely ignored Annette when she moaned about how hard jeans were to wring out. Yeah, they sure are & we all had a chuckle about that. Now, I swear her clothes can stand on their own before she puts them in the wash. I don't think I need to say laundry was not an issue with the boys. If anything, we've had to remind them that clothes DO need to be changed once in a while.

I've picked up more work. I'm taking longer guard shifts for now, as there's only Sam & I. We've split the night into two 6 hour shifts, from just before sunset to sunrise. It's tiring, I'll admit it, but MT can be a bigger help in other areas. Mom can take some of the shiftys - as soon as we feel she's caught up on some rest. She's still exhausted & has lot too much weight in my opinion. Frankly, Cindy should get off her ass & do some guard shifts too. She seems to be spending more & more time in bed & less & less doing any physical work.

Anyway, other than bitching about Cindy(!), & standing longer shifts, I've started going through the house, both floors, attic & basement as well as the outbuildings twice a day, just making sure everything is working as it should & trying to think through any potential problems. One thing I wish we had more of, other than lumber is glass for windows. The windows are all fine for now, but replacing them should anything happen would be a real pain in the butt. Especially if they cracked or broke right out in winter. I wouldn't mind having a lot more weather stripping too - again, just in case.

Maxine is the chief cook & bottle washer; well, chief cook anyway - the kids do most of the dishes. She's really hit her stride with meals. The first few weeks, it was pretty much the usual meals - nothing wrong with those, but she's devoted a lot of hours to trying new recipes & inventing her. MT hs been a great help there & although there have been a few disasters, most of what they've conjured up has been wonderful. The kids are learning to prepare meals too. Even Sammy can wash vegetables, set the table & help clear away. Greg can whip up a mean French toast & Annette is getting pretty handy in the kitchen.

The kids have all become good housekeepers. They dust, sweep, keep the bathrooms clean. We're pretty much at the point where we'll be able to set up a regular housework rotation where everyone has regular chores. Max will remain in charge of cooking, MT will supervise laundry & inspect the kids housework efforts. Cindy repairs clothing & makes over items which are outgrown or inappropriate. I oversee the house in terms of its physical operation. Sam keeps an eye on the outside of the property; security being the big issue there & weather worthiness.

Mom; well we haven't decided yet & all this is kind of day by day upin the air anyway. Right now, she's making sure dad doesn't try to do too much too quickly & is catching up on rest herself. That's perhaps thwe most hateful part of this whole process. We just don't know what's coming day to day; we don't know how anyone here is going to feel & we're still in the preocess of discovering our strengths & weaknesses. We're surprising ourselves & each other. I can't believe how the kids have risen to the challenge; talk about maturing quickly.

Dad, when he's not snoozing or spending time with mom, is working out new lesson plans for the kids. With so many changes hitting us so fast, we're all spending a lot of time thinking through what may lie ahead; how we may have to reorder our lives. Talk about the veneer of civilization being stripped away. We've had a lot of evening chats about that & they're actually becoming the best part of the day.

But it's late in the day now & I've got to grab something to eat before getting ready to pull my guard shift. It's been cold today, the power was out longer than expected & that stew smels good!

[CanadaSue]

Just past noon & everything is peaceful in the house. I think I'll spend a few days keeping this Journal up to date. Dad is still tired, mom is finally starting to relax & everyone else is keeping pretty busy. I've been feeling restless again & it feels good to get back to writing; something I haven't done routinely other than term papers, etc. since about eleventh grade. I enjoyed it then & should keep it up when time permits.

I spent all my time yesterday speaking of the family. I meant to get into more news type information, but my hand cramped up well before I was finished & I had my shift to prepare for. I should start locally & move outwards, then move back to the center, so to speak; the potential effects of outside news on us here at home.

We're seeing fewer & fewer military & police patrols. Mom mentioned that she'd been hearing the police & military had been falling sick in increasing numbers, worrying when you consider that most HAD received vaccines early on in the outbreak. It gives credence to the suspicion that the virus had been bio-engineered to get around the vaccine in many people. It would be bloody awful to think that those out doing the hard work may end up being the ones spreading it. Anyway, as I said, fewer & fewer military vehicles going by & we don't really know why. Local news has commented on this, but has been unable to provide reasons.

Locally, food supplies are starting to look pretty bad. I think we only have about 2 weeks left & the mayor has warned everyone that we may have to tighten our belts some. He can't guarantee deliveries of anything from anywhere. State government isn't responding to many calls from local governments, he told us, so we've been told to assume we're on our own.

Over 2/3 of the local community is now down with the disease or dead of it. That's rough, to put it mildly. There will be few orphans left as almost all kids coming down with it aren't making it. The elderly & those already ill are dying in droves too. So far those who appear to be recovering are those between 20 - 55 or thereabouts. The mayor apologized for not having better numbers but really, I don't think statistics are anyone's ppriority right now.

The care centers are full & simply not taking anyone in, unless they are found by local patrols & have no one to care for them. There are not enough people to care for all needing nursing & the mayor & council have told people to see to their own family members & do the best they can. A family with a sick member is to hang a colored towel, anything but black or dark colors; & local patrols will notify the ration people who will ensure that some basic medical supplies are included in ration deliveries - as long as medical supplies hold out that is.

Once a day, army trucks drive slowly by & drop ration packs for families at various points along residential streets. Armed guards ensure, as best they can, that people don't take more than they're entitled to. Anyone trying to & not backing off when told will be shot. That apparently has already happened a few times. Our truck shows up about midafternoon & Sam goes out to get the stuff. We leave it on the porch for several hours, with one of the kids at the front indow keeping an eye on it. By then, the bleach Sam has sprayed all over the package has disinfected the outside of the package & we hope the cold takes care of any stray virus particles surviving the bleach.

The rations are pretty bleak. We've seen lots of rice, some pasta & a few 5 pound bags of sugar so far. Early on we got some potatoes nearly every day, but we're not seeing anywhere near what we were told we would get. The reason isn't too hard to see. Between stormy weather & so many people getting sick, there's not enough people able to drive delivery trucks. They talked about using planes, but again, there's not enough personnel to clear runways, maintain the planes, load them or fly them; not on any regular basis anyway. I don't think there's enough people to continue regular production at the canneries or packaged food plants either.

Meat? What's that? We got 3 pounds of bacon last week & haven't seen anything since. And to think dad chewed me out for shooting those 2 does. At the rate these kids are growing, we're going need more than that. The other night, I went to the back field to pick up that delivery of milk. There was a note too; pretty thoughtfully prepared by Drew. He wrote it clearly in fineline black marker & left it in a Ziplock bag. He said every night, just after his last farm rounds, he'd make his way to the same spot & deliver anything he had to spare, as well as notes. He asked if we'd do the same. Funny enough, he's run out of ketchup! Dad must have about 10 cases of it & I was glad to get some for him, ready to eat!

We've set up a routine now. He stops by at about 9 or so at night & I set off just after I finish my shift, about 1 in the morning or so. I read his notes, then leave ours, adding anything I need to in response to what he's put down. Noreen, his wife, is feeling pretty lonely. It's just the 2 of them & the dogs out there, but so far they're healthy. Drew mentioned in his last note that they had a bit of excitement the other night. About 2 in the morning, the dogs started barking & Noreen was certain she heard someone outside the house. Drew let the dogs out & he reports they seem to have chased someone off. In any case, the next morning, there were footprints outside. Just as well the dogs were on chains. He spent some time that morning, after the farm chores, icing up the approaches to the house. In my note to him tonight, I'll give him the plans for our tin can alarm system. It's not better than the dogs, but may give them a bit more warning, especially if whoever it is approaches from downwind.

No such happenings here. Louise next door is fine, it seems. Her posters still show up on her side window 3-4 times a day. She must feel awfully lonely over there. I'm wondering if, in another week or 2, she shouldn't come over here. She hasn't left the house except to get her rations & she's been spraying her stuff down too. Frankly, I know Joe has a ton of lumber in his basement. They were planning on finishing the basement this summer & have all kinds of construction material down there that I know dad wouldn't mind getting his hands on. She can't have much food left & she sure would be company for the woman as well as an extra set of hands. We've seen no sign of Joe since the outbreak started & she's indicated that she's had no word from him or about him. Who knows when or even if, she will.

The weather has been miserable. It's been bitterly cold the last week or so & we've been going through a fair bit of firewood. Oh we still have lots left, but my thoughts have started swinging to long term thinking & I wonder if 1 night I shouldn't bundle up the kids & Mom, (with a rifle or 2) & go collect some of that dead fall back in the woods. There's a fair bit of downed, well dried wood & every bit helps. The outing would do the kids good I think & I might try to talk Sam into it as well. If I wait until early next week, Dad should be well enough to keep an eye on the house, along with Cindy. We'd only be gone about 3-4 hours at the most. I also want to check the depth of snow cover over the pond. It is spring fed, I'm pretty sure dad still has his old ice auger somewhere & some time down the road, we may be looking at hauling our own water.

We still have 3 old toboggans in the back shed, the long wooden ones that would easily sit 4 adults. I don't know why on earth dad kept those, but I'm sure bnot complaining. They just need new ropes for pulling attached, a bit of waxing & they're all set to go. They'll make fantastic winter transport for wood, water & anything else we can think of. Wish I'd thought of that after shooting those deer the other night. It was only after we were home that Sam remembered we still had them! I felt like an idiot, but so did Sam, so we were even.

When I look out over the town through the attic window, it's easy to see signs of deterioration already. Most roads are full of snow, except where the wind has swept some sections bare. Quite a few street lights are broken or down; must be due to that wind storm we had. No matter, they weren't wasting power on street or traffic lights anyway. There have been a few fires in town & a few blocks appear almost completely burnt out. From what I can see, these appear to be residential blocks - or were. Probobaly electrical short circuits or something & if the fires hit when scheduled power outages were in effect, if the fire services couldn't get close enough because of snow blocking the roads, I can understand them choosing to let the places burn.

Maybe it's a sign of the times, but once I got over my concern for whoever had lived in those homes - I'm sure they got out & there's been nothing in the local news about deaths by fire recently; my main regret was all the food, clothing, etc in those houses that had burned up! I'm almost ashamed to admit that, but who knows when we'll be able to buy or obtain anything again, easily? Amazing how quickly we get used to buying anything we want, any time we want it; assuming of course that we have the money or credit available. Get used to it is the wrong term. I grew up that way, even though mo & dad always taught us to be careful with money & I've always saved, I KNEW I could always get what I wanted, if I was willing to spend the bucks.

Now, man; who knows? Late at night when I'm lying in bed, just before I fall asleep, I find myself wondering what will happen to all those people who had nothing. Who never bothered ahving more than a week's worth of food or thereabouts in the cupboards. They've got to be hurting now, if the rations we're getting is anything to go by. On the other hand, with fewer & fewer people left alive in town, I suppose the need for rations is dropping. 8,000 dead last time they reported numbers and another 9,000 estimated to be sick. Man, that sucks big time; no other way to put it.

No one knows for sure & right now, anyone who can move & is available to help has more than enough to do. So, they've stopped checking any house showing no signs of life. Oh, once a day, a military patrol; accompanying the ration deliveries is going by with a bullhorn & is repeating the same message. Anyone sick & alone or if the whole household is sick; open the front door, wave from a window, give SOME kind of signal that they nedd help. Houses that had already been checked &/or are known to be empty have had a red 'x' spray pained on the front door; saves precious checking time. And the rate at which people are going down with this, time saved may be lives saved.

I can't help but feel guilty that I'm in here & there are others out there working their asses off. Sam & I had a longish talk about that this morning, when he was coming on & me going off shift. He feels the same way. Here we are healthy, well fed, warm & doing pretty damned good under the circumstances. We have a healthy neighbor beside us & a good, solid farming couple behind us with whom we're bartering as needed. Dad's had a heart attack, but is doing well according to Mom. The kids are doing great. And yet I KNOW there are so many out there with nothing. How many, right now; are lying alone & duffering so badly? It doesn't bear thinking about & I've had more than a few nightmares.

Under the circumstances, I can't help but feel that as a young, single & healthy man, I should be out there doing SOMETHING for the community. Sam & I have talked long & hard & Sam sees it this way. This is bad, very bad; but could become even worse. We have no way of knowing how many will end up being struck down with this miserable plague. It could end up that we are one of a very few families left when spring arrives. Sam says & I reluctantly admit he's right, there has to be someone left whole & sane on the other end of this. At the most basic level, someone has to repopulate our community & over time, "fix" things.

What the hell he means exactly by "fixing things"; I'm not exactly sure. Just looking out the attic, there's so much that needs fixing. Where the hell does a person start? Who's in charge? What if the mayor, the whole town council gets sick and/or dies? Where do we go from there, especially when we don't even know what "there" is going to be yet? "Here" is bad enough, believe me.

The rest of the state is doing badly too; hell, the whole country is. The west coast is getting slammed by storm after storm from El Nino. It wasn't supposed to be quite this bad, but the last out local newscrews were able to hear, the appeared to be no end to the storms. One good thing about California being the home of Silicon valley & tehcnogeek heaven; there are some folks out there managing to keep some of the internet up & running. They're bootlegging downloads of weather sattelite data & amateur meteorologists are giving forecasts as best they can. Their accuracy is surprisingly decent, but I wish it wasn't. They're not seeing any end to the storms & huge stretches of coast are being pounded by surf as high as 35 - 40 feet. It's almost like an out of season, out of place hurricane. A lot of land is tumbling into the ocean, along with a great many homes.

The midwest, including us is suffering from a bitter cold spell. We're okay, but no doubt many are freezing to death, especially if they're too ill to keep fires going. Roads in many areas are impassible due to drifting. Obviously supplies aren't getting through in too many areas & in the cities, it must be pretty bad. The local news guys reported some rumors they'd heard of dog packs roaming through Chicago, Springfield & the Twin Cities; attacking anyone who isn't armed & willing to shoot. Unfortunately it seems they've caught & killed more than a few people. This is one time I'm glad we're getting news by radio & NOT much from TV.

Speaking of TV news, most of it now is done by a few, very tired newscasters in the studio. You have to feel sorry for them. They're used to almost instant verification of most major & local stories & now they're operating in a half world of rumor & semi-stale news. They're doig their best though & working hard at keeping on top of what's really important now, local news.

The radio station we have on all the time has been doing sterling service; if I may use MT's favorite term for somethng she approves of. Any known delays in ration delivery, they announce. They have staffers manning the phones, (when they work) & keeping up to date with anything important coming from local government. Five men & three women are the on air announcers. They're working in 6 hour shifts & I'm not sure how many people they have behind the scenes, working the phones, cb & shortwave. Thank God they've at least got that, although it's getting harder & harder to pickup anything.

The southwest seems to be holding its own outside of the illness. Their weather has been reasonably decent & they're not lacking for food. The southeast is also managing, although they've had a fair bit of rain. They're also holding out for food, far better shape than we are anyway. Florida & other winter getaway areas for the elderly are reporting horribly high death rates & they're being forced to tow old freighters & whatever other vessels they can find, loaded with bodies, out to sea, set them alive & turn them loose. Sounds awful, but the ground is too close to the water table to even think of burial & a "Viking's funeral" is more efficient in terms of time & fuel.

At least 2 oil platforms out in the Gulf are alight. Whatever problems they've had, the wellheads are open & somehow caught fire. What a waste, especially when we're starving for heating fuels of any kind up here. Getting to them, identifying the problems & fixing them are absolutely out of the question right now. Obviously any crews left aboard are too sick to even radio in, (assuming their transmissions can be picked up), or are dead.

The northeast is an unmitgated disaster. All those large cities with so many people & they're seeing a damp, snowy winter. New England has been buried in snow & the only comfoting thought there is that the folk living there are hardy, used to tough winters & tough times. Some will make it through. I don't even want to think about NYC or DC. All the news out of these areas, as well as Baltimore, Philidelphia, Buffalo & Boston has been as bad as you can imagine. Rioting, looting; these cities are under siege from within & no one knows how to begin to stop the madness. A local tv station got hold of some film shot by a news helicopter & uploaded to the internet. Riots, fires, then eventually, bodies lying in the streets. God knows what's inside the buildings.

Man, this is getting too depressing to continue with. Sam had the late shift & spent most of it trying to put together what he could of news from around the world. I'll let him add it to the journal once he finishes eating. I ned to eat some then talk to Dad about teaching Greg to shoot. He's ready for the .22 & we can do some dry firing & safety drills in the basement for now. Annette could use some practice too; even if it's just dry firing. Hope he doesn't mind, but I'll feel better if we get everybody up to speed as soon as possible on as much as they can handle.

Things are going downhill too fast.

[CanadaSue]

... and I'm not a writer, never had the time or inclination. I suppose it's only fair I contribute to this family journal however. It's not fair to put all the burden on only a few members. You won't get much philosophizing from me. I don't have time for that these days & to be honest, I don't like the roads my mind can take me down these days.

I told Andy I'd write about what appears to be going on in the rest of the world. As far as we can tell anyway. The local radio station is doing a decent job of letting us know what's happening overseas. Funny, just a few months ago I prided myself on always being on top of what was happening in as many places as possible. Now, it doesn't matter nearly as much as what's happening at the street corner. What happens there could threaten my safety or that of family. The rest of the world at this stage, seems awfully remote.

Seems this smallpox is hitting everywhere real hard. I don't doubt that. It's been murderous, literally, here in town & across the region & we have decent hospitals to start with. What it's like in dirt poor countries, I can't imagine. It does no good to tell myself that they're 'used to misery' in those parts. Misery is misery, no matter where you are & if what mom told us is any indication, this is not something to wish on even those you loathe.

Maybe Iraq was lucky to be nuked when we did that. They had it too, they must have & in my opinion, better to be instantly vaporized than to go through the agonies mom was describing. Sure, it seems Iraq brought this down upon us, but that wouldn't be the average Joe on the street. No it took a real sick & twisted set of minds to pull this off & I hope they rot in hell.

Where ever they happen to be right now, wether they're answering to God or Allah, they've inflicted a misery on tyhe rest of us that hasn't been visited upon the earth since the days of the Black Plague. I try not to pay too much attention to the news items about how the disease is striking people. It bothers me too much, especially when I think of the kids or Maxine getting sick.

Much of the world is calling us everything but righteous for our response to the attack on us, but tough. They've got it too & if we're the only ones who had the b*lls to answer this as it deserved to be answered, that's the way it plays out. Long term, our response will prove far less lethal than what we're living with now.

This is AMERICA, by God & you don't do this to America. You don't do this to us & get away with it. We should have been a lot faster in our response to 9/11. Yeah, it was quicker than most expected but to my mind, it didn't go far enough. I figure we had more than enough proof of the source of that attack, or sources & we should have hit with all our might, rather than incrementally. What's that old line about boiling a frog slowly? Those countries are used to a state of constant low grade warfare & we should have just slammed them as hard as we could have - as soon as possible.

But we didn't & this is the price we're paying. We should have taken Iraq out years ago & I don't care how callous that sounds. We make have prevented this outrage if we'd acted as a strong nation should. But we didn't & now, even though we've basically eliminated them as a country, it's too late.

They may have eliminated us & they've certainly done a number on how we live. I've always been a careful man; watched my money, been the best husband & father I could & now I feel helpless. I don't know what any day, any hour will bring; what threat may stroll up the front walk or be heard over the radio. Thank God for dad & his years of careful planning for worst case scenarios. He couldn't have imagined this though, not this degree of suffering & I don't think he really considered how worry for mother might affect him. I'm sure that's what caused his heart to act up.

Damn, and didn't I say I don't like to think much on these thing? Or write. Andy will laugh.

Right, for the rest of the world. The BBC in Britain is still broadcasting by shortwave & the Germans still have something operating. The radio station is faithfully reporting their news as well. Initially, the EU, (stands for Entirely Useless in my mind), was all set to condem us, then they got bogged down with their own smallpox cases. Funny how your priorities get refocused real fast when the shit hits the fan. It's real bad over there. The weather is perfect for the virus & people live pretty vrowded, even in what passses for country side in most countries. Things aren't being helped by the storms hitting the western part of Europe; something to do with El Nino or something. They're getting so much rain that parts of some countries are flooding bad. Belgium, Luxemburg & the Netherlands, the so called Low Countries may soon end u[ as underwater countries. Some years back they almost lost some major dykes in the Netherlands during another bad El Nino year. It took a lot of effort by a whole lot of people to keep the dykes from bursting. This time around, they simply don't have the manpower,although they're doing their best.

Eastern Europe only has sporadic news reports coming out. What little is being reported out is pretty bad. Those weren't healthy countries to start with & this isn't helping at all. Africa is pretty much toast. What smallpox doesn't get, the resulting secondary illnesses will get. I doubt any one in the rest of the world will have much time to worry about Africa for a while. China is being devestated. They had a bad flu epidemic as well, which is seriously complicating things. The rest of Asia is a nightmare, don't even ask me about the Indain subcontinent.

It's looking now as though at least 50% of the world's population will be killed off from this & follow on illness over this next year. Thatmay go as high as 75%. That will make those ultra greenies happy. The bloody panda bears can have all the bamboo they want & the whales can roam freely; no one will be left to hunt them.

If this is sounding bitter, it is. Like Andy & I were saying, it's tough being so angry & not knowing who or what to aim that anger at. If inded it was Iraq, then we did the right thing, but it leaves us without someone to scream at, doesn't it? If the rest of the world wants to bleat out their outrage at us, screw them; we've got enough to deal with & they'll have their own messes to sort out sson enough. I suppose the good thing about not getting instant news feeds is if anyone decides to "punish us" by taking us out with nukes, we won't know until it's too late. I hardly see the point of that anyway, but thenwho could imagine the point of unleashing a pandemic of smallpox.

Right now, all I'm concerned about is keeping everybody, especially the kids, safe. They're all we have & like the old saying goes, they're our only hope right now. That may be literally true. God knows how may or how few kids are going to survive this.

Dad is doing great, now that mom is home. We're having a harder time keeping him still. He's starting to feel much better & feeling like he's not pulling his weight. Heck, he's been 'pulling his weight' in terms of this crisis ever since I've known him. If it wasn't for him & the sacrifices he & Mom have made all these years, we wouldn't be in such good shape.

Maxie had a great idea. She suggested we ask him to do some long term thinking, along the worst case scenario type of thing & write some notes on how we can manage later on in the year. His eys just lit up at that & he got busy right away. At least he sist still while he's thinking & writing & as we keep telling him, jhis brain is his greatest gift to us right now. He's spent a life time thinking through some pretty awful things & it sure will come in useful now.

Enough from me anyhow. I'm a poor writer & it sounds like Sammy is getting a little over excited. Time to send the kids outside. I think I'm going to have them start 'collecting' snow, packing it into whatever empty containers they can find. We can always heat it up for wash water. I'm getting uneasy with how often the power is going on & I don't think we can count on tap water for much longer.

[CanadaSue]

It's late at night, just past midnight on the 19th of January. I can't sleep. I swear I spent the first 2 days home either speaking with Tom or sleeping. I can't remember ever being so tired in my life as I have been working with those poor babies. It may take another week or so before I feel as though I've properly caught up on my sleep. I'm still tired now, just not sleepy.

Tom encouraged me to find a quiet period of time & write this, "this" being an account of my experiences at both the hospital & care center to which I was assigned as Head Nurse. I have mixed feelings about doing this. I suppose I have to get it out of my system; hope that somehow disgorging the words may help me somehow excise the impressions, the sights & smells; the sounds which haunt me when it's too quiet here.

I told Tom I really didn't know what to put down here; what deserved noting in a permanent form. He suggested just sitting here with this journal in hand, pen ready & write it as it comes. Funny, that doesn't sound too organized & that may be the place to start - the feeling that there was no way we could have been organized enough to adequately face this, to treat each patient as they deserved to be treated.

We thought we had a good public health response plan to deal with any major medical scenario. It certainly worked last spring, when that tour bus crashed & we had 60 patients to deal with. We had the callout system started within 3 minutes of receiving notice from the police that a mass casualty situation was coming in. All patients were at hsopital & triaged within 90 minutes & within 6 hours, everything was well under control.

Oh we did the usual post incident analysis & were pretty happy with how it had all worked out. The few problems we ran into, we thought we had ironed out. But looking now, especially in light of what's currently happening & after catchinhg up on some sleep, I see several major errors we made. The awful part is that I'm not sure that knowing in advance what would happen would have been much help.

We always looked at mass casualty, callout situations as "one time only" type of emergencies. Even scenarios where we were looking at major outbreaks of illness such as flu had a terminal point. Scenario 'A' would end on Day 'X' sort of thing. We never looked at open ended situations.

The base assumption was always that supplies could be obtained, be they food, IV fluids, clean sheets, etc. The only real source of concern there came from the accountants who fretted about how we would pay for large orders; they weren't sure our credit limit with suppliers was high enough! The idea that we could run out was never seriously examined.

Staffing; same sort of thing. We assumed, even with staff down with flu or something similar, that within a few weeks, they'd be well enough to return for at least light duties. We never presumed a scenario where staff couldn't get in to us, chose NOT to report for duty or were a large part of the patient load themselves.

And, I don't think any projected scenario ever looked at more than 10% of the area's population becoming ill. We also realized that at 10% of locals sick, we would be seriously hampered in our ability to diagnose, treat & deliver supportive care. Most of us out & out stated it couldn't be done.

On paper, we had a working plan for an outbreak of smallpox, but too many crucial issues had not yet been addressed. I doubt it was ever really taken seriously by those who really could have made a difference in the planning. The lawyers kept grinding the process to a halt anytime we spoke of comandeering buildings & people do the work required in a large scale outbreak. "Illegakl, can't be done, violation of this, that & the other thing"...

Yeah, well smallpox is the grossest violation of anything I've ever seen in MY life & I have no doubt those same lawyers would say differently now. What the heck does property law matter when you risk having few people left to worry about property? Honestly, claims & counter claims in a court of law have no bearing on the current crisis. By the time we get through this, IF we get through this, I don't think any lawyer will have any higher priority than feeding him or herself & their families.

I think Tom was right; sit down with some quiet, pen & paper & eventually the words come pouring out. And, I haven't even begun to speak of the unspeakable. I'm going to get a cup of hot chocoalte first, something soothing... and some tissues. I have trouble thinking of what I've seen & you readers a long time from now, forgive me if my writing gets shaky. These are terrible things to relive, to write about.

I needn't say much about the first few days. Tom says he wrote about how I was called in to discuss plans for the crisis which hadn't yet been publicly announced. What he didn't write, (I hadn't told him), was how full of panic the meeting was. It was bizarre. The youngest & oldest doctors, those who've either had experience with severe outbreaks of anything & the newer doctors who've gone for bioterror training were white with anxiety. I must say, my heart felt like it froze for a moment when the Chief Medical Officer told us what we might be facing.

We must have spent a good ten minutes simply REACTING, filling the air with unanswerable questions, opinions & yes, even some tears. The CMO let us 'vent' for those 10 minutes, then quickly got a grip on the meeting. At that time remember, we had no cases here but he saw no reason why we shouldn't expect any. After all, the CDC was already aware of several index cases in a number of different cities.

We really didn't get too much done that first meeting. With an impending crisis of the size we were facing, it makes more sense to have representatives of all interested parties. About all we got accomplished was ackowledging that we needed representatives from the clinics in town as well as the other hospital. Thankfully, we were able to set that up for 3 hours from when we broke up our first meeting.

The second meeting was something else. It took a while just to get everybody settled & ready to 'get real'. Too many still wanting to fight over who would be in charge of different aspects of the crisis, should it hit home. Our CMO finally, disgustedly I'll add; handed it over to the Chief of Medical Operations of the private hospital, adding that he'd be happy at act as his second. That finally got the ball rolling.

In any case, it worked out like this; a central switchboard for calls between hospitals & clinics was organized, in order to minimize confusion. Both hospitals agreed to send home as many patients as possible, with medications, care instructions & written instructions for any minor care procedures their families could carry out. All staff was to stay at their own institutions as they were familiar with procedures & protocols, not to mention the physical layout of their own facilities.

In terms of procedures, all emergency room doctors, clinic doctors & private clinicians were to be provided as quickly as possible with descriptions of early smallpox symptoms & findings. Ambulance services were put on notice that they could possibly expect a large influx of calls. Luckily the 2 companies in town are pretty on the ball & their drivers/paramedics well trained. They assured us they'd be ready within 6 hours, both to recieve patients & to transport them to the proper location.

We agreed to take in all suspected smallpox cases, to evaluate & do the lab work & initially, to provide 100 beds. We all hoped that wouldn't be necessary, that we might perhaps only see a few cases which could easily be isolated & that the public health department would be able to vaccinate any contacts.

There's where things started breaking down quickly. At the time, we had no vaccinia vaccine & we still hadn't heard when we could expect to get any. Heck, state public health was darned near impossible to reach & understandably. Still, we had to plan & we spent long hours trying to decide how best to handle suspected cases & contacts until we could assure a supply of vaccine.

Let me skip forward several days...

You know by now, from your own families & from history classes in school that after that first few days, the situation rapidly worsened. We got cases alright, far more than we could have dreamed of & within the first week, it was clear that we were not dealing with "normal" variola. You probably have the answers to that by now, exactly how it had been engineered, how many end up dead. From this side of the time line, so many questions remain unanswered. I'm not sure I want all the answers still outstanding.

I won't soon forget my first sight of a patient with a full blown case of pox. She was about 25 according to the chart & had a semi-confluent case. I'd seen quite a number of patients with prodromal symptoms & some with early pox, but this poor woman lived alone & had been too sick to call for help. She was lucky a neighbour decided to check on her, although that poos woman payed for her concern later, with her life.

Strange, you train, you prepare, you think you've steeled yourself against the worst possibilities. You have faith in your ability to overcome any fear r revulsion you may feel towards patients. Sometimes the reality is almost overwhelming. I froze, I truly did for about 30 seconds or so & had to fight the urge to run, to flee to some mythical safe place. It was as primeval a feeling as I've ever had; more elemental even, then birthing my children; an overpowering sense of immediate threat to my life. I almost broke right then & there & those first few days, several staff members did.

I can't, don't blame them. Most came back after a few minutes, perhaps a few hours, ashamed of their reactions. Most have never seen horro the likes of which we face now & their reason fled in the face of overwhelming sights. In emergency we often deal with gross insults to the body, horrifying injuries, but we mainly deal with those one at a time & any staff member who has trouble emotionally after working on a tough case can get counselling.

But here we were, constantly recieving a stream of patients we could do little for. Sam told me we have close to 20,000 people sick or dead now, just locally. I find that easy to believe. We saw relatively few cases, considering the scope of the outbreak, but those we saw would break the heart of the most hardened person. Men, women, children; we got them all that first little while, until there were just too many clear cases & no room, not enough people to handle them all at hospital.

I wasn't happy about being chosen to head the nursing effort for the childrens' care center. I've always avoided pediatrics like the plague & children in emergency, especially those with serious illnesses & injuries always made my heart sink. Luckily, I'd never had to care for too many. It's not that I'm not good at it or don't deal well with children. In fact, I'm very good at it. I just can't seem to leave that aspect of work at work, if you know what I mean. Still, the peds people here were already pretty tied up & several showed signs themselves of having contracted the illness.

We were given adequate enough facilities thank goodness. One of the local high schools with 2 huge gyms, both of which could be searated into 4 smaller rooms. An adjoining cafeteria gave us even more space. I couldn't have imagined needing all of it though & even overflowing into classrooms the way we did. In my center alone, we ended up with close to 1000 beds, cots, mattresses; all full of kids under the age of 10.

Most of the time I spent there remains a blur. There never seemed to be enough staff, but really, there was little we could do except keep them as clean & dry as possible, keep fluids in them & sedate those who were in the most pain or the most upset. I'm grateful I didn't have the real babies to deal with. It was bad enough having the 2 to 5 year olds. They're old enough to speak, but not really old enough to understand what's happening & definitely not able to understand why mom or dad can't be with them. Some of the doctors didn't them bringing in their stuffed animals, but I put down my foot at that. What would have been the point of excluding them? No one came to us unless we were sure they were suffering from variola & they certainly weren't going to make it worse for others if their teddy bears were contaminated.

So what were we able to do? Frankly, not very much. The worst cases got IV rehydration but for most that was more of a problem than a solution. The little ones often ripped them out or got so restless, the needles slipped out of the veins which at that age, are small & fragile to begin with. It was easier to simply try & get them to drink whenever possible. Food, well most weren't too hungry in any case. They were too sick, too frightened or missed their parents too much. And they were so frightened at the sight of those lying around them. A full blown case of pox, especially on the face looks terrible & these kids are at the age where their fantasies are vivid & they can't distinguish dreams & nightmares from reality.

We had to keep quite a few lights on at night for a child waking & seeing the face of his neighbor, would often erupt into heartbreaking screams of terror. It was hard enough keeping them still & calm, without involving their own terrors. Some, we were able to put loose, soft blindfolds over but even that became a source of terror to many. Young kids are very visual & not seeing was to some, wrose than what they saw.

A no win sitaution all around. Most died within 3 - 4 days & with the death rate so high & so many new pateints coming in after being found alone, we had no way of knowing how long some of them had been ill. We had days where over half the patients in any one room died & no way of giving them any privacy nor of protecting those around them from the sight of death.

And the stench. Even the masks did nothing to keep that out. It can't be masked or eliminated & most likely factored into the lack of appatite many kids suffered from. The smell of an 'accident' was almost welcome. wful as that can be, it's far better than the reek of weeping pustules.

We spent most of our days working in tems of three. We'd go from bed to bed, washing what we could as gently as possible, making sure linen wasn't too dirty & changing it when it was. We'd give them what we could to drink, assess how they were doing, then move on to the next child. Three of us to see to thirty or so kids & it took an hour at best, three at worst. It was actually fastest when we arrived at a cot & find the patient had died. They'd be taken away by oderlied while we did the best we could to disinfect the bed, then change the linen. I don't think a cot or bed was ever empty more than 5 minutes.

I don't know how long we worked. We generally worked until we couldn't see straight, then would go shower out & lie down for a few hours sleep. It was easy to forget to eat & the sights, sounds & smells made it impossible to look at any food with any degree of enthusiasm. I made the mistake of looking outside once. Curfews notwithstanding, many parents stood patiently outside, hudling against the cold & weeping softly in the arms of loved ones.

Every few hours, some poor orderly had to go & read the list of those who had died & eventually, those few who were making a recovery. If you lost track of the time on the wards, you were reminded when the shrieks & wails of anguish could be heard outside. Unfortunately, that generally set the kids off, adding the bedlam we were already experiencing.

I understand why soldiers who have seen war have that empty, far away look in the eyes. There are different wars that we fight & this war we're fighting now, the battle against this scourge, is no less terrible than any WW1 trench or massive artillery barrage. We have been subjected to a bombardment of disease & a campaign that's the result of years of arrogance, of neglect, of assuming we would never suffer such an attack.

And we're paying fullest, fullest price... through the deaths of our babies.

I must stop now. There is more to say, but not at this time. My hands are shaking & I suddenly feel like those children are just on the other side of the living room door. I can't go there right now, not & stay sane.

[CanadaSue]

Andy again. I almost have to chuckle. After promising to take over journal entries until Dad feels better & needs a bit less rest, who decides to write but Sam & then Mom. We've all made a pact not to look at what each other person writes; perhaps we'll re-read this as a family at some later date, but right now, we've agreed to NOT read each others' entries. That makes sure that everyone records their impressions honestly & without feeling influenced by others.

Mom was up last night, when I got back from the wood lot. I know she was writing in this journal & I'm soooo tempted to look, but judging by how she seemed to be when she finally put this down, perhaps I'd better not.

Drew asked us if we wanted 3 or 4 hens or more! We've been talking about it all day. I'd quickly added to my note to him; telling us not to bring them tonight; that I'd have to talk to the others, but personally, I think it's a great idea. We'd have our own eggs, meat when the hens get past laying & it would sure ease my mind about all of us eating this winter. MT & Annie are keen, assuming we can get enough chicken feed to keep them going. Drew did say, he'd provide that as well. He ran an egg sales operation before the outbreak, as well as selling 50 or so roasting chickens a week. He's obviously got more than he can handle right now & even if he slaughters off most of his birds, he & Noreen can't keep up with all of that.

I think we're going to go for it & Dad & Mom are going through our supply lists with Sam, trying to figure what we can give Drew in exchange. I tried to phone him up today, several times, but the lines are down more often then not. I'm sure he & Noreen are in need of something, soon if not right away & they'll sure be doing us a favor by giving us a half dozen laying hens. The look on Maxine's face when I told everyone what Drew had offered! She's excited at the thought of being to do more & better baking & of course, eggs a few times a week would sure break the monotony of rice, pasta, stews & other meals easy to prepare on the wood stove.

The power has been off all day, strange considering the wind died early this morning & it's been warming up considerably. I looked at the sky before sunset & huge, long streamers of high altitude cloud were blowing this way. Looks like we're in for more snow & the radio station concurs. They say we should expect a good foot of it over the next day or so. Sam & I both went around the house, both inside & outside, making sure everything was good & snug should that snow turn into a storm. Everything looks shipshape & we snugged down the garage door; it's been getting pretty rattley the last week or so & we just hadn't made time to see what the problem was. Looks like one of the tracks was loose, but that was easily repaired.

We brought some roasts from those does in from the wooden boxes. I'm tired of hamburger & pork, even if Maxine does do a wonderful job with them. Haven't had venison in a while & I'm not sure if the kids have ever tried it. MT will help Max tomorrow prepare a nice roast. She's got the trick of cooking it at the back of the fireplace & we jury rigged some heavy tongs with which to shove the roasting pans around. Glad we have more than a few, although if things continue to go this badly, I have a "resupply expedition", I'd like to undertake at the local mall. I'm thinking finding such items may prove difficult in the future & I'm not keen on learning how to operate a forge!

We sat down together tonight, after supper. It was cozy with the fireplace going & just a few lamps with tin foil reflectors providing the lighting. I felt like we were filming an episode of Little House on The Prairie although I don't think the girls ever wore cords & dad's hunting jackets inside! MT was almost swallowed up in quilts, mittens & a brilliant red woollen hat Annette knitted all by herself. It's not that cold in here really, but we don't want MT to catch a chill & Annette had been out in the back yard & still felt a bit cold. The house is thankfully draft free & between the fire, hot chocolate & everyone gathered around, it felt pretty good.

Dad had spent a good part of the day looking forward towards spring time. That sobered us all up pretty quickly, especially after he asked Mom to speak first. She had trouble saying what she had to say - I guess the memories of nursing at the care center are still too fresh in her mind. She doesn't think this is going to go away any time soon. She says in this area anyway, with most people either already sick or staying at home, she expects case loads to start dropping. She's not predicting how many will die but says she doesn't think this area will have more than 5,000 people left alive by spring. She had to leave the room for a time after saying that, getting herself collected again.

Her fear is that when people finally do feel free to leave their homes, we might see more waves of infection & she doesn't know quite how we can prevent that. It comes down to this she thinks, the vaccine will protect some people, for reasons no one can quite figure out yet; some people are protected while others aren't. Those vaccinated who do get the illness seem to get a slightly less severe case, but still die at a fairly high rate. Many of those left alive are blind; she says perhaps upwards of 1 in 5.

That won't be of any concern to us for a time, but at some point, we're going to have to leave this house. We can't immure ourselves in here forever. The trick will be to figure out how to minimize our risks. Dad had some ideas there & some good ones. We can get by for a good long time with what we have now. When we do have to obtain some crucial items, most likely medecines & such, it will be spring time. Once every 6 weeks or so one or two family members will go shopping or whatever passes for shopping by then. They'll go masked, gloved & gowned & when they return, they'll stay in the back shed for 2 weeks. Mom says as much as they can figure, no one incubated the virus that long; that the incubation period was most likely a week or less. We'll have to see about that.

Supplies brought home can be disinfected outside & we'll have the back shed fixed up as a comfortable little cabin for those who make the trip into town. There's a cold running water system we can jury rig using hose & running it from one of the second floor windows. They can use a bucket as a toilet & hopefully, that will only be a temporary problem.

We'll turn the back garden & part of the back field into a garden. One of the things we'll have to try & get is fencing of some sort, if only to keep the deer out of the garden. MT says she has some ideas we might try to keep animals out of the crops. We're going to spend time this winter learning as much as we can about gardening on a large scale & animal husbandry. We'll hopefully have the chickens & rabbits might not be a bad idea. If I can catch some young wild ones this spriung, well after they're weaned, that might work.

If Drew & Noreen stay healthy, if Louise next door does as well & all can swear to stay away from others, we might be able to make a go of some kind of co-operative farming effort if only to supply our needs. We can all contribute. Mom is a nurse, MT has a lot of practical knowledge of living in simpler times & Maxine & Noreen can both cook up a storm. Mom can help Noreen & Maxine preserve & can & Dad, Sam & I are pretty good at butchering; well deer anyway. Drew can teach us what we need to know about cattle, swine, etc. I'm not sure what all he has on the farm right now.

Dad can teach the kids & Sam & I provide brute force labor. So can Jake if he ever comes home. There have got to be some draft horses out there somewhere; a lot of local farmers ran sleigh rides during the winter, especially around Christmas. Hopefully, some of them would make it through even if their owners don't. I think we can figure out how to care for them & the agricultural museaum has at least 1 old plough. I'm sure Drew has one somewhere in that collection of sheds & barns of his.

Boy, we'd asked Dad to think long term & primitive, but didn't ecpect him to go to these lengths. He cautioned us this was all specualtive & based on worst case type of stuff, but this is pretty bad case now. I crunched some numbers based on what Mom has been telling us & factoring local variances for death rates & such. We may end up with a population of only 75 to 100 million nation wide. The cities will be unliveable for a while & I thank God we're far enough 'in the middle of nowhere' to not attract too much attention, at least for a time.

Anyone wanting to relocate is going to have to do that next summer. They'll need time to plan, to obtain what they need, then make the trip. Some will be able to keep vehicles running & make most of their journey that way. Many others will use bicycles, horses or even their legs. Winters here are fierce & I hope enough people realize that, so that they're disuaded from heading in this direction. It's my hunch that many would head south. They're welcome to it.

As for us, we'll stay here; everyone is pretty much decided on that. We've been, as a family, in this area for 2 - 3 generations & know the climate. There's farming blood in the family & we're motivated to learn new skills as fast as we can. You should see Greg & Sammy working on their reading. Sammy says he wants to be Annette's helper looking after the chickens. She handed him a couple of encyclopedias & books which talk about chickens & with MT's help, he's struggling through the reading. Making great progress for a kid in kindergarten. Greg has it in his head that he'll be in charge of any horses we end up having. He's burying himself in every old horse novel he can find in the attic. Both boys are doing practical math with Annette's help; figuring out how much land we'll have to plant in potatoes, corn, etc. as well as kitchen garden items. Greg is getting to be pretty good, although we allow him to "cheat" & use a calculator!

The only one not really showing any enthusiasm is Cindy who's still spending a lot of time pouting. Mom has let me know she'll be "talking" to her tomorrow. I expect a bit of verbal abuse is in order! Mom of all people knows what could be ahead of us & won't tolerate any crap from that spoiled little princess. She told her today to start thinking about what she was going to ned in terms of baby stuff; to prepare a list as well as ideas of what we could substitute. Cloth diapers anyone?

That's something else we'll have to think about later, especially if Jake comes home - birth control. I don't know what they were using, but it's one post outbreak issue that had better be addressed quickly by couples. Sure, we'll want to try & replace those we've lost, especially the kids - but the timing is going to be crucial, especially if a couple is on their own. Too bad the phones are down. That's one issue I'd like to point out to the radio station.

Well, time to make another round, both in & out. I suspect it's about to start snowing & I want to haul out the showshoes for going over to the woods later. Have to tell Drew we're happy to take the hens, then figure out how we're going to do that. Dad told me to spend some time tonight figuring ouot what we can do for a chicken coop. Argh! As long as I'm not the one who ends up shovelling chicken sh*t!

[CanadaSue]

Well now, it's good to be back. Anne has told me I can only write for an hour at a time, so my entries may be shorter than I like, but at least I can continue my chronicles. To any of my blood kin reading this, I feel fine now, after several days of enforced rest. I sure didn't know what hit me. I honestly thought I was just having a miserable case of indigestion until the pain seized my whole chest. I don't want to go through that again & I wish I had access to a cardiologist right now, to see just how much damage I've done to myself.

Anne, after listening to me describe what happened & after asking everyone else what they saw, thinks I was lucky, that I just had a minor episode. Well, if that was minor, I'll gladly pass up on major. MT's nitro tablets really helped, as did the double shot of brandy Maxine insisted I swallow. It didn't take more than a few hours for the pain to completely leave my chest.

What I can't get over is how TIRED I was afterwards. I'm glad MT has had experience with heart attacks. She's had plenty of angina attacks & many of her cronies have suffered heart attacks. I felt blessed to have her here; she kept me pretty calm when I was all set to have a real panic attack. I don't suppose that would have helped any.

Now, according to Anne, I'm going to have to make some changes. We've had some long talks about that since she came home & she tells me I'm simply going to have to let go of the reins some & let others handle some of the load. he's right, I know she is, but by God, that's heard to do! Part of me resents that, the letting other people handle things. Deep down inside, I "know" no one can handle things around here as well as I can. Isn't that foolish? Talk about ego!

MT made me list down all the things I think I do well, then make another list of what skills & talents the other family members have. You know, it helped to see it all on paper that way. Maxine can run rings around any of us in the kitchen. Sam, with a young family & demanding job is probably better at juggling many jobs & responsabilities. Andy is strong & better able than me to push something through to the end. Anne is more practical; I've always been more of the dreamer. Jake is better at thinking things through & even Cindy, when she's more herself is better at working out good shortcuts to jobs. MT is a treasure trove of ideas, old & new. She's always been a great reader & is surprisingly flexible for a woman her age.

Even the kids are showing strengths I didn't know they had. Both boys can be headstrong, as can Annette & it's simply a matter of harnessing that mule headedness. Yup, between all of us, we can make a go of this.

My first few days, when I wasn't sleeping or dozing ,weak as a newborn kitten, I spent a lot of that time fretting. The kids, (mine), got in the habit of 'reporting to me', letting me know what they were doing & trying their best to keep me up to date with things. I appreciated that, yet resented it at the same time. It reeked of "humoring the old, sick man"; something I loathe. But I suppose it was necessary. It's going to be hard to let go of some things though, but Anne has warned me that if I don't, I'll become a drain on the rest of the family. Anything but that!

We've spent a fascinating few days working through what could happen over the rest of the winter & into the spring. We've had little chance to do anything else. It's been blowing quite a storm since just after 2 in the morning yesterday. It was pretty at first, big fat flakes & warm. Anne even let me go out on the back step for a time, just to enjoy the sight of the snow. About 6 hours ago though, mid afternoon, the wind picked up & started blowing the snow around. You can hardly see to Joe & Louise's now, never mind across the street. In the lee of the wind, along the east side of the house, there's a clear patch, cleared almost to the ground, extending out about 4 feet from the house. Then, there's a huge sculpted bank of snow, reaching almost to the second story. When this storm blows over, the men & kids will pack as much of that snow as they can against the side of the house - cheap insulation.

It's still warm thank goodness & I'm praying for those out in this weather. I hope they're not straying too far from vehicles or lights as visibility is terrible. There's no end in sight either. It seems this has stalled over us & we're right in the thick of the snow coming off the lakes. Andy keeps trying to measure it; next to impossible in this wind; but he figures we've had almost 14 inches so far. I'd be surprised if we saw the ration truck today or any police or military patrols. God knows how they'd get around, unless they have dozers at the military encampment. Even if they do, there must be some major routes they have to concentrate on keeping clear.

The local radio is reporting this storm is hitting most of the midwest & hitting hard. It's sandwiched between 2 high pressure systems & the low is REALLY a low, leading to these terrible winds. I'm so thankful we're warm & snug in here. We still sent the kids out, but Andy rigged a rope between one of the pillars holding up the back porch roof & the back shed. The kids each have a rope "harness" attached to the main rope. They bundled up several times today & went out to play. They didn't stay out too long after supper. The wind was pretty fierce by then & bundled up as they were, scarves over their faces & all, they found it miserable after a while. I don't know how he manages, but Sammy always ends up soaking wet & drying out his things can take forever, even in front of the fireplace. At least it adds some much needed humidity to the house.

Sam & Andy have done their best to keep a small path to the road clear. They didn't want to make it too easy for anyone to spot, so they zig zagged it a few times & it stops a few feet shy of the road. They can just bull their way through the last bit of snow if they need to get to the road. The tough part has been keeping our wooden freezers out back clear. Andy came ibn a while ago & told me if he hadn;t known they were there, he'd never have found them. One was buried under a five foot drift!

Goodness, my concentration is gone. I was saying we've been talking over what might happen over the rest of the winter. I don't expect we'll see spring until well into April & it would be early May before we could work the land to any extent. We're all trying to calculate how much we'd need in terms of potatoes, corn, perhaps wheat, (if I can get seed), as well as vegetables. Root vegetables won't be a problem. I have enough put by to act as seed stock & as long as we were careful with the first year's crop, we could easily increase our holdings, God & the weather willing.

With Anne figuring on so few people making it, there should be lots of land available, especially considering it would be a long time until we see fuel again. Anyone not willing to do a lot of manual labor, would only take on a small patch of land. At least we're not having to worry about sod busting. This land has been tilled for almost 200 years now. Those farmers who make it will be a precious resource.

Our back garden is good land & I've always had a vegeatble patch. We're thinking of turning that into an herb garden. MT is trying to remember as many of her mother's herbal remedies as possible & Andy had printed out 2 entire herbal manuals before the power quit on us. Some things we can obtain from the woods & fields & start them here, where we can keep an eye on them. Other seeds, well Andy has a plan for that, he tells me; to be discussed later.

There's always been lots of deer around & for a time anyway, cattle will be plentiful. There are still lots in the pastures & providing they have some shelter, they'll winter over; enough of them anyway to calve this spring. There are rabbits & other small game & I don't doubt they'll rebound quickly. What happens later on in the year & thereafter is anybody's guess; too many factors & too few answers to fairly guage anything yet. All I know is that we're okay for now & we have the rest of this winter, 4 - 5 months to plan, to learn & to practice what we can. If the circumstances were different, this might almost be exciting. You can see it in the children; they love the idea, (in theory anyway), of a new way of life.

[CanadaSue]

It's shortly after nine & we've finally got the boys to bed. They've spent most of the past 2 hours, racing from window to window, looking out at the storm. As bad as it was this afternoon, it's become even worse. There must be a good 18 inches of snow on the ground now, if not more. We can't see Louise's house, except for those short periods of time when the wind dies down. The radio says as far as they can determine, there's no end in sight. The storm apparently hasn't moved in hours & even if it were to being moving again, we'd have at least another 18 hours of it. The boys went to bed full of plans to tunnel into the snow out back... not a bad idea for fun. although we'll have to warn them about snow collapsing on them. Kids CAN be killed that way. But if they get involved in playing out there, tunnelling away & if we don't have a thaw, the tunnels should provide them hours of insulated fun.

Andy made his usual run out to the edge of the wood lot last night. He & Drew have set up a good system there. Drew had quite a surprise in last night's 'mail drop'. Inside a giant sized baggie was a walkie talkie! Batteries even. Thoughtful of him to package it up so we could disinfect it before opening it. I'm impressed. It's not a cheap system, but looks more like military surplus. Takes some honking big batteries, but those I have loads of & if things continue to go downhill, we'll rig up a bicycle generator or something. I can figure out some sort of system with Andy's help.

In any case, Maxine & Noreen have really hit it off, trading recipe ideas & chicken raising tips! Drew is giving us a few days to rig up something to serve as a chicken coop, then will arrange to drop 8 laying hens by the edge of the woods. Andy will time it so the hens aren't left alone for very long. He's rigged one of the toboggans to takea load & I'll send Sam out with him that night to pick up the hens.

It looks like we'll steal some space from the garage to serve as a coop. I have some tin sheeting I can use to wall off a space between cords of wood. It won't be easy for us to get in there, but the kids can manage & Drew will send along a roll of chicken wire. He mentioned Noreen is still getting those stress headaches she was always prone to having, so I'm sending along a couplke of bottles of Tylenol & Motrin. If that doesn't work, I can give her some of the stronger stuff I've got put by, although I'd prefer to save that for real emergencies.

The kids are pretty excited about becoming chicken farmers & Sammy & Annette have been discussing how to care for the hens. As long as they can stay warm enough, they should be fine. Drew says they're used to an unheated shed & our garage will be more than adequate. He's sending along a 50 pound bag of chicken feed & says come spring, we can let them scratch out in the yard & garden. MT says he's right & I'll have to take their word for it; chicken farming has never been my idea of fun. Wait until the kids have to shovel chicken manure for the first time! Will make great fertilzier for the gardens though.

Little or no news available from out of state. The storm is causing a fair bit of radio interference & we still have no power. Thank God for 2 wind up radios. Best money I ever spent. I wish there were some way to express my gratitude to the newscasters over there. They've not been able to leave the station & they sound some tired. One of them admits to feeling lousy; winter cold from shovelling outside & he said he may take a few shifts off, just to catch up on sleep. The stomr continues to batter the area, the state & most of the midwest. Another nor-easter has formed off cape hatteras, so the New England states are expecting more heavy weather. The west coast is still in a pickle with those storms. No end in sight there either. The south, both west & east continue to do well & isolated ranches in the plains & west are holding out. Luckily, population there is scattered & although people are feeling pretty isolated, most can make it through the winter & there is little illness in some areas. May their luck continue.

Our power station is out for good... or until and unless they can get more fuel. It's a coal fired plant & didn't have more than a month of reserve coal. A lot of it was stolen early in the outbreak as people began to worry about heating their homes. A lot of people are risking illness simply to come to those few shelters open to receive people. There are some areas with generators & although they don't & can't power up all day, every day; they keep the temperature above freezing & blankets & quilts are being used to keep the old & young as warm as possible. Most generators & the fuel for them is being used at the hopsital & care centers.

Bodies are piling up until the storm abates & some roads can be cleared. The mayor announced he'll have to order the clearing & digging up of the ball field on the east side of town in order to dispose of the bodies. I'm not sure how he'll manage that, even if the storm does end by morning. There must be dozens of reefer trucks outside the hospital & care centers & they'll have to clear about 4 miles of road, then dig pits. Ugh.

Oh dear, Anne is telling me it's time I went to bed, before Annette even. I suppose she's right. Tomorrow might be fairly busy for all if this storm continues & surely there are some minor, time consuming but sit down tasks I can do while others are clearing snow.

[CanadaSue]

Goodness, what a day! It was hard to sleep last night through the noise of the wind. That storm is still with us & still more or less stalled - moving at only a few miles an hour out of here. We have 2 feet of snow now Andy reckons & still no end in sight. It's a strange sight out there, mountains of snow, only the quickest glimpse of other houses; everything is white, white, white.

We're going to have a heck of a cleanup effort ahead of us when this finally ends. Andy & Sam have been out several times, walking as far as a few blocks up the road. Safe enough; they were the only fools out there. Sam got a bit of a fright. He fell over in the snow & when he got up, wasn't sure which way he was facing. He wasn't sure if he'd become turned around or was still facing the same way. With the wind swirling around the way it is & visibility down to nothing he became quite worried. He was smart enough to not move for a minute until he felt able to get his bearings. He was able to backtrack himself until he found Andy. I reamed them out for allowing themselves to get separated, believe me! I don't think they'll make that mistake again.

Anyhow, the radio says to expect a good 24 hours of this yet, so I don't expect anything will be moving unless it's absolutely crucial. The hospitals & care centers have enough fuel left to power their generators for another 72 hours at best, so we're all praying here that the storm ends soon. I hope they're fine in terms of water & food. Actually, they can always melt & treat snow the way it's falling.

We've spoken to Drew & Noreen several time over the walkie talkies. Drew is having a heck of a time just keeping his cattle fed. He opened up the barn so they could have shelter & had to rope the door so that it remained open enough just for air & access. He's roped off a path from the barn to the house, dropped hay bales from the loft & his only concern now is keeping them watered. Thank God it's not cold out, although the boys tell me it's pretty bad in the wind.

We're keeping the children inside for now; it's just too bad out there. On the west side of the house, the snow has drifted up to the second story windows. I 'caught' Greg & Sammy planning to get dressed, open the windows & jump out into the snow banks - the idiots. They don't realize they can easily smother in the snow, as high as it is now. They'll have plenty of opportunity to mess around in the stuff when it ends. There's a lot of snow to move to we can have access both through the front & back doors. The garage door is completely covered & I don't know where we're going to put all that snow. Don't let me get started on the problems we might have in the basement come spring when it starts melting.

As I suspected, we've seen no sign of ration deliveries since this storm got bad. I thank God we don't need them & pray for those depending on daily food deliveries to sustain themselves. I only hope they've kept by a few days worth of food, for storms such as this one or other problems. I suspect too many people had too little food to begin with & if what everyone is getting is similar to what we were receiving, I doubt they would have been able to put aside anything. Sam & Max confirmed what I'd thought - we have a good 18 months worth of food, so even if we can't grow quite enough this coming summer to see us through an entire year, we'll be fine.

Drew & I have been talking & putting together a tentative plan. Anne really feels this is going to get worse before it gets better & that the nation will be left bereft when the final death tolls are estimated. I say estimated because I don't know who would count them & how they would go about that. I'm thankful it's winter. No one has time to collect & dispose of all the bodies & the stink would be horrific. Even if this begins to abate by spring, I don't know who would collect bodies & give them any kind of dignified farewell. I'm not even sure who stayed in this neighborhood, if they're well or not. We've seen no signs of life at all up or down the streets in the area & the boys use the binoculars to check from the attic & second floor windows at night.


We're staying well here & keeping busy in spite of being cooped up. I thought the kids might get restless, but they're all busy reading & learning, even little Sammy. I can't believe how resilient kids are. You'd think this way of existing, (hard to call it living), has always been what they've known. They had some nightmares, tears & all at first, but now seem caught up in preparing for what may lie ahead.

I wish I had hard & fast answers for them, or even for myself. I still can't grasp that everything I knew as normal is gone, at least for now. How can we begin to return things to the way we knew? Is it even possible? It's far too early to tell considering we're only a month or so into this crisis. Facts are hard to come by with national media not available to us. Power is out just about everywhere & again, I don't see how that can be repaired any time soon. I'm going on the assumption that it won't be; that some regions may be able to get some power up again, but that it's safest to assume that will NOT happen.

There are simply too many things broken, not working, nor likely to start working again soon. I think for at least several years, this nation is going to reorganize itself into regions rather than think of itself as a nation. After all, who's going to be able to repair & maintain road & rail networks, never mind airports & all the facilities that need to be running well to ensure safe travel.

Food production; I don't even known how to begin to think about large scale food production post outbreak. Is it even possible in the near term? Are we looking at thousands, perhaps more plague survivors starving to death next year? There have got to be stockpiles of canned & packaged good, elevators full of grain... somewhere; isn't there?

What about fuel to run combines, disks, harrows, balers, factories & canneries... how can we get those operational again? What about the pipelines? It gives me a massive headache just to try & grasp the scope of the problem, never mind begin to think of possible solution.

We haven't heard from Washington in several days & speculation must be rife. If the President even alive? What about members of the Cabinet, FEMA, the Chiefs of Staff, the Supreme Court? We've heard nothing other than news of the outbreak & as days go by, news from outside the immediate area seems harder to come by. Odd though, I've lost almost all interest in any news from overseas. I'm sure they have problems as serious as ours or worse, but it hardly seems important in light of what we face right here. I wonder if other countries, if people there are thinking the same way? If they're facing shortages & outright outages of crucial items as we are, I doubt their focus is anything but their local conditions.

It may seem odd to you, years from now; that so quickly into this emergency, my thoughts have gone to what may lie ahead; that I'm assuming it will be a long time before life resembles anything that we're used to. I can't honestly think of any other way to think right now. Locally, most people are stricken, with many expected to die. The weather is dreadful & winter just beginning. We have a good 4 months of very unpredictable weather ahead & who knows what spring will bring in terms of storms or extremes in weather?

I have my family to think about, not just now when the emergency seem to be at its height, but afterwards. And nowhere am I hearing anything about what comes after. It's understandable that official attention is being focused on the outbreak; conditions are surely dreadful for so many people, but is any attention being paid anywhere to what may come following this illness?

It may turn out that only individuals, families such as ours are able to give any though to what lies ahead. I wish I was able to speak with more people. Drew & Noreen are sensible folk; good, solid farming stock from way back & there must be many others like them who are prepared to ride this out, who once essential tasks are done, are finding themselves with time to think about what lies ahead for all of us. Perhaps sometime soon, we'll find ways to communicate. I regret not having spent more time thinking about that. I pity those alone at this harsh time & pray they find a measure of peace knowing they are really not entirely on their own, that the prayers of myself & my family rest with them.

And speaking of rest, Anne is standing here frowning at me & tapping her watch. I'd best take my nap before she starts telling me off.

[CanadaSue]

Still snowing & I'm getting pretty concerned about the amount falling. We much have close to 2 feet now & heaven only knows what the roads look like. Nothing is moving out there or, if it is, we can neither see nor hear it. The section of roof over the kitchen is getting pretty laden with snow & Sam, with Andy's help, plans on shovelling off as much as he can a little later on. I knew I should have built that roof with a steeper pitch, but never expected snow like this. Under normal circumstances, this would already be called a heavy winter. We've had a fair amount of snow since just before the holidays. Must be that El Nino thing.

We're well here, but bored with being cooped up inside. We can still get out, or rather the others can - Anne still won't let me do much, but the others have been out back several times. They say it's too windy to be comfortable for more than 15 minutes or so. When they can glimpse anything through the wind driven snow, it's unrecognizeable. Snow is drifting into fantastic shapes & huge piles.

I've been monitering the CB radio & not getting anything other than a very few short, garbled transmissions. There's still SOME transport out there, but where it's going, where it's coming from & what it's carrying... who knows.I can't get clear enough reception to understand anything. Still, it's a comfort to know there's life out there. Louise has a police scanner & through notes on the window, is passing on to us anything significant she hears. Right now, that's not very much other than to say no one is going anywhere unless it's absolutely crucial. That seems to be holding across the state.

No idea what's going on anywhere else right now. The storm is such that little or no information is getting into this area. I know locally, the dead are piling up & I pray the temperatures remain below freezing until the remains are dealt with. The local radio says as reefer trucks are filled, they're sealed & sprayed with bleach at least twice over a period of several hours. Needless to say, they're also under guard although I can't imagine who'd want to get anywhere near them.

Drew is having a rough time with his cattle. He has upwards of 60 head crowded into 2 barns right now. They have enough feed to last a long time. Drew always tries to keep a good supply of rolls of hay, but watering them right now is a concern. What he's doing is packing snow into huge tubs, hoping the body heat of the cattle will be enough to melt it down to water. That usually works, but the storm is making them skittish & they're not doing the usual - keeping to one end of the barn huddled together. He's finding it tough walking the 150 or so yards to the barn. He was smart enough to rope off a safety line, but he says the snow is so deep, most of his line is buried. He has a waist rope tied to the main line with a honking big caribiner & just hopes it never detaches on him. He says it's taking him a good 20 minutes to fight his way out to the barn & he's making that trip every 6 hours or so. He's doing his best to keep the barn door clear enough of snow so it can remain partly open but says part of the barn is drifting in.

More worryingly, he has about 40 cows due to calve in 6 weeks; he always liked early calving for early sales & that worked fine when he had the staff. He's not sure how he's going to manage. He lost about 20 laying hens, but says he can simply put them in the freezer - lots of freezer space yet. He still has over 100 heans & 3 roosters, so is not concerned.

He's been trying to keep an eye on the 3 farms he can easily see & reach from his place. 2 are holding out; families are there & are doing well so far, no sickness, no major problems with their herds or stock. At the third farm, smallpox is present & he almost found out the hard way. He hadn't seen any movement there for a few days & almost entered the house. The front door was locked & when he looked in through the window, the couple were lying in the kitchen; both dead he figured. He stayed at the window a good long time & reports he saw no movement. Water in the sink appeared frozen so he thinks they've been dead for a few days. He did what he could for their cattle & horses, but says he'll have to return soon & check on them. That farm is a good half mile away, so getting there isn't going to be easy. He's also not in any hurry to expose himself to any virus, so won't rush back. He put down as much hay & grain as he could & says the stock will have to manage as best they can for water.

It's been about a month now & after all the shocks & my heart attack, I'm worn out - we all are. Funny though, it's not a physical feeling of tiredness so much as emotional wipeout. Our underpinnings have been taken away & I personally feel like I'm floundering for something to grasp firmly to. Haven't found it yet. I can see it in the others. Cindy has turned helpless, Maxine is almost too quiet, Anne has a sad, faraway look & Sam looks like he's smouldering with rage. Andy has an almost manic energy to him, probably nerves. MT just goes along with her day's work. I'm not sure if she's more accustomed to disruption or simply too old & tired to react more visibly. The kids, as I've mentioned before appear to be the most resiliant.

Funny how life never works out quite how you planned. That's an old saying you grow up with & to me, it started making sense at some point in my 30s. At that point, I remember always trying to plan for "fudge factors" in whatever I was doing. Sometimes; not always, my 'allowances' worked. At other times, they were unecessary. But saying life doesn't always work out as you planned it, doesn't begin to cover what is happening here.

Anne & I used to talk about this kind of thing... and laugh. Such discussions had an element of surrealism that I thought would remain in that realm. You know how often, especially when you're doing something routine or mundane, something requiring little or no thought you dream? I call it running 'personal movies'. Of course in my case anyway, those life movies starred me. I was the one who thought of everything, planned for the worst & who was the hero. I could be or do anything I wanted. No one shared these "movies" with me. They were deeply personal & probably pretty silly at times. But don't we ALL do that in one way or another? I always have, even when I was a little guy.

I remember being the cowboy, the airborne soldier, always the hero. As I got older & more grounded in reality, playing out such mental scenarios never lost their fascination. If anything, adding elements of realism made such scripts more challenging; more adult. There's one thing about dreams though that isn't happening here. Personal mental movies, dreams... end. You wake up, your mind returns to the here & now & the script you wrote for yourself fades. Plus, you can always "cheat". If the scenario you script for yourself becomes too difficult, you can change the parameters or completely change scripts.

So here I am, here we are... early in the year 2003, stuck in the ultimate horror movie. I can't change scripts, roles or even turn off the projector & turn on the lights. And I sure as shooting don't feel like a hero. Heroes don't have heart attacks & have to depnd on others to fulfill their roles. Heros don't realize they've forgotten or failed to consider some important stuff, like I have a ton of rechargeable batteries & battery chargers... but didn't count on a possible permanent loss of electricity. Oh, I THOUGHT about it, but dismissed the idea as too pessimistic.

See, my preparation scenarios never involved something that could or would disable a large percentage of the population; not seriously. If it did, I mentally counted on a million stalwart heroes, rising above conditions & carrying on. Not supermen, just old fashioned Americans made in the mold we grew up on as young boys & girls. Clean cut, all American determined patriots who could rise above whatever what was thrown at them as individuals or citizens of this great nation.

Never, not once did I picture an event so devestating that it had the potential of ripping the nation apart from the roots. It scares me. It bloody well TERRIFIES me. Oh, I'm not concerned about surviving or even thriving as a person or family. It's simply that, at my age, at my time of life, this isn't what I'd planned on. Pioneers are meant to be young, approaching the prime of their life; men like Sam & Andy or Jake. Women like Maxine or Cindy or Louise next door. Even the children, young & malleable enough to grow into the concept of starting from scratch. Not someone my age. Retirement was in my immediate future. Anne & I have or had enough saved up to leave work later this year or next. Our house is paid, we have everything we need & money in the bank.

All the positive balances in passbooks now are meaningless though, aren't they? What good does a wallet full of $20s do when stores are empty & closed, when they're unstaffed & unstocked? My real valuables are those things in my attic, my store rooms, my garage. In that sense I'm a wealthy man; probably a very wealthy man compared to a great many. I have knowledge & access to more. I have a family who's young & strong & who is used to work. What I'm not sure I have is the mental strength, the gumption to carry on.

At this point, the situation is too uncertain, too confused for me to plan adequately beyond today or tomorrow. All I really KNOW is that I have a snug, secure house, plenty of supplies, a family & my faith. I pray these will be enough.

[CanadaSue]

Was I not just writing about the unexpected things that can happen? It's getting to the point where I'm loathe to put my concerns down on paper for fear they turn into actuality. But I'd best start where I left off.

The storm blew out overnight after I went to bed - an hour or so after my last entry & we woke up to a frozen canvas of shades of white. The women cooked up a hot, filling breakfast & everyone who could weild a shovel went out. It took a good 45 minutes just to clear the front door. We couldn't SEE out the front of the house on the first floor - the snow had drifted up that badly. When Sam opened the front door, it was to find a drift of snow completely obscuring the entry way. He quickly shut the door & Andy crawled on to the roof front my bedroom window. He told us we had about 10 horizontal feet or so of snow to get rid of before we could clear the door. He, Sam, Annette & Maxine made their way out the back door & after about a half hour of struggling through drifts, made it to the front of the house. They started shovelling their way to the front door, guided by the same bedroom window which thankfully is located almost directly over the front door.

In the meantime, MT, Cindy, Anne & Sammy scooped snow from the INSIDE of the house, through the open front door & brought it out back. Thankfully, the back yard closest to the house remained scoured free of snow & we found room to dump most of the snow. MT had the brilliant idea of putting some in the bath & in pots on top of the stove & in front of the fireplace - it made fine bath water! It took almost 3 hours simply to clear an opening to the outside world from the front. Ansy ended up ramping a path up to the top of the drifts - for now. Much less work & much of the snow will pack itself down. In any case, it makes the house look uninhabited, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If passers by think no one lives here, we may be free from unwanted visitors.

I was put 'in charge' of keeping the stove & fireplace going & making sure hot chocolate was ready when needed. I also made sure the kids came in & cahnged into dry things once in a while & kept the wet things hung up. I'd have rather been out there shovelling, but I would have been shot!

It took all morning to clear enough snow from the front to be able to get in & out safely & the men spent the rest of the daylight hours filling in the void spaces along the east wall & back wall with all the snow. Insulation of the house will certainly NOT be a concern the rest of this winter. Andy's not sure how much of the stuff fell, he figures close to 30 inches. In any case, they made sure we had snow where we wanted it & clear space where it was required & by the end of the afternoon, everyone was exhausted.

We sent Sam & Andy to bed straight away, after giving them a good hot meal & Anne informed Cindy SHE was taking the dark to midnight watch shift. To hear the carrying on, you'd have thought she'd asked Cindy to walk 20 miles, up hill - both ways! Obviously Anne's had more than enough of her attitude, her whining & long face. She listened quietly as Cindy got wound up, let her get to the "poor little pregant me" phase, then unloaded a backhand I swear could be heard from outside. That produced some real tears, which quickly dried up when she leaned over, got right in Cindy's face & said something in a tone so low no one else could hear. Cindy turned white, shrank back, then turned off the faucets & went to her room. She's been a different person to deal with since, believe you me! And I don't think anyone was sorry to see that happen. The woman has turned into a drain on everyone. I don't think we have to worry about that anymore.

Anyway, the rest of the night was split between Anne & Mother Thomas is terms of keeping watch. We deemed it safe enough; there was simply too much snow out there for any ne'er do well to be out looking to try to break in anywhere. We've heard little about that kind of thing locally anyway. This is not the big city & we don't have the "me first" attitude more common in larger, more impersonal communities. Indeed, the night passed quietly & we all slept like logs. I set an alarm for early & made sure there was water enough for everyone to have a hot drink when they awake. With no shortage of water in the form of snow, most yesterday got to take a long, hot bath. Time consuming to heat the water & carry it upsatirs, but all judged it worth the effort. We were quite happy to benefit from Anne & Maxine's frozen stews augmented by a couple of dozen tea biscuits. We splurged & let all have as much butter as they wanted - we've been pretty sparing in the use of it so far.

No one did much of anything during the morning; too tired I suppose from the night before. Cinsy, when she wasn't helping get meals ready, spent most of the morning & afternoon in her room. Several times, Maxine went to go to her, but MT stopped her, telling her that in her, (MT's), opinion, Cindy needed some good, hard, thinking time. She certainly got it. No one was unpleasant to her, but we're all tired of her attitude.

After lunch, the wind died down & it was quite pretty out with the sun shining. The boys wanted to go out again, to play in the snow, so we let them. Annette preferred to help Andy work on a makeshift chicken coop in the garage. I sent the women & Sam for a nap, much deserved & told them I'd moniter the news & keep an eye out for the kids. They were quite busy tunnelling through the drifts with old flour scoops & dust pans. Not much on the news, other than several exclamatory stories about how bad the strom had been; no reports on dearths or damages, but bad news can almost always wait.

I must have dozed off. I woke up about 2 hours later & could hear the kids in the livingroom whispering, excited over something. My heart sank when I walked in there. Greg & Sammy had come in some time previously - couldn't have been long for they still had very reddened cheeks. They'd carefully hung their outer clothing to dry & leaned their boots up against the fireplace wall. One problem though, one BIG problem. There were not 2 boys sitting on the sofa, but THREE. I must have looked like a sputtering fool & I thought I was going to have another heart attack. I must have scared them to death, for all three shrank down into the sofa, then Greg burst into tears, quickly followed by the other 2.

It seems the third young lad, Tim his name is; appears to be four & says he is... had been wandering around outside since the storm. All I got about where he lived was a vague "that way" as we waved over up further towards the main part of town. When I got the boys calmed down, they gave me this story...

Our two had ended up on the front lawn, trying to see if they could climb on to the roof as the snow was pretty much high enough. I think they'd planned to slide down into the snow & thank GOD they were distracted from that. Sammy spotted Timmy struggling down the middle of our street & kids being kids, our 2 made it through the snow to him. They found a very cold, very wet Timmy who wasn't sure how long he'd been outside - he says he went out after the sky got light. He told me his parents have been "asleep" for a few days now & he can't wake them up. He had been told to stay indoors but got cold & ran out of food. He says he doesn't know how to work the can opener or he would have eaten some Sapghettios.

I don't think I need go into too much detail about the uproar this created. I woke everyone else up, through closed doors & told them all to STAY WHERE THEY WERE. I explained as best I could what I knew & Andy was able to get out through the second story & backtracked Timmy over to where he'd come from, about 7 blocks from here. Sure enough, his parents are "asleep", both dead of smallpox & Andy, before coming inside through the second story window again, stripped down & jumped immediately into a tub of cold water - yuck!

Unfortunately, the boys had been in both the living room & kitchen by the time I woke up & realized we had a 'guest'. This really changes things & it wasn't easy figuring out how to handle this. Obviously, we weren't about to kick a 4 year old back out into the streets & Anne thinks that if he was going to get sick, he would have done so already. Our concern is the boys who helped him take his clothes off - his fingers were cold to the point of being numb & of course, MT & Cindy.

For now, we've confined the latter 2 to their rooms; a kind of reverse isolation. They may be exposed to virus through bringing them their meals, but that can't be helped. MT is fine, Cindy surprisingly, seems resigned to spending some time in her room. We thought it best to isolate them separately in case one gets ill & the other doesn't. It would be a shame if one took sick, then infected the other.

Anne & Maxine, helped by Sam did their best to disinfect the downstairs. We didn't need that effort after the big job shovelling snow, but there you go. Sam even ripped up the carpet with some old box cutters & pitched it out back. It can be replaced & we can put down parts of it later as area rugs. A few days out in the cold should kill any virus outside. We almost boiled the kids clothing, both their outerwear & what they'd changed into. I figure the heat from the fireplace & stove killed any virus on their boots & any surfaces in their vicinity.

They wore masks, gloves & old raincoats & once the cleaning was done, bathed in water with Lysol & washed their clothing in the same mix. Thankfully, they all thought to put on "grubbies" before coming down to clean. Anne is beside herself with worry for me. She figures I'm more susceptible having recently had my heart act up. In any case, they wouldn't let me do anything but bathe & change. I felt terrible watching them work. I don't think any of them have ever done more determined scrubbing.

All 3 boys are also isolated, together this time in the upstairs family room where the boys were sleeping anyway. Annette, poor girl, she was up there too & most of her things were located in that area of the house. She'll have to make due with some of Anne's older clothing for now.

It took time to get more details from Timmy & poor kid, he's convinced that all we have to do is go back to his home, he & one of the adults & his parents will "wake up". Andy tells us they must have been dead several days - it was pretty bad in there & he's surprised Timmy isn't more upset than he appears to be. MT told us to let it rest; his little mind will deal with it as best it can - in time. For now, all we can do is tell him his parents are still sleeping & won't wake up for a long time & that in the meantime, he's to stay with us.

He's fascinated by Greg, a "big boy" & Greg is taking the responsability seriously. He's reading stories to both younger boys & keeping them busy. The kids think they're in heaven - no chores & lots of games. Too bad there's no power, some videos would go down a treat when they begin to get bored.

This is a headache we didn't need although as I've mentioned, we're likely likely to kick a kid out on the streets! Poor little puppy. Andy didn't dar go in the house but looked through as many windows as he could; small house, not much in it & judging by his clothes, his parents didn't have very much either. Andy could see some food, but as Timmy said, mainly canned. We'll keep him... and pray that he doesn't become ill himself or sicken anyone else.

In the meantime, we're scrambling to change our routines to accomodate the new circumstances & praying hard...

[CanadaSue]

Phew, tired...

It's been a hectic 24 hours as we struggle to re-organize our home & routines to accomodate the new conditions. To review; MT & Cindy are isolated in their rooms until we're sure Timmy doesn't have smallpox. The boys, our 2 & Timmy are isolated up in the playroom - thank God it has an attached bathroom! Anne wants this isolation to remain in effect for the classic 18 day waiting period. So........ we're stuck like this until February 11th or thereabouts. Anne isn't too worried about Timmy coming down with variola - she figures he would be sick by now with his parents having become ill & dying. No, she's concerned about any stray virus he may have brought into the house on his person & clothing & that virus infecting any of us. The boys had the most contact, so are staying with him. MT without the vaccine & Cindy, pregnant; are also at increased risk should they become ill.

In effect, this means more work for Anne, Sam, Andy, Annette & myself as we fill in for those isolated. We have to pay more attention to housework too & I spent some time yesterday filling some spray bottles with a mixture of bleach & water. Before we open the bedroom doors to remove used dishes & laundry, we spray the air immediately outside the door. Those inside also spray INSIDE the doorway. That way, should any virus be there, it gets killed. We'll do that until either the 18 days passes incident free or if someone gets ill - that would result in a whole other level of work.

The isolated peoples' dishes is being washed with bleach added to the water & we're treating their laundry the same way. With strong suspicions that this virus is engineered, we can't really be sure what the incubation period is. Anne says it's most likely much shorter, but who's to say we're dealing with only one strain here? I very much doubt the CDC or USAMRIID had had the time to do much typing of the strains in lab samples they gathered before this outbreak really picked up serious momentum.

Oh, I could kill the boys, but on the other hand, would I have done differently? Probably I would have brought the lad home, but found some way to get him into the house without him having to pass through the main part of it. Boost him up to the second floor & into a bedroom would have been the easiest & most convenient. I have difficulty imaging three boys that age staying cooped up in the bedroom without driving each other crazy... or cheating & 'sneaking out'. Sam put a lock on the outside of their bedroom door; something I hate doing because of fire safety, but someone is awake 24 hours a day in any case & the lock can be smashed open in a moment.

I find myself at times wondering, how many more Timmys are there out there, cold, hungry & alone in homes peopled only with the dead. Probably far, far too many. I know the children tend to get sick fastest, die more quickly & more often but surely there are some surviving out there. I only hope they can either hang on until help of some sort arrives or are old enough to fend for themselves for a time. And I truly hope that those who prey on children are too ill to even consider taking advantge of the current situation.

I can't help but think of society's most disadvantaged & the criminal element; how are they coping right now? What does a drug addict do when his supply dries up, his supplier disappears? Alcoholics can simply break into liquor stores & I suppose some desperate addicts may try to break into drug stores but drug stores were among the first establishments guarded, then cleared out by the military. With manufacturing grinding to a halt, every available medication is required somewhere, by someone.

How does a prostitute earn a living when people are afraid to be within one hundred feet of each other never mind closer proximity? How do their pimps cope with that? No customers, their "girls" perhaps sick or dead? For that matter, how many of them are well? The homeless - what do they do? They are being seen in some cities as walking repositories of plague & regrettably in some cases, being dealt with summarily, both by officials & by citizens.

What of those who found themselves trapped in the country when travel was summarily suspended? Far from home, perhaps not speaking the language, unable to reach loved ones & how are they eating? Were rations provided to these people as well? Are our citizens trapped overseas being treated with consideration? Not that we could do anything about it if they weren't...

So many, many considerations with this crisis; many of which I've never really thought about & perhaps most of those of us remaining alive to date have never examined. I wouldn't want to be the President right now for all the gold at Fort Knox. I sat up for a time last night, star gazing & asking myself, if I were President, what would be, in light of this crisis, my short, medium & long term goals.

The problem I immediately ran into was that almost every crucial aspect of life, its maintenance, resumption or re-implementation is a high priority. I asked Andy if he has any idea how many miles of roads we have in this country & if he couldn't find that out, how many Interstates & other major highways... I'm thinking delivery of supplies here. Whatever the answer, how often do most large highways have to be repaired? Does it depend on a combination of use & weather? here ould the gravel, tar & asphalt come from with most factories closed? How about the fuel to run the resurfacing vehicles, diggers, etc. Where's the manpower?

How much roadway do we need open; how far could we reasonably expect people to travel to obtain food, medecine, clothing etc.? Can we even think of taking care of transportation on a national basis immediately after the crisis? Or will our constituent states form regional blocs?

What about legalities? I know many who would dearly love more power at the state level, less at the federal level, but who gets to make these decisions? Heck, who's going to be LEFT to make these decisions? The way it looks to me now, the federal government is going to have to decide to either go isolationist & clean up things at home, or let states & municipalities do that themselves, while they concentrate on international issues.

Assuming all other nations face the same concerns & I'm sure that's pretty universal, is there any point in worrying about international dealings for a time? I worry about that because much of our manufacturing base went overseas; cheaper labor & other costs. So if we're not dealing with other countries, where do these items come from? In the short term, if we take as large a population hit as Anne thinks we will, this shouldn't be a problem; there are stores full of clothing, footwear, household supplies, etc. out there. So who are they going to belong to, post outbreak. Pessimistically, I'm thinking whoever gets them first & both Sam & Andy agree. Think of the barter value of kids clothing, disposable diapers, medecines, etc. until we re-establish some kind of commerce.

How do we fund infrastructure repairs, where's the tax base to come from? Oh man, I'm giving myself headaches just coming up with the questions, forget about answers! These are all significant issues that we CANNOT ignore. But in what remains of our governments, who is going to be there to pay attention to all of this? Heck, I'm not even sure what infrastructure should be repaired first. There are valid claims for so many. I can think of transport, power generation & transport, food manufacturing, communications... I have no idea how much any of these systems, save power, will break down over the next several months, thus can't hazard a guess as to what would be involved in fixing anything.

Education? That's easy enough. I expect most parents with surviving kids will either teach them themselves or organize de facto schools. Medical care will be much the same. Doctors, nurses, herbalists & many other medical professions won't lack for employment. But how does one determine value when money is simply dirty paper in your pocket?

Oh these things will all be resolved one way or another, but at this end of this journal, none of these questions are close to being addressed & I for one am frightened. All I have to count on is myself & I proved to be not up to the challenge physically. My heart has failed me once already & I'm afraid of repeating that episode. My sons are young & strong, as are their wives, wether they know that or not. The children are as children have always been, resiliant & able to cope with the most surprising things.

I'm encouraging them to write their own journals or, if they're more comfortable, to dictate their thoughts for me to write down. I've promised them Gramps is not interested in "correcting" their ideas, thoughts or feelings. Gramps simply feels it's important to remember what life was like, before... this.

I've been feeling pretty down lately, in spite of no lack of things to do, things to think about. Anne assures me that heart attacks frequently have that effect, that cardiac patients very frequently undergo pretty deep depressions as they realize how close they may have come to death, how many changes they will have to make in their lives.

I agree, but only in the sense that for our world or much of it, 'heart attack' may be an appropriate analogy. We've all been stopped short by a deep shock which is, like it or not, going to bring even more profound changes to our lives than it already has. As often as I used to snarl about living in a corrupt society, there are many things whose passing I will mourn deeply.

First & foremost, any sense of security I had living in the richest country in the world is gone. We had risen the highest & thus, will probably fall the farthest. And who'd wearing a parachute? There was a book written once, 'What Color is Your Parachute?'; something about retirement benefits. If I were to write a book now about the national psyche that emerges from all of this, I might title it 'Were You Wearing A Parachute?'

Already I miss music, the kind of mindless soothing stuff that entertained me on long, lazy afternoons when I was doing busywork. When will local radio next offer some relaxing music to while away the time to? I regret never having learned to play a musical instrument; I really do. Anne plays the piano & Maxine used to play the fiddle; I wonder if we could "find" her a fiddle? After all of this is done, perhaps we should all try to learn to play something - just for fun & to make our own entertainment.

I was never a huge movie buff, but will miss being able to freely watch my collection of documentaries & some movies I have taped because of their outstanding quality. Already I miss just being able to hop into the car & drive out into the country, to swim, picnic, etc. A 20 minute drive would now be an all day walk. My horizons have been shortened & I don't like how helpless that makes me feel.

I miss contacting freely friends & family just by picking up the phone or going online.

I miss laughter; there's been precious little of that lately.

I miss hearing about all sorts of mundane things that don't matter; things that don't have an efect on my life. Now it seems I have time for nothing but information that's vital & it's ALL vital right now.

I fear finding out I forgot to stock up on something absolutely crucial; something that will make life extremely difficult. I fear we'll drive each other mad sharing this same house - I'm not sure that will be practical post outbreak. But I would very much miss living here; in the home I've lived in & improved.

Paper, paper & pens; how long will we be able to obtain those? I've discovered I like doing this; that this journal is now an old friend, even though it was started barely a month ago. Who knows, I may be writing a history text of some sort that will be read by school children 100 years from now. Why not? How many are documenting what is occuring in their areas right now? I hope many are, for as many commonalities there must be to this experience, there must be very disparate regional issues as well. Heat & humidity in the south, winters here & in the northeast. Availability of food items... all these things will be so dependant on where a person finds themselves & how many are left when this is over.

And when WILL this be over? Anne just shruge her shoulders helplessly & says there's not enough information yet to reason that out. She's trying anyway, based on how our town is handling this. She thinks the worst of it here will be over within 3 months, in terms of illness & deaths from smallpox. After that... who knows?

Maxine is calling us to eat. My turn to bring the boys their supper & I'll see if they're interested in having me read them a story through the closed door. This might be a good time to introduce them to some rip roaring adventure stories based on our great pioneers. I could use the inspiration too!

[CanadaSue]

I wonder if I'll ever feel properly rested again? I've gained a new appreciation for our ancestors; those who came out here by horse, walking alongside wagons... and that was the beginning of their hardships & perhaps not even that, for most left behind all & everything they knew. Many had come from somewhere overseas, spent some time in the more or less settled east, perhaps learned a trade & married, started a family. Then, after all of this, they made the momentous decision to move west, into unknown lands. There, amongst unknown dangers & alien circumstances, they painstaking carved new lives for themselves. And such a fragile existence it was, easily snuffed out by accidents, disease, sheer circumstance. I have never, EVER appreciated the fears they had to overcome, never mind the sheer physical effort they had to exert to simply LIVE.

Compared to them, what do I have to complain about? I am not facing the daunting prospect of building a soddy solid enough to withstand harsh prairie winters. I don't have to worry about a young wife, perhaps under 18; giving birth in the late winter when I have no experience with women birthing. I needn't fear disease, the madness that can be brought on by cold, isolation & privation. I am surrounded by those I love in an environment with which I'm intimately familiar.

Oh, I have not chosen to be a "pioneer" & if I have to be one, I have pretty well the best of circumstances. I have food, heat & shelter, am surrounded by those I love & who love me & we're basically healthy. I have education, knowledge & practical skills, as do others in my family. I have books.

Yet I'm terrified & I'm not entirely sure why. I'm struggling to sort out the reasons in my mind & in my heart. I feel it's important to reach down into myself, rummage through my own soul & drag out my fears, kicking & screaming... then pound some sense into them! Ridiculous & clumsy analogy - I'm not a writer nor a particularly skilled diarist. I'm trying, as best I know how, to be honest with my thoughts, feelings, impressions & fears; as embarassing as they may be to write about.

I hate reading bland & facile histories & diaries obviously done over by professional authors. They may purport to be more historically accurate & probably are - but I can't help feeling that raw first impressions have value, that they help connect future readers to what is happening at the time of writing. We've all made a pact not to read this for at least 10 years. By then, any sense of embarassment any of us may feel should have passed, or no longer matter. I hope so, anyway...

It's been a while since I've written about our daily life, the routines we've established & how we fill our time. Perhaps this would be a good time to do just that. Best to start early in the morning, when we begin our day. We have someone on guard duty all night & at 6 in the morning now, it's Sam who remains on duty until it's clearly daylight. Maxine is usually up by 0630 & immediately begins preparing breakfast. We're partial to oatmeal with raisins, chunks of dried apple & other fruit & some spices, usually cloves & cinnamon. Sam has a pot of water almost boiled by the time Maxine is up & a kettle for coffee. We're rationing ourselves to 2 cups of either coffee or tea a day, a third on "special" occasions.

The kids are usually awake by seven or so, Annette later than that if she can get away with it! Everyone dresses quickly as the house is fairly cool that early in the day. As breakfast is being readied & daylight hits, Sam does a last round outside the house, making sure there have been no intruders; not that anyone could get too close without running into ice or alarms.

We all gather, those of us not isolated right now & say a quick prayer before we eat. We serve the 5 upstairs, in their rooms & make sure they're fine before we eat. The morning meal is usually over pretty quickly. Sam likes to eat, discuss any plans for the day with us, then not being a morning person by choice, he's in bed by eight thirty & sleeps until noon or thereabouts. Annette & I clear away breakfast, do the dishes & tidy the kitchen while Andy beings in wood for the stove & fireplace & sets a few metal pots near the heat to melt water. We're using as much fresh snow as possible while we have so much of it. Maxine decides what we'll eat the rest of the day & Andy gets anything she needs out of the outside freezers.

After that's done, I go upstairs & "teach" the boys through the closed door; sounds a bit bizarre, but it's amazing what you can do without actually seeing them. I give them mental math problems & have both boys write; usually a journal entry in their own journals. Young Timmy is apparently poring over an alphabet book & Sammy is proud to be the "big boy" & help him learn his letters. He can correctly point out his letters through 'G' & is learning to print the more simple vowels. I slip them some written work under the door, usually some vocabulary work, more math problems & have them do some geography for the rest of the morning. I take up the written work with them the next morning, using a copy I've made for myself.

While I'm doing that, Maxine & Annette are seeing to most of the housework. Annette has taken over all the laundry for now & she's painstakingly careful with the laundry from MT, Cindy & the boys. She's not shy with the bleach! I hang the wash & later, take it down, fold it & put it away. Andy does any outdoor chores that need doing, making sure snow is banked against the house & the last few days he's been walking partway down the street & even going down a few side streets a few blocks. The rule is, he's always in sight of the house & is always armed. Someone, usually Annette, watches from the attic or a second floor window in case of any trouble.

Afternoons are quiet. Annette usually goes outside, she's a teenager after all & needs some quiet time & privacy. Once she comes in, she writes in her journal & handles any chores that may crop up. I cut & peel fruit & vegeatbles & do any kitchen chores Max assigns me. Anne has kept busy the last few days reviewing what we have in case someone gets sick & mentally walking herself through the routines we'd have to assume in case someone breaks with smallpox. We all spend time sitting outside the bedroom doors, keeping our "isolates" company. Anne also finds lots of housework to do, but I'm encouraging her to rest some more. She's still emotionally worn out from her experiences, yet not prepared to speak more of them.

Timmy sounds like a sweet child. He's very much enjoying being with our 2 young lads & seems to have developed a case of hero worship towards Greg. Greg loves it, as you can well imagine. We tell stories & simply talk back & forth. It's a little sad to hear the boys already starting with the "remember whens?" Remember when we could walk outside to the store? Remember when we could go to the movies? They even seem to be missing school. They're worried about their friends, how they may be making out. I've caught Annette in tears on several occasions. She must be sick with worry about her friends too & is old enough to understand most of the severity of the situation.

She's become very introspective & studious. She's voraciously reading everything she can find about chickens & Andy regrets not having thought to download information on their care. But who would have thought we'd have the chance to raise a few of our own? I've told her not to be too worried, we have Drew to call on for advice.

Often we nap in the afternoon. For some reason, we're all finding it difficult to sleep through the night. We're no longer insisting the children stay in bed. If they genuinely can't sleep, they can get up & play or talk quietly. They're not allowed lamps, candles or flashlights; that would be a waste of valuable resources under the circumstances.

Evenings, we get busy again. I do the early watch from dark until about eleven, then Andy takes over. We keep the fireplace & wood stove clear of ashes as required & are always careful to replace what water we use up with snow. When the power went out for good last week, I put a lot of antifreeze down the pipes. For some reason, our toilet is still flushing; I seem to remember the sewer runs quite deep here, so we may be alright for a time yet. In case the toilets stop taking waste, Andy & Sam had begun digging a sort of cess pit well out back. Part of the back yard has excellent drainage, probably something to do with the marshy bit near the woods & the men worked very hard digging a cess pit. Once they broke through the first foot of frozen ground, they were lucky enough to hit cold, but thawed dirt. They've covered the pit with a few old pipes in a criss cross pattern & have started a second pit a bit farther over. I knew I'd forgottensomethng - I don't have nearly enough lime. I'll 'obtain' some later.

The house is holding up well. We'd thought to close some of it off to save on heating but I worry about it being damaged by the cold weather. So we open it up twice a day, morning & early evening & let some heat through all the rooms. We also open & close each window & door daily, to prevent them freezing over. Right now, the garage door is frozen closed, but that was a deliberate decision on our parts. Garage doors are almost always a weak spot in home security. We have wood, water & other valuable supplies in there that I would regret losing. We've heaped the front of the garage door with snow as high as the roof line. Anyone trying to get in will be very hard pressed.

One big concern I have for spring is the seasonal melt. We have a LOT of snow piled around the house & if the melt is quick, I could have flooding in the basement & heaven only knows if the sump pump can operate by then. Once the real melting starts, we'll be making sure we shovel as much of the snow as possible away from the house, towards the downgrade. I have a good slope to the lawns & that will help.

We speak with Drew & Noreen via the walkie talkie twice a day, mid morning & evening. They're doing well, as is their stock. Drew is concerned for spring; he'll need help by then with the stock. Assuming the illness is waning by then & that they've remained well as have we, we've offered to help. It's good honest work for everyone & there's never enough time to do all the required work on a farm.

I moniter the radio & CB as often as I can; there's usually someone within ear shot. We had some significant news today. The President will be addressing the nation tomorrow at about 11 in the morning. As he can't really do a nation wide address, those within ear shot are encouraged to take down his message, any way they can & pass it on to local media, by CB, however they can manage. If this is successful, he'll try & address the nation every few days, at least.

I'm glad he's reported to be alive & one of the first things I want to know is what is the state of our government; who's left, who is able to do what & where, Just KNOWING something of the sort will be some reassurance.

I'm also glad to report that young Timmy appears healthy. He's eating a lot but no doubt has not eaten well for quite some time. He looks like a starved puppy & the other 2 boys have been generous about sharing their snacks & treats. MT & Cindy are fine. MT is calm as usual & I'm glad she's with Cindy. She's keeping her calm & I;ve even heard her laugh lately! A good sign indeed.

Well, it's getting late & I must prepare for my shift. I'll write another entry once I hear what the President has to say. Goodnight & God bless all.

[CanadaSue]

Another busy, thought provoking day, highlighted by word from our President, after over a week of "official" silence. We weren't able to get the entire text of his message until about one o'clock, but I'm thankful we did get it & hope most across the nation will be fortunate enough to have it as well. The local station couldn't get it directly & had to depend on a relayed signal from radio stations across the nation. Whatever works, I suppose & the tranmission we got was clear enough. The radio station waited until they had the message in its entirety, then broadcast it. Andy brought out the old cassette recorder & I decided it was worth while using some some battery power to record the speech. I'm writing it here, verbatim; before I speak of anything else...

My fellow Americans. I hardly know where to start today as I sit here at my desk, speaking to you. There is so much I could say on so many issues & I don't know when or even if I shall be able to speak to you again. So, please bear with me as I try to speak of the many important things that face this great nation.

Before I speak of what is facing us & what lies ahead, a personal note, if you'll bear with me. I was elected your President some three years ago. I've always liked to think of myself as a plain man, a blunt speaker. It's become the nature of this job & most other elected positions, to pay more attention to politics, to opinion polls, to re-electibility than it has been to truly address the needs of American citizens. I have been no less guilty of this than many of my predecessors. I wish I could say otherwise, but I'd be lying if I did. I regret that citizens have become used to lies from its elected & appointed officials. I'm not sure how we started down this long & slippery slope, but now I feel as though we're hanging at the bottom of a hill, dangling over a cliff & there's not much holding us up. Only history will tell us how much damage these lies have done to our national credibility. I fear, we will not look good.

You might be asking what any of this has to do with the crisis we're now facing. I don't have the answer to that. I'll leave it to the historians to figure that one out. It's probably going to prove to be as complicated as anything we've done in the past. But I don't have time to worry about that now, now of do.

Over a month ago, our nation was attacked with a weapon of mass destruction or more accurately, a weapon of mass casualties. Unfortunately, it has spread across the globe & the entire world is now suffering the effects of this attack. Now I'm sure most of you want to know as much as we do about this attack; just how bad it is right now & how bad it's going to be. Some of those answers I have. Some I don't, but I'm prepared to give you the best guesses we have, based on the work & experience of those who deal with these things.

First of all, we had no real warning this attack was going to happen. There were vague threats, but nothing our intelligence & law enforcement agencies could run with; no names, no dates & no specific agent. As you all know, we've had mnay, many vague threats since 9/11. These have been as frustrating to the administration as they have been to all citizens. There's nothing worse than hearing you may be attacked but not knowing where, when or how.

Law enforcement interviewed the first patients who presented to hospitals with signs of smallpox. Most were innocent citzens, people like you or your neighbors. Several however were not innocent at all. They called themselves martyrs & clearly told us they had been deliberately infected in Iraq, then sent to the US & several other Europena countries. They were told to be in the public as much as possible, starting from the fifth day of their infection. They were clear in their statements that this was deliberate & that Saddam Hussein. In fact, before these 'martyrs' were infected, they met with Saddam, ate a meal with him & were told their families would be looked after in perpetuity. He apparently told them that Iraquis wqould be protected from the plague by Allah. The infected Iraquis believed him.

That is why we attacked Bagdhad using an atomic weapon. We did not do this lightly, nor without a great deal of thought. We didn't take the word of these men, but did our best to confirm the information they gave us with other intelligence assets. While I can't tell you we 100% confirmed what they told us, we got enough confirmation to allow us to feel as comfortable as we could with our decision.

And for those who may wonder; no, we weren't comfortable making that decision to use a nuclear weapon. Using any weapon of mass destruction is a grave breach of our collective pact with humanity. I cannot, will not deny that. Is it any justification that such a weapon was used on us first? I think so. Me, both as an idividual & your President. Maybe history will judge that I acted incorrectly, that I made the wrong choice. It has always been stated US policy to respond in kind were we to be attacked with weapos of mass destruction. We were & thus did so; retaliated in kind.

Most of the casualties from the weapon were instant, citizens of Bagdhad vaporized & many others dying shortly thereafter from radiation & other injuries. I deeply regret the necessity of killing so many who surely were not involved in the attack upon us. I would have regretted even more not making a response on behalf of all American citizens. I cannot & do not claim to have responded in this way on behalf of any other nation. That is not my purview. If other nations wlecomed our action, that is their right. Other nations were not happy with our decision & made this point clearly to us. That is also their right.

No matter how any now feels about the bomb, it is done, for better or worse. We did not use the largest weapon at our disposal, in hopes of minimizing the downwind effects on other nations. To those other nations, I have said so formally in verbal communications in the absence of an ability to write to you; to those countries I apologize. You have my most sincere regrets & sympathies for the added trials you now face. I did not choose this action in contempt of your lands, your people, nor your culture & traditions. It's a hard fact that many things we do have regrettable consequences for innocent parties. We are in no provision to render you any assistance as you struggle to recover from the effects of the detonation. It may be at some future time that we may be able to assist you in your recovery. If we can, we most likely will do so.

My fellow Americans, it's certainly true that many nations who had no part of this have & will suffer great losses as a result of the bomb we dropped over Bagdhad. Please remember these nations, these people in your prayers, as I do.

And now, to speak to you of the Outbreak. As best as the Centers For Disease Control and the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases can figure out, we were attacked with three strains of smallpox, perhaps more. One strain was bioengineered, deliberately changed by research scientists in order to shorten the time between a person getting the illness and becoming contagious. What does that mean? It means that after only 5 or 6 days, a person who's infected can infect those around him, those with whom he lives, works and plays. People can also pass on this disease a few days before they themselves feel sick. That has made it easy for this vicious illness to spread. A second, natural strain is one known to have an exceptionally high death rate among children and unfortunately, that is indeed what is happening. A third strain is more prone to lead to more grave forms of the illness. People bleed to death within a few short days of starting to feel sick.

The vaccination program is able to protect most people against those natural strains inflicted upon us. Unfortunately, it only provides protection to about 25% of those who become infected with the weaponized strain. And as of now, we're not sure exactly where this weaponized strain was released. We do know that in the early days of the outbreak, it had many chances to spread across the nation. So, even if you were vaccinated, you may not be protected. However if you still have not been vaccinated, we urge you to seriously consider doing so. Most areas are still running vaccination programs.

Right now, to the best of our knowledge, more than one half of our population is sick with smallpox. Unfortunately, that includes much of the Administration. The Secretary of State is right now fighting for her life at Walter Reed. Please include her in your prayers. The Secretary of Defence passed away yesterday morning, after a valiant fight. Three of our Supreme Court Justices are dead and four others are ill. Many senators, congressmen & heads of agencies are either ill, dying or dead. Many of our medical people have fallen ill. They were as careful as they could be but they're very tired and some made mistakes. Some simply were exposed before we knew what had happened. Having fewer doctors & nurses, lab technicians, laundry workers & room cleaners is hampering our efforts to save lives. Thankfully, many have volunteered to help fill the breach, retired health professionals & those with no families or other claims on their times.

Our military has also been struck hard. We have roughly 1 million soldiers, sailors & airmen now available to us to help us through this crisis. Those we have are trying their darndest to keep supplies flowing, to clear roads & allow our truckers to get through with their crucial loads. They're providing assistance to the medical effort, through the delivery of medical supplies & providing safe passage for doctors & nurses. They're also bringing blood samples to be tested at the CDC, in hopes we can find out something about the engineered version which can hekp us fight it.

The military is also helping with the disposal of the many bodies we're finding ourselves with daily. Right now, 75 million Americans, probably more, are dead. At least that many again are sick & we don't know their outcome. The military is digging burial pits, collecting bodies, identifying them when they can & registering the deaths as best they can. Then, they're disposing of them with dignity & humanity. At most of our burial sites, we have a priest or a rabbi, a minister who prays for the dead & for those they have left behind. This is not the burial any of us would wish for our loved ones, but those dead of smallpox must be cremated if possible & if not, buried deeply & the grave sites disinfected as best we know how.

When this outbreak began, I halted all traffic on our roads & highways. I asked everyone to go home & stay there, safe with their loved ones. I did this on the best advice of our medical experts, many of who have worked long & hard to try & plan for a time such as this. They hoped we wouldn't have to do any of these things, as did I. But now we find ourselves facing our worst nightmares; our citizens, MY fellow citizens & theirs' are sick with a disease that's deadly to so many. From what we understand from state governments across the country & governments of the larger cities, most people are being smart & staying home, isolating themselves from the rest of their fellow citizens in hopes of slowing & eventually stopping this outbreak.

That's a hard thing to do & I appreciate the sacrifices that entails for most. You cannot work & you cannot easily replace precious food, water & medecines. The rationing programs established by the cities, towns & states is, for the most part, working fairly well. The midwest has my special prayers right now. You were hit hard by a snowstorm & we're working as hard as we can to clear your highways in order to bring food into your towns & cities. I can only encourage you to hang in there; we should be able to get food to you within 24 hours. I was going to make a joke when I wrote this, about this being a good time to be on a diet. Laura's a smart woman & she was smart enough to know that this is not a time for that kind of humor. I say this to remind you that while I may be your president, I'm still just a human being. I make mistakes. In my position as President, these mistakes can have grave consequences & I'll admit to you, I'm frightened, both as a man & as your President.

This crisis has brought to us critical issues with which it would be hard to deal, even one at a time. Now, they're all here at once. Transrportation is basically halted. The production of goods, provision of services, that's all stopped for now. Communicating is very difficult. I have contact with all state governments & the governments of our largest cities. It doesn't feel like enough. I feel as though I'm cut off from the heartland, from ordinary people. Rest assured I am doing my best to find out the facts, as quickly as I can, with as little spin as possible. That's another problem with being a politician. It's hard to get information that doesn't have an agenda attached. I've made it clear to my administration that this is not the time for partisanship, that this crisis is outside of political affiliations & personal interests.

We have 27 serving senators able to work right now, as well as 264 Congressmen. Let me tell you ladies & gentlemen, they are working as hard as they have ever done in their lives. I've given each unique responsabilities. We have several medical doctors & nurses serving in Congress. They are working with our infectious disease experts to try & shorten this outbreak & to make sure as few people catch the disease as possible. I have people from the power agencies working with elected officials with a background in the energy industries trying to figure out how we'll get our power systems up & running again. That's going to be hard to do. We're trying to find out how much food we have left in our nation's warehouses & how quickly we can begin once again to produce canned & packaged goods. We're emptying out & delivering grain to bakeries.

Those of you who hunt & fish, all restrictions & game laws are now abolished, at least for the duration of this crisis. Our country is rich in game & although I regret reducing our stocks of game this way, we need the meat it provides us. I urge you to please be careful. Avoid other people in case you or they are incubating smallpox. Know what you're shooting at & wear clothing that won't let you be mistaken for game.

Many ranchers & farmers in different parts of the country have offered their animals to local governments, to be slaughtered & processed & distributed to citizens with no food. I humbly thank them for such a gracious gift. This goes beyond patriotism. It is a gift to humanity. I encourage such actions from those who can provide such assistance to their fellow citizens.

My infectious disease experts aren't sure how long it will be before the worst of this outbreak passes. With care & with some luck, they hope the disease will abate by spring. But no one can promise that. We have yet to vaccinate many people & some cannot or will not be vaccinated. We can't predict how they will fare over the winter. If they can remain isolated in their homes, avoiding contact with others, perhaps they will avoid falling ill. We simply don;t know right now.

Now with so many crucial systems not working or working poorly, you may be wondering how we're carrying on the business of governing our great country. To be honest - not very well, I'm afraid. Now please, that doesn't mean we face imminent attack from other nations, that our security is any more at risk than it is under the conditions of the current crisis. What it means is that many of the government programs you're accustomed to are simply not being carried out. We have neither the staff nor the time to worry about many areas we used to concern ourselves with. To those unhappy with this, well; our time is best spent dealing with what's crucial.

What is crucial? Dealing with this disease. Feeding the nation. Keeping it warm in the cold areas. Our borders are closed & there are no flights from outside the country. Mexico & Canada re also suffering this plague & hardly pose a credible threat. We have little ability to communicate with our embassies in many countries. Our communications sattelites are still up & running, but are being used for only the most crucial communications. Our military is concerned with protecting & preserving what is left of the American people. I'm sure other nations have the same concerns & thus we estimate that threats from abraod right now are minimal. We still worry about more terrorist action, but currently have little or no capacity to deal with such threats.

Governance as we have grown accustomed to is for now, a thing of the past. This nation was founded on the principles of freedom, assuming that each man & woman was best able to judge for themselves how to get on with their lives, how to prosper. For better or worse, this si the state we now find ourselves in. Everybody listening to this, now is the time to be prepared to think for yourselves. You must do what you can to stay dafe in your homes, to stay warm & keep yourselves & your families fed. If you become ill, many, most of you are on your own. The media, in the early days of the outbreak had much good advice about how to care for patients of smallpox & other illnesses. I hope you listened.

We're used to unlimited food of all kinds. No more. You must exercise restraint. Don't empty your shelves & cupboards thinking the military can provide meals for tomorrow. No one can guarantee that, not for the immediate future & perhaps more. We have our children to think about. More than at perhaps any other time, they are our most precious resource, our future. Hold them close to you.

Police your own actions. If you have the means to do so, help your neighbor. You can provide food to the truly destitute among you without risking your own health or safety. At all times, be alert to threats to your well being. Our farmers & those who live in small communities know what it means to come together to overcome tough times. Those who don't have those habits, learn & learn fast. If your neighborhood has remained disease free for several weeks, start to work together. Share what food you have. Teach your children. Worship together. Watch out for each other.

Over time, as the disease abates, local governments will be able to reconstitute & begin restoring order. Their job & your lives, will be simplified if you act as good, responsible citizens. I'm not closing my eyes to the possibility that many will choose to take advantage of this situation. There will be those who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Be aware of this & identify those who would do so. Do not deal with them. Make sure they are known to others. Do not encourage nor condone criminal acts. I'm not encouraging vigilante justice, but I am encouraging communtiy watch. Look after each other.

Elect your own local officials. We don't need special ballots ora whole lot of electioneering. Pick the most qualified among you for positions of responsability. Tolerate no incompetence; too much is riding on our efforts to restore our nation. Grass roots democracy; local efforts for local problems are where we have to start.

There is more I could say today, but I've given people enough to chew on. I have faith in the citizens of our great nation. We're down but not out. We have overcome difficult times before & that spirit remains in our hearts, our souls. Reach deep inside yourself, pray & seek advice from your families. With careful action, planning, hard work & a bit of luck as well as a lot of prayer, we can overcome this crisis. I will try & speak to you again in 2 days. May God bless us all...

Wow, that was a mouthful wasn't it? Lots to think about, to talk about & pray over. The adults all sat outside MT's room & we talked about what this might mean for all of us. Opinions were all over the map & we really didn't come to any hard & fast conclusions. I'm thankful we're safe for now, with all we need. We've agreed to sleep on it, to think through tomorrow, then talk again tomorrow after supper. For now though, I'd better do my rounds. It's almost time for Andy to take his shift.

[CanadaSue]

I had hoped to do an entry ths afternoon, but found myself too wrapped up in discussions of the President's speech with everyone else. There was certainly a lot to think about & talk about. We all agreed, our hearts a sank a bit when he effectively told us everyone had to be 'on their own' for the forseeable future. I'm not sure how to express this adequately - we KNEW we were on our own, pretty much from the earliest days of the Outbreak, but to have it openly confirmed by our President; rather scary.

And if, prepared as I am, am frightened, I can't imagine what those who are not very self reliant are feeling. Many have no food, water or heat, no one with them & have no history of having to cope with crisis situations. They're used to depending on others, be that family, agencies & institutions and/or the government. It seems at times as though the "self started" gene has been bred out of much of the population. Perhaps I'm wrong - I HOPE I'm wrong, but having no contact really with anyone other than Drew, Noreen & Louise, I'm in no position to judge that.

It was interesting hearing how the others felt about the President's speech. MT looked worried, as did Anne. Sam looked angry & Andy looked ready to jump up right there & then & start running the household. Cindy wanted to cry but didn't & Maxine just shook her head. We're all more than a bit worried about what this will mean to us. Effectively, the nation is in a state of anarchy. We have no real law enforcement ability, certainly not the way we used to have. We can't depend on food production or the production of any goods we're accustomed to having. Obtaining services means being in contact with people - out of the question for now, for the most part.

We hope we're ready for the challenge. In the house now, are 7 adults & Annette who's stuck at that awkward halfway stage between childhood & adulthood. Then, there are the three boys. There is Louise next door, as well as Drew & Noreen, three more adults with ideas & skills. We've decided we're all going to work together for the duration & who knows, Joe & Jake may come home at some point or we may somehow find our numbers augmented through circumstances we can't predict.

After we sat for a time after the speech, it was as though everyone was reluctant to begin to speak, to express their ideas. Understandable, as independant as anyone likes to think they are, there's a subconscious feeling of security knowing there's some kind of safety net out there. Our President has told us its gone for now, that we must create our own safety nets. Wow, a hard thought shift to make!

I asked everyone to at first, just toss out whatever what going through their minds; that would at least give us a firm starting point for discussions. It seems we mainly had the same worries. All of us were concerned with being able to replace food & goods we're consuming. The President is right, at this stage of the Outbreak there's a long, hard road ahead & we have to be think very carefully, plan well & conserve our efforts & energy. Okay, he didn't exactly put it that way, but that was the impression I was left with. Anne felt he was admitting that governments no longer have effective control over anything, that the play of events has taken on its own momentum & created its own priorities. I agree. Sam feels we're being told to fend for ourselves, to do what we have to do without harming others. I hope so, although I can see where criminal elements may move as quickly as they can to take advantage of the situation. Cindy worries about medical care; a real concern seeing as she's halfway through a pregnancy. Anne pointed out that as an experienced nurse, she had valuable skills. She would use them at home & later, perhaps be called upon to use those skills in the wider community. She pointed out that such skills give her a distinct advantage in a post paper economy. Amen!

Andy brought up a really good point. Our family as it's currently constituted, runs the range from around 5 to mid eighties, with most being or approaching prime "working years" in terms of ability & strength. He's quite right. Drew & Noreen have invaluable assets to countermand their advancing years. The kids are growing fast & are already able to do a good many small jobs & chores.

It was reasssuring for all of us to realize we all DO have skills & abilities, talents which will help us do well as a family & skills we can trade or barter with others, later. We're not in a position of desperation where we will soon be forced to do things we don't wish to do, in order to stay alive. I hardly need explain what I mean there & am loathe to, considering that younger people may be reading this. If you are, ask your parents what kind of criminal activities I'm talking about. Listen carefully & remember that yes, people do awful things sometimes, when they think they can get away with it. Sad but true.

We've gone over our supplies again & are feeling reasonably good about them. We updated our lists & paid special attention to those items we don't feel we have in sufficient quantities. Everyone is doing a list of things they think we need or could use as barter items. I expect there will be a lot of overlap on individual lists, but I encouraged everyone, even the kids, to write their own. Each person will no doubt add something valuable to the master list.

We've decided on one action we're going to take in the next few days; something none of us are terrible comfortable with, but an act we feel will allow us to continue to live reasonably well & perhaps aid others later in this crisis. Drew, Louise, Andy, Sam, Anne & Annette are going to make a trip into town 3 nights from now. We will formulate a master list of things we need, rig up the toboggans to carry as much as possiblem, then go into town, break into stores & get what we need.

Yes, those of you reading in the future. I AM speaking of blatant theft. Shall I offer you my justification? I'm not sure that our reasons will stand the light of day, expecially to those in the future, but please remember the position we're speaking from. We have a global crisis, much of the world sick & dying, no production of goods, yet we must live. It;s winter & we cannot grown our own food yet. We have no idea what the immediate future will bring.

Perhaps we're regressing to a 'former stage' of human evolution, a time where greed & selfishness of the open sort was paramount. I don't feel good about that, I really don't. However, I'd feel even worse if someone in my family became ill & died because I didn't have what it takes to keep them alive, to make them well. I don't want any of the women forced into... enough, I don;t want anyone forced to do something against their wishes in order to live; not like that.

This is not easy for any of us. We already have so much it seems & many out there have nothing. We don't plan to take more than we need to; items we need & perhaps a few spares, but we're not looking for example, to corner the local market on steak sauce! We simply wish to have enough on hand so as not to have to depend on anybody & perhaps, be able to take in others who would be an asset to the family group.

I've burned a lot of battery time discussing this with Drew & Noreen & shouting back & forth to Louise. They know about Timmy, the circumstances under which he came to join us & as we are, are hoping he stays well & that the rest of us do not become ill with smallpox. Anne says she honestly doesn't think that's going to be a problem & we sure hope she's right. She sometimes has an instinct for these things, so fingers crossed. In any case, the boys, Cindy & MT are staying in their rooms for quite some time yet - just in case.

Here's how we thought we might do this. Tomorrow, we'll go over our lists here & consolidate them into 1 master list. Then Louise, Drew & Noreen will add whatever we haven't included in ours. We'll then prioritize the items. There's no way, with the weather, distances involved & people available that we can do this in one night. We're not going to try. We'll have 6 people, 2 armed & on guard at all times, the other four to pull the toboggans. Hiding their trail will be difficult, but we'll have a few days to think about that. It would be wonderful if snow or a strong wind came up just after they returned home.

I think initially, the "expedition" will head from Drew's to the feed & supply store. His cattle, chickens & pigs may be our "seed stock" in terms of meat, eggs, milk, etc. Drew has mentioned he wants some veterinary medications, especially for calving time - dewormers & all sorts of stuff I only half understood. He wants more seed, much more seed & we certainly want some more seeds for the gardden. Those items alone, as well as some farm implements will take several trips. Drew says the supply store is only about 1.5 miles from his front drive & the road has been effectively deserted for days now. Let's hope that holds. Those first few trips will be grueling, heavy loads & all... Thankflly, Drew knows exactly what he needs & where it is in the store. Now, let's hope it's still there.

For general goods, we want as many spices & seasonings as possible, flour, rice & more pasta, canned goods that we can use as a basis for soups, stews, casseroles & meals until we can make our own. Fabrics & sewing stuff of all kinds, wool, footwear; the list is huge & if all works well, we may be sending our "pack mules" out for a week or so. I don't know if we should keep going until we have all we need or take breaks in order to rest up & not push our luck. God, I wish we could do this with a vehicle. We may choose to do that, depending on the state of the roads. Doesn't seem likely, but Drew said he may have an idea. I'm thinking he's got a snowmobile on his mind. Good idea, but they are so darned LOUD. No way we could maintain any degree of screcy using one...

In the meantime, everyone is working on their lists & thinking. I pretty much had a mental list ready anyway, just from going through my own supply rooms & wishing I had more of certain things. It would be great if we could get to the point of getting some "nice to haves". I must ask Anne what happened to the library books when the library was turned into a care center. I'm thinking tect books for the kids, atlases, encyclopedias; how to manuals... all will be very useful. Paper & writing implements of all sorts would be great. Heck, why not chalk boards & chalk? We can later make our own chalk & it would sure save on paper.

I'm gambling on many people still being stunned at the President's speech, being busy thinking about the implications for themselves & for the nation. Too busy to think about doing what we're planning. But thinking long term, I want to head into the end of the Outbreak as well prepared, as well equipped as I can be.

Drew & Noreen have made us an offer we're going to need time to think about. Long term, it may be the best solution, but I'm still going to ned time to think about it. He understands that & is not pushing us at all. See, he & Noreen are living in a farm house that's been on the property for close to 150 years. It's huge. They basically live out of the central kitchen & have a bedroom which opens off of that. That's the original house. Over the years, several wings were added, all of which Drew now keeps closed off. He says the building is solid though & that there would easily be room for all of us & more. He's right. If I remember correctly, there's a decently sized front parlour & a large dining room downstairs. As well, there's a large sunroom which wraps around the south & west faces of the house & a farm office off that. Drew still keeps his records there. There are three more rooms downstairs which over the years have been used as sitting rooms & play rooms, as well as two bathrooms. Upstairs in two wings, there's a total of eight bedrooms. Many of them have closed up vents to outside so we could easily re-install wood stoves to keep them warm. The building is solid & well sheltered by maple & poplar trees.

This is going to sound absurd, but I'm concerned about not feeling like the "man of the house" anymore. It won't be MY house & between Drew, myself, Sam & Andy, we have four adult men. Let's not forget the ladies! Any of them could run the families well. I wonder how we'll manage to fit in so many strong personalities without clashing? Differences of opinion are bound to happen & I suppose the trick is making sure everyone has an area of responsability; something which they are in charge of. I'll have to talk that over with everyone & see what they think.

Then there's leaving the home I love so much. It's been perfect for Anne & I, even when the kids visit. Unfortunately, it's not going to work well on a permanent basis with all of us here for who knows how long. The baby will be here in a few months & perhaps Jake will return soon. What if Joe never retruns? We've been wanting to offer Louis a "ready made" family if she wants to join us. And there's Timmy now as well. His parents are dead & I can't see any circumstances under which he'd leave us now. But who will he "belong" to? He needs someone to call his own; more than just joining a large ready made family.

So much to think about & we're but a month or so into this. Is it any wonder I'm so tired?

[CanadaSue]

MT here; to use the name I'm known by around here. I've finally coaxed Cindy into taking a nap & have thus bought myself what I hope will be an hour or two of quiet! That girl never seems to stop finding things to worry about!

No, let me slow down somewhat & backtrack a bit. It has been some time since I've written, after all. Cindy & I have been together for some 6 days now; ever since poor little Timmy came to be with us. That poor little boy, what a dreadful experience to have to go through alone & so young. It sepaks well of him that he had the brains to get dressed in his outdoor clothing as best he could & left his home, looking for someone who might be able to help him. In spite of the extra work & consternation it's led to, I'm so very thankful that my grandsons were the ones to find him. Of course they didn't think of anything other than getting him indoors, dried & warm.

Cindy was furious & everyone else worried, but I prefer to seeit as God's will. After all, when I think of other places he could have ended up... even that young... his life wouldn't have been worth living. Even in times that try most mens' souls, there is no end of evil out there. I'm convinced he'll be fine & we'll all stay well. But, if it eases the others' minds to keep the boys isolated, as well as Cindy & I for now, so be it. It leaves me plenty of time to read my bible, talk things through with Cindy & try to remember what I can of life in my grandparents' time.

The others may find it puzzling, but I'm not terribly worried about what may lie ahead. Yes I'm old, but I figure I have a few years left in me yet & God willing, I can be more help than hindrance. My body may be getting frail but blessedly, my mind is still sharp & I can certainly help with easier but time consuming tasks such as preparing vegetables, folding laundry, taking up the childrens' lessons & reading to the younger ones. I miss them, being cooped up in here. Annette has been wonderful about sitting outside the door & speaking with us. Poor child, she must think that without televisions, computers or the telephone that we're dying of boredom. Not at all! I've always had a mind that liked to wander to interesting places & these days, life itself is interesting enough.

Poor Tom. That man always did like life to proceed in an orderly fashion. He's more than up to coping with whatever lies ahead, but he does find comfort in his routines, in his own home. If what old freinds have told me holds here, he must be feeling especially vulnerable after his heart attack. Not only has his body debrayed him, but now life itself seems to have taken its best shot at all of us. I hope he remembers that in trying times, it's best sometimes to bend & flex, rather than try & stand tall & strong. Strength is good, flexibility better.

He was surprised when I was the first to state what I'm sure we were all thinking, that we might best think of getting more food & other items, in case things get much worse before they get better. With so many in town dead or dying, surely we'll be forgiven for trying to do our best to stay alive & well. I told Annette, through the door, that yes, legally what we're planning is theft. We don't know if the owners of the establishments we're planning on taking things from are alive or not. We have no idea h9ow we could make payment. I explained to her that perhaps in the future, when we know to whom these things belong, we can arrange to "work off" what we owe.

It is, I'll admit, difficult to think about, the whole idea of stealing what we need. Cindy was appalled, but; she hasn't been terribly practical since this crisis began. As much as I'd like to tell her that yes, the old rules & conventions still apply, they do not - not right now anyway. Many reading this will disagree with me, will disapprove. I can't argue with them nor can I realistically explain my own actions in terms of a greater right or wrong. Like most people, even at my time of life, I have a healthy interest in staying alive.

In my long time on this earth I've witnessed wars, a depression & many hard times & fearful times. These are times when the best & strongest among us can feel helpless, out of control. It's true we cannot control what others do, but we can certainly deal with what comes our way if we think things through & plan well. Even at that, there's always the unexpected.

I fear that late this winter or early in the spring, many hungry, desperate people will emerge from where ever they have been sheltering. They too will children to worry about, families to feed & may be far more desperate than we're accustomed to seeing, especially the children for whom desperation is, at best, a vague idea. Something they see on television news programs.

Anyhow, once people crawl out of their 'caves', they'll soon begin to look around them & seek to improve their situation. Most will do so harmlessly. They may look for empty homes in better condition than those they are presently living in. They may wish to move in order to be near others & to work together. But not all will have such harmless intentions. Many will seek to control those things they feel are of advantage, perhaps water sources, access to food & land on which to grow it, medecines... the possibilities are huge & people being people, it WILL happen. I explained to Annette that her parents, aunts & uncle & grnadparents are simply doing their best to make sure we all stay safe & that we need not fear those out there who would do us harm. She'll be some time digesting that one, but better she worry about it in theory than have to deal with unfortunate events.

Tom hesitantly told me about Drew's kind offer & seemed surprised when I told him I thought it was an excellent idea. We must now begin to think beyond ourselves & begin to think of communities we can form. Drew is a farmer. he has land & animals & a large, soundly built home. What he lacks is a workforce. We can provide that, as well as medical care, company & our own supplies. Long term, it strikes me as a fair deal. I can understand Tom's reluctance though. He likes things just so & moving to a place that's not home will be difficult for him.

I did tell him we had to begin thinking differently; that with our short term needs essentially looked after, we had to think of the next few years. Buildings deteriorate quickly. Animals that are not tended die off & land that is not worked reverts quickly to a tangled mess. Moving over to Drew's will involve a lot of work & no little heartbreak, but in the long run, will probably be best. Tom & Drew & their families have known each other a long time. Drew's three sons are long gone & although they may find their way back "home" along with their families, they may not. If something happens to Drew, Noreen would be on her own & someone might try & take the land from Noreen. Better that we be there, friends & neighbors, than hard hearted strangers.

Best of all, we have four children among us with a fourth on the way. Is there anything more hopeful than children to carry on after yoou? Other than the promise of being with your Xreator when you pass on? I think not & if the other adults haven't reached thqat point in their thinking, they will soon enough.

Although it's tiring, I'm glad I've had this time with Cindy. Although she's still prone to wearing a long face, I've managed more than once to get her to start thinking about her baby & what's next in her life. Of course she misses Jake terribly but I've been blunt with her. Jake may not come back & if that ends up being the case, she's got to start thinking about her baby. Perhaps a negative mindset doesn't harm babies in the womb, but it can't help! She's worried about delivering the baby but as I've told her, it's nothing new, Anne is there to help her & it will be a most welcome baby. It won't lack aunts, uncles & cousins to fuss over it, relatives by blood & perhaps now, choice.

I've asked her to start thinking about what talents SHE has that she can offer the group. She looked at me blankly, but I firmly told her she must have someething she does well, that she can offer the group. Of course she does & I know that as well as she does! She's simply been too focused on herself & her problems. And as I reminded her, compared to many, many others, she HAS no problems. She has a warm bed, food & a family around her. Really, I itch to slap her sometimes! I've got my thinking cap on, trying to thgink of ways to keep her busy once we're allowed out of our little cell here!

Maxine has made a poit of coming up every few hours, just a cheery hello through the door & keeping us up to date on how the boys are doing. It seems they're more than a bit bored & restless, but are healthy & eating well. They're spending a lot of time working on schoolwork. Greg is working on his reading & helping the younger two learn their letters & words. Seems young Timmy may be quite bright. He's already memorized the alphabet & is learning some simple words. It's not as if they have much else to do. Tom is limiting the amount of scrap paper he gives them to play with; we need to conserve & many of the games up there are too difficult for young boys. I suggested to Maxine that she encourage them to play memory games; to collect & look at a collection of objects, then hide them away & try to remember as many as they can. She's also having Greg teach the younger ones basic addition & Tom is spending time reading them stories through the closed door. Poor things, they must be so restless...

The men & Annette, as well as Anne are taking turns serving guard over our home at night. Annette is quite proud to be given this responsability & perhaps is being a bit overzealous. The girl never sits down & if she's not peering out one set of windows, she's checking doors, the fires... she'll settled into the job soon enough. I hope she takes advantage of the wuiet time to further her own studies. She's been grilling me about poultry, but my, it's been such a long time. I remember feeding them & cleaning coops, but I don't remember ever giving it much thought. It was justr a chore, like so many others.

Dear me, Cindy is stirring. I'd best put this down & put on my cheerful face.

[CanadaSue]

MT has asked me to leave her space in the journal. She tells me she's written an entry & wants to insert it before this one. What I should remind everyone is that I have a three hole punch & can insert loose leaf pages pretty much anywhere... as long as the pages are dated & in some cases, time indicated.

Much to speak of today & I'm not sure I'll get it all down, but will do my best. The President addressed the nation again today; at this point, I think he's concerned that Americans feel as though the federal government IS present, is not totally out of the loop. He sounds exhausted and, I thought; discouraged today. Who can blame him? I'm not sure I'd know where to begin if I felt the responsability of acting as steward for the nation under such circumstances.

In any case, we did the same thing as we did two days ago; taped his speech & we took turns transcribing it until we had it all. Here it is:

...My fellow Americans. I'm glad to be able to speak to you again today, forty eight hours after I last addressed the nation. Let me bring you up to date on new events & decisions I've taken since I last spoke to you. First, the state of the Outbreak. We are up to approximately 85 million dead & please be aware that it's difficult to get up to date numbers. Hospitals & care centers are doing heroic work treating the sick, trying to ensure as many stay alive as possible. It's hard for them to give us updated numbers in a timely fashion. They're doing their best. We estimate about 100 million Americans sick, but again, it's hard to be sure. We collect the numbers of sick from the state health departments & they depend on care centers, hospitals & law enforcement to update their numbers. The number of dead are based on those remains which have been collected by the various agencies. Many of these remains have yet to buried or cremated & again, Laura & I express our deep grief at your losses, our losses.

The Centers For Disease Control inform me that they expect new cases, in terms of how many more people become ill; they expect these numbers to soon begin to stabilize. And that is because of the common sense most of you are showing. A few weeks back, I had asked citizens to stay home or, if they were working in essential industries, to remain at work even when they were not on shift. This has caused a great deal of difficulty for many, many citizens & let me assure you, I & the rest of the Administration deeply appreciate these sacrifices you are making. This however, is what it's going to take to beat this scourge.

Vaccination programs in mnay areas are still up & running for those of you who have yet to bet vaccinated & who choose to. Right now, we're identifying areas of the country where there is a shortage of vaccine & are doing our best, with the help of the military to make sure that supplies of vaccines, needles & other essential medical supplies get to those areas. I wish you could see some photos I was shown today. As many of you know, the midwest has been hit by snowy weather & roads have been next to impassible. I was shown a photograph of a convoy of tracked snowmobiles pulling sleds. These sleds were piled high with vaccine & supplies & the persons driving the snowmobiles were ordniary citizens, determined to help us see the end of this Outbreak. My hat is off to them as well as my prayers for their continued success.

I've asked my teams of medical experts to try & give me their best estimate of when we'll begin to see the outbreak pass. They haven't given me an answer yet. I told them I wanted them to think long & hard before coming to me with an answer & if the answer didn't appear to them to be very good news, to give it to me straight. I want to give YOU the straight goods. We're a strong country with a proud history & I know that together, we can handle whatever they tell us. Until we have some indications, I can only ask you to keep up your courage & faith, to hang in there.

For many of you, I know conditions are getting pretty bad. You may be short of food, of water. Some of you may be running short of medications which you need to stay as healthy as possible. I am aware of these concerns & my Administration, with the help of your state & local governments, is working hard to solve these problems. I'm told that after my address, many state governors will be addressing citizens of their states, giving them some idea of changes in rationing, telling them how best to obtain any medecines they may need & other crucial information.

As a priority, I've asked my team of communication experts to work on a plan to begin to restore communications across the country. I must be frank. Right now, communications are pathcy at best. Most of out telephone networks are down due to a lack of electricity. Many citizens with the ability to speak to others, be that through CB radios, HAM sets & other systems are working hard with their local governments to make sure essential information flows to & from local governments. With some hard work & luck, we can begin to restore the ability to communicate & hopefully soon after, we'll begin getting power back to some parts of the country.

It's been a month now since we first saw cases of smallpox. Many of those first cases died, but almost as many survived & are on their way to getting better. I'm told there are at least 5 million people who, within a week or so, will be able to say they have beaten smallpox. Hopefully, those numbers will grow day by day. These people have been through the grinder & I'd love to be able to let them all go home & rest. But under the circumstances, I can't do that. I'm going to have to ask them to contribute their talents & skills, their knowledge, to beginning the process of restoring our nation.

And ladies & gentlemen, there is much to be done. We need to begin to manufacture & distribute food. We need to clear our roads & begin to be able to transport needed goods. We need to look after the safety of our citizens & their neighborhoods. Unfortunately, there are more reports of crime than any of us would hope to see. Even in a crisis, there is a certain element of society willing to take advantage of others. Our law enforcement capability has been severely curtailed as I've asked law enforcement agencies at all levels to dedicate as many of their personnel as they can to this crisis. Thankfully, citiznes have stepped up to the plate & are filling the breach. I'm hearing of many neighborhoods where people keep watch & have developed a way of signalling others near them if danger is near.

Some of you may call this vigilante justice, a return to the wild west days. Maybe it is, in a sense. However, as I mentioned the other day, we find ourselves under circumstances we've never before experienced, at least not in living memory. I can only ask those who are trying to ensure the safety of their neighborhoods to use their best judgement, to be just & humane. No matter how badly things are going right now, the current circumstances are not an excuse to forget those values which made us great. And to those of you heartless enough to take advantage of others who are suffering greatly, it's my personal opinion that those you encounter in your acts of crime are best suited to deal with you right now. It is THEIR communities you are harming.

I've had queries about our citizens overseas - how are they faring? I can't answer that with any certainty. In many countries, our citizens were able to go to embassies or military installations. Unfortunately, there is illness in these compounds as well. Communications with other nations are spotty & some third world countries are completely out of touch right now. Those of our citizens away from home have the prayers of everyone at the White House.

Now we also have many citizens of other countries who, when the crisis began, were trapped here. I've assured the leaders of those nations I can speak with that their citizens are being treated as well as any American citizen. They too are recieving food rations & care should they fall ill. The sole exception to that in a sense is those citizens of Iraq. Those people are currently being held in detention camps. I have no doubt most had no idea what their leadership was planning. However we have neither the time nor the assets to sort out the innocents from those with evil intent. Until we do, they remain in detention.

In terms of the government; 25 Senators remain well & I'm told four who have been ill areon their way to recovery. That's encouoraging news. Quite a few states have no Senators left to represent them & I've taken the liberty of appointing the most senior person in their offices to replace them, at least until we can begin to reconstitute our government. The same holds true for the House. Right now, I'm not too worried about the legalities of this, not nearly as much as I am concerned about getting the country up & running. I have signed an Executive Order allowing these substitutions to remain in effect until February 1/2004. At that time, should the crisis be pretty well behind us, we'll begin the process of returning our government to what we are used to, what is legal according to the Constitution.

I had told you we were trying to assess how much food we had left in the nation's warehouses. Given our total normal population, I'm told we had enough, roughly, for two months. Given the curent death rate, we may be able to stretch that out for five or six months, especially is we continue with rationing programs. This food is not distributed evenly throughout the nation & so we're concentrating our efforts to determining the areas of greatest need & are going to make sure that crucial roads remain open in order to transport food. That may take time. We need trtucks & drivers for them. We have the fuel as I've authorized the use of the nation's strategic supply of fuel for the relief effort.

I'm asking greenhouses which would normally be growing pot plants for houses & flowers to turn over their production to essential foods. The Department of Agriculture is putting together a list of food items which can be grown quickly. We will be doing our best to ensure that these greenhouses have power in order to heat & light greenhouses. It will be a few months before we begin to see much help from that source. In the meantime, I ask all who are in a position to grow food at home to do so. We will soon provide information on how to grow different sprouts & plants which ripen quickly. As winter passes, more & more states will be warming up & by then we hope to be organized enough to help you begin to grow food of your own.

Many of you may remember Victory Gardens from the Second World War. Tell your families about them & try to remember what plants grew best in your area. Many of you eat greens & other wild plants. As these plants sprout & begin to grow, harvest them. Teach your neighbors how to glean & prepare them for eating.

Many of our farmers have fallen to smallpox leaving a lot of our country's acerage with no stewardship. Much of what we need can be grown on this land. We'll be working with your states & municipalities to determine how best to distribute this land to those who would wish to grow food for their own use & for trade. We must also be concerned about compensation for those whose land is used in this way. They may have surviving family members who may not wish to farm, but to whom the farm lands now belong.

We must also think of compensating those companies whose food & other supplies we've simply taken in order to keep citiznes alive. We are not a Communist or socialist country & simply taking what we need without fair compensation is wrong.

These are complicated questions to deal with & to try & find solutions for. It will take time. It will take patience on the part of those to whom we will owe so much. People must also be compensated for their labor. I'm asking communities, states & individuals to turn their attention to these matters... in time. I appreciate you all have other priorities right now, which is as it should be.

I will leave you on that note, adding my continued prayers for all of you. God bless everyone & God bless America...

[CanadaSue]

Grampa said he would write for me if I wanted to write something down for the family diary. He says it's called a journal but I like diary because it's our story. A journal sounds like a newspaper. Oh this is Greg, sorry.

I got so many cool things I want to put in here & some stuff that's not that cool, but kind of neat anyway. Grampa said I can put in anything I want. He wants to know what everybody thinks about this whole stupid thing.

Well I think it's stupid, this smallpox stuff. I don't like being stuck in my room. I don't like not being able to watch TV or play on the computer. I don't like eating all that weird stuff mom is making. Most of it is okay, but I want pizza for once. I like being at Grampa's but I want to go home. I want to be in my own room again. I'm not gonna tell mom this but I want to go back to school so I can play with my friends again. And it's my birthday soon & I don't think I can have a birthday party this year. I was gonna go to that cool Laser Place. Now I don't think I'm gonna have a birthday. There's nobody gonna be able to come.

I don't know why someone decided to make everybody sick. Okay not everybody but a whole lotta people. That's mean. Didn't they worry about their own moms & dads, their kids too? And daddy says we dropped a biiiiiiiiiig bomb on the guys that made us sick. I guess a lot of people got us sick 'cause a whole lot of people died. I think that's really stupid. If so many people are gonna be dead, how come we made more people dead? I don't get it.

Grampa said maybe I should talk about Timmy, how me & Sammy found him. That was neat. We were playing outside after the big snow making forts & throwing snowballs & sliding & stuff. We weren't supposed to go out front, but it just kind of... HAPPENED. Didn't mean to be bad. We were playing & thinking maybe we should go inside 'cause we'd been out a long time & Sammy was tired & we were kinda wet.

Sammy saw him first & he got scared. He said: "Look Timmy, there's somebody coming. Is it a bad guy? Call Grampa, quick!" Sammy's little & he's kind of stupid sometimes. I looked & it was just a little kid, even littler than Sammy & he was crying. He was all wet. I went over to ask him what his name was & where he lived. He's really little 'cause he knew his name but didn't know where he lived. That's dumb! But he was really cold & he said he was hungry.

Sammy was really scared. He didn't want to bring him inside & said Grampa would be mad. No way! Grampa had said if we stayed inside & didn't go outside a lot, we wouldn't get sick. So I brought Timmy inside so he couldn't get sick like all them other people who keep getting sick here. We're not sick at our place & we've been staying home a lot. So it's easy. If we bringed Timmy in & he was already sick, he'd get better. Sammy said that's wrong but what does he know; he's just a little guy.

Anyway, we bringed him in & I had to help him get his clothes off & not wake everybody up. I made him a hot chocolate all by myself. We got his clothes hanged up too & nobody helped us! We finally stopped crying when I said he could stay here & we'd give him something to eat. He said his mom & dad were sleeping & couldn't wake up. I'm not dumb. He thinks his mom & dad are sleeping & Sammy does but I know that means they got smallpox & are dead & won't wake up - ever. So I'm glad we told him he could come in & stay with us.

I guess that means I got another little brother & I guess that's okay. It beats having a little sister. My best friend Max has a little sister & she's a pain in the butt. That means she's a pain in the ASS, but I'm not allowed to say that or I get spanked. That's dumb 'cause people say that all the time on TV, even kids & they NEVER get in trouble. Mom & Dad can be dumb sometimes. I hope they don't read this or I'll really, REALLY get in trouble - I think.

Anyway Grampa told me I was kinda wrong about the smallpox stuff. That we were supposed to stay away from everybody in case they got us sick. I thought if we brought them here, even if they were a little bit sick or gonna get sick, they'd be okay if I brought them in here. Mom & Grandma told me better and I feel SOOOOOOOOOOOOO dumb. If anybody gets sick it's gonna be my fault now & I don't know if Grnadma can fix them. I hope so. But maybe nobody can get sick & we can go out of our room. It's boring in here, nothing to do but play games & we can't watch tv cause there's no 'lectricity.

I'm helping Timmy learn letters & words & stuff. He learns fast. I think he's way smarter than Sammy but Sammy got mad when I said that. I wasn't trying to hurt Sammy's feelings. I just wanted Timmy to feel better 'cause his mom & dad are dead & he forgot to bring his teddy bear with him & he misses everybody. So then Sammy was crying & Timmy started crying & Sammy is such a dumbass. How come I'm not allowed to say that anyway? I was listening to some of Annette's CDs & people singing say that all the time & it's a neat word. Dumbass - yeah. A lot of people are dumbasses. The people who made us sick are dumbasses. They're worse than that but I think Grampa would get mad at me if I said what they are.

I miss seeing everybody. Grandma & everybody won't tell me how long we have to stay in here. They keep saying "a bit longer" but it's already been forever. I'm gonna ask Grampa if he'll tell me exactly when. Maybe we can go out tomorrow. I hope so. I'm tired of reading & writing all the time, even reading to the little guys.

I like Timmy. He's neat & he likes me a lot. He follows me around even if he can't follow me far cause this room isn't big. But he tries to follow me to the bathroom & that’s stupid but I think he’s scared that I’m gonna fall asleep too & not wake up like his mommy & daddy. That’s dumb ‘cause I’m not sick & I’m not gonna get sick, dad keeps telling me that. So how come they won’t let me go downstairs?

Well that’s all I want to talk about right now. Grampa is gonna read to us. He’s gonna read a new book called The Swiss Family Robinson.

[CanadaSue]

Feeling edgy today as this is the day that our 'expeditionary force' makes their first outing. We wanted to wait another day but after the Pesident's speech, I reckon a number of people have either already gone out for supplies or are planning to shortly. I don't think we can afford to wait. We've made one major change in our plans; instead of heading into town, they're going to go to the mall on the outskirts, about 2 miles from Drew's place. It's almost right beside the feed & farm supply store; the first stop we've planned for them to make.

I've spent a fair bit of time & battery power discussing this with Drew, trying to get a handle on how much he feels he needs to get in terms of bulk & weight. If I remember correctly, cattle can go through an awful lot of feed in short order. He reassured me that feed wasn't his concern; that he has enough feed for probably 2 years, even if he grows no crop this year. He's more interested in dewormers & medications he may need, especially when the calves are born some months from now. That's a relief. Sam had an excellent idea. He remembers that just out the back of the warehouse section is a little section of woods that's fairly open once you get past the first line of trees. He suggested that after the team does a quick recon of the feed store, that they load up what they plan on bringing back, then take some time to hide more stuff out the back - items such as seed, more medications, leather for harnesses, awls, all manner of tools. A good whetstone or three wouldn't hurt. Drew probably has most of that stuff, but it can't hurt to stash some away. We'll have to trust Drew's judgement on that.

I expect this first outing will take the better part of the night. They're sleeping now, at least those from this house who are going. They'll have a good, hearty meal before leaving & will pack some food & hot drinks with them. They plan to leave about an hour after full dark & MUST be back before dawn. Drew suggested we simply bring everything back to his place. He has more than enough room in the unused wings of his house in which to store everything. That makes sense as there's nothing we need immediately & it will be far less tiring for everyone. Just before heading home with their load, our team will carefully check out the mall, especially the grocery store. If memory serves me right, there's a drug store there & they need to see what they have to do to break in. Obviously, security alarms won't be working & I expect all they need is a few blows with an axe or large hammer to get into the drug cabinets.

Anne has been preparing a list of drugs & medical supplies she'd love to have on hand & that list will be filled fairly early on. We can grow food, make do with many other things but at least in the short term, some medications can't easily be duplicated or substituted. She's also keeping in mind the fact that Cindy will become a mother in several months & wants some items useful for childbirth - not that any of it is absolutely required, but it won't hurt. The problem with making up these lists is that they can quickly grow very large, more than we can reasonably bring back over several nights, so it's important that we get the right things as quickly as possible. After all, it may be that our team can only make a few such trips before it becomes too dangerous to return. The weather might turn bad again. Their trails might get spotted as we can't count on wind to hide all traces of their passage.

There are obviously other dangers. The roads are snow covered & I hope they don't run into impassible sections. Someone could slip & fall & get seriously injured. The women are at risk for obvious reasons. They could encounter the military or law enforcement who arrest them for theft. They'd have no legitimate answer to that. They may encounter a store owner or employee, armed & prepared to defend their property. Again, no real defence for that. God forbid, they may somehow be exposed to smallpox although they'll do their best to avoid that. They may do all the work, load the sleds then get "highjacked" by thieves as they make their way back. There is the chance they may be attacked by packs of hungry dogs who think humans are an easier target than cattle, horses or game. We'll be praying for their safety.

I thought I should write down the list of items the team is going to try & get tonight, followed by a list of what they'd like to hide in the little stand of trees...

In no particular order & forgive me if I don't have the names exactly right:

dewormers, antibiotics, (animal grade), syringes of all sizes, including huge ones to feed orphaned calves, bottle & nipples for calf feeding again, seeds for the garden in the first instance. On a side note, I realized that we won't be able to get starter potatoes, so I've had Sam put aside a good quantity that we can cut into sets to restart the garden come spring. How could I have forgotten that? Same with onions. But anyhow, all kinds of garden seeds including herbs. Hoes & pitchforks. Awls to work leather & as much leather as they can get; straps & flat sheets. Horse shoes, (Drew has 2 anvils somewhere), a few heavy hammers & metal working pincers. Drew also has a list of some metal replacement parts for tools - I have no idea what he means by most of it, but then - he's the farmer! He did mention something a tad gruesome to me - some nasty instrument he needs to castrate bull calves. Ewww; not sure I want to help with that although I may have to... blech!

What they'd love to find & hide: feed, lots of grain, seed for hay, saddles & harnesses for draught horses, a couple of books covering basic veterinary care - Drew says he can always know more than he does already, chicken wire & fencing wire, nails and/or humungous staples for same. Drew also wants to stockpile as much seed of all types as possible, again in case of problems such as crop failures & the like. Drew said he had quite a number of other items on his list, but that he didn't think there would be enough time or available strength to get to it. I had asked him about fuel, but he figures any gasoline, propane or diesel left in the tanks there are long gone - probably taken out by the police or military. Too bad, extra gas stashed away somewhere would probably be worth its weight in gold.

I wish I was going. I keep telling myself none of them are lacking in brains & judgement; maybe it's an older adult thing, but deep down inside, part of me obviously feels they can;t pull this off without my help & supervision. As Andy would say, I'd better 'get over it' ! They're all adults or almost - Annette is growing up quickly & will legally be an adult in a few years, hard as that is for me to fathom. But, as Anne has said & she's usually right, there will be plenty of further opportunities for me to go out on such expeditions as we move closer to & into spring.

It's hard on me now, even without the heart attack, to feel like I'm cooped up. I'm used to spending a fair amount of time outside, working around the house & property, walking through town & chatting to people. Not having much news about any location, be it national, state or local is increasingly frustrating. I keep fighting back this overwhelming feeling that I'm missing something vital to our well eing. Probably not, but I'd feel easier in my mind if I could just have a look see for myself. Does that make sense? It does to me although it's hard to explain in words that are clear.

I had a hard time not laughing last night as Greg dictated what he wanted me to write. At times, it was hard not to cry or jump in to correct misunderstandings. To think he thought simply being INSIDE would prevent or heal smallpox. How on earth we left him with that impression is a mystery but it serves as a good warning to me & the other adults about exactly HOW we inform them. Perhaps we should do what teachers used to do, have the children repeat what we've just told them, but in their own words. I shudder to think what would have happened if thewy'd stumbled upon & allowed in someone with frank smallpox symptoms!

That brings me to a more serious issue - Drew's offer to us. Drew's not a stupid man & he's well aware of my concerns. I'm used to being my own boss, running my old household & Drew has made it clear that he intends on turning over an entire wing of the house to. There's even a separate kitchen with a large wood stove. We could remain as "alone" as we wished for much ot the time, although that's not exactly what concerns me. I'm mainly concerned with Drew being the boss man, the overseer of the farm. Isn't that absurd of me? But who says reason, logic, have anything to do with this?

Drew even has that one covered. He wants to draw up a contract in which he deeds over part of the land to us. He says he's willing to draft up an agreement now, for us to examine & discuss. I'd forgotten how much land he has until he had me find an old topographical map of the area & he talked me through his holdings. All told, he has almost 1500 acres, way too much for any one man & his wife to work, especially if much has to be done by hand, the old fashioned way. Even with all of us conributing our labor & skills, we can only hope to farm a small portion of all that land. His holdings include a woodlot of mainly hardwood with about 150 acres of trees, 2 streams & an adjacent beaver pond. The trees include many maples - we can do our own maple syrup! We can fish for trout in the streams & there's lots of game, as long as we're judicious in harvesting it. certainly wood to heat & cook won't be a problem.

It's an extremely generous offer he's made but as Drew has pointed out, he & Noreen are all alone. They haven't heard from their three sons, none of whom ever had interest in farming & they don't expect to at this point. Even if all of us here move over to his place & Lousie comes as well, we'll have to work very hard to ensure we have what we need to survive & thrive. I still need time to think about this. Just the thought of moving all our supplies over is daunting. Then, we've undergone so many changes, so many shocks. I'm not sure I'm ready for another major change so quickly.

I need to think about it, but not quite yet. Right now, I'd better get some rest, for I'm sure I'll be awake most of the night, worrying about those out there getting the goods.

[CanadaSue]

Man, this is about the third time I've started this entry, ripped it up & started afresh. I'm so nervous. It's coming on to six thirty & our expeditionary force has just arrived at Drew's. They left about an hour ago & Gregh monitered their progress right up to the edge of the woods as they made their way through the field. I radioed Noreen with the walkie talkie when they left, which they did shortly after dark. I wish I were with them.

They spent the afternoon loading Louise's stuff onto the sleds - she is going to stay at Drew's from here on in & while it was bulky, it's not heavy I'm told, a good way to warm up. I armed the 2 women from my family with a handgun each, a double barreled pump action shotgun for Anne & a .303 rifle for Annette who's the better shot.

They're taking a short rest at Drew's while Drew & Noreen unload Louise's things. Noreen has a room near the main part of the house cleaned up & warmed for Louise & for now, will simply place her things in there. They're all taking bathroom breaks & having another light meal & more to drink. Physical work in thw winter drains as much fluid from you as it does in summer. They're all warmly dressed, but it's not cold out, so I tolsd them to layer up with lighter items.

It's cloudy & between the cloud & snow cover, there's just enough light for contrast. The women all have backpacks, mainly empty except for snacks, drinks, extra ammo & Cyalume light sticks which may come in handy.

Last night, Andy checked out the woods between here & Drew's & found three passable sections; not too much snow or deadfall. Drew assured us he knew the best places to hike between the farm & supply store.

Boy, I hope this is making sense, I'm too on edge to pay much attention to sentences, grammar & all that.

Noreen is in contact with our party through a second set of walkie talkies. They radio her with progrerss reports, then she lets us know. She doesn't call them, they call her. Safer that way in case they're in a position where they have to be absolutely quiet.

1945: Noreen says they've arrived at the supply store. bad news - someone has stripped out all the fuel tanks; probably the military, police, fire or ambulance services. Good news, lots of seeds of all kinds. The women are checking through the store with Drew's lists in hand while the men prepare to hide a lot of stuff out back. They'll pile it up, cover it with tarps, then heap those over with snow.

2100: Noreen radioed again. The party says they're doing well, although it's slow work. They were concerned about trying to hide their tracks but forget it, can't do it with this snow. Maybe after they're finished if they're not too tired... they're doing everything from the back door anyway. Sam & Andy broke through the locks with some axes they brought along - good thinking.

2300: Noreen again. They had a close call. A military vehicle drove by & luckily, they heard it well before it was near them. They had time to make sure nothing was visible & were able to hunker down in the trees. They ARE patrolling for thieves. They slowed near the store & shone lights over the front. Luckily, they came in through the back, having moved off the road several hundred yards away from the building. The truck had sped up & was driving with minimal lighting when it passed their tracks & don't seem to have spotted them. The wind has died completely & I think it may snow later which would be a good thing.

0100: Okay, they've loaded the sleds with everything from the list they could find. Apparently they have most of what they needed. Anne & Louise, along with Andy went as far as the pharmacy at the strip mall. They had no choice but to break in from the front & luckily, a broken window allowed them into a store front. From there they were able to smash into the back service corridor, then get into the pharmacy without being spotted. The women filled their backpacks with the most crucial medications on Anne's list as well as some other supplies & they'll make several return trips over the next few nights.

0300: Noreen says they're within a half hour of the farm according to their last report. No problems yet, knock wood. They're exhausted & progress is slowing. Noreen has a hot meal waiting as well as clean dry clothes.

Damn! I was hoping they'd be there by now, although that was more hope than reason. I'm going to radio back Noreen & suggest the bunch from here spend the night to get a good rest. Why walk here, only to have to return tomorrow? There's enough food prepared that I only have to thaw out & heat for everyone & little hosuework that needs doing. Maxine & I can easily handle things.

0400: Just spoke with a very tired Sam. They are going to stay the night. He says it was an uneventful night, but nerve wracking - I can imagine. They don't have the energy to unload & nothing really needs to come off the sleds until well into the day anyway. They simply dragged them into a shed & becktracked themselves to make sure there weren't terribly obvious signs of their passage. It's begun to snow a bit & as long as it remains light snow, it should cover their trail without impeding them tomorrow. They are eating now & Noreen has bullied Anne & Annette into taking hot baths. She said the men will take their turns tomorrow during the day as they wake. She can handle feeding the animals, preparing food & doing the necessary chores.

It's a relief to know all is well. I've taken the liberty of waking MT, Cindy & Maxine to let them know everything is fine. I slipped a note under the kids' door to let them know everything is fine for when they wake up. Whichever one of us wakes first, Maxine or me, will do the early rounds. I banked the fireplace & told the kids to grab extra blankets for now. Their room is getting pretty chilly & I may have to open their door to get some warm air in there. Greg says it's really getting cold - frost on the inside of the window & all...

0630: Shit! I don't know what to do here, other than wake Maxine. Greg just yelled out; Timmy he tells me is really sick; throwing up all over the place. What the hell do I do now? Call over to the farm & have Anne come home? Well, isolation or not, I'm simply going to have to go in there.

0830: Okay, got Timmy cleaned up & I hope he was just sick from excitement. He's been fine up until now but really lost his lunch so to speak. Talk about projectile vomiting. He managed to get it all over the bed, on the floor & even a section of the wall. He says his throat really hurts & I'm not sure if that's from vomiting or something else. He's got quite a fever too. Wouldn't you know it? I rushed in there wearing gloves & a mask... around my neck. I was in the room about 5 minutes before I remembered to put it on! And I didn't shut the door properly either. God help me for being the idiot I am.

1000: Just got off the radio with Anne. Funny, she doesn't seem too worried. Maybe she's just still too tired. She had me look carefully down the lad's throat with a flashlight. I didn't see anything but to me, that doesn't mean anything! She says I'm worrying too much. Ah, if she were here I'd be screaming, I know it! She didn't see how much puke I had to clean up & isn't seeing how flushed he is. I thought we men were supposed to be the logical ones while the women got emotional? Why are the roles suddenly reversed. God, I feel so inadequate right now. What does that boy have; please God, not smallpox!

1130: Now the bad news is on the other end. Anne has slipped & apparently, badly sprained her ankle. She was walking out to the barn - wanted to see the chickens for herself & didn't see an ice patch. In trying to prevent a fall, she twisted her ankle & it ended up taking all her weight. She said she almost fainted from the pain. Drew & Andy got her in & splinted her up. Thank God the girls had brought some some hefty painkillers in their backpacks! Anne is now out cold in the kitchen, on the old leather sofa. Everyone tells me her ankle is NOT broken, but I can't help feeling they're not telling me everything.

Maxine is busy bringing in more prepared meals from the outside freezers. She has informed me that she's heading over to the farm, to judge for herself how things are with Anne. I tols her not to go in, just to peek in through the window in case Timmy does have smallpox. He hasn't been sick again but looks awful, pale & flushed by turns. He's spiking some nasty fevers, up to 103 & then by times, it drops to almost normal.

I'm scared, really am right now. Everything feels like it's spiralling out of control & I hesitate to write this, but I've already taken 2 nitro tablets. been getting little twinges off & on. I have GOT to calm down before I really get myself into trouble.

[Cabal]

damn you... you always stop writing at a critical point!!! You're gonna cause me to start taking nitro tablets!

Cabal

[CanadaSue]

I only quit last night because I had 2 kids coughing & hacking all over me, wanting drugs, hot drinks, hot baths & TLC. BriHard of course, wanted his computer back too. He's away all weekend starting at about supper time tonight.

There will be lots of excitement in Tom & family's life over the next few days - excitement from within & without.

Stay tuned for an episode or two later tonight & keep the whiskey & Kleenex handy, whatever you prefer to use... lol.

Gawd, this power could quickly go to my head. I mean really, who do I kill off, when, how & exactly why?

God can keep his job. I ain't suited for anything remotely like that...

[CanadaSue]

My word! What a day! MT here & I've finally managed to get that idiot man to bed, hopefully to stay, for several hours. Honestly, he simply MUST get over this fool notion that the household will collapse if he's not there to oversee every aspect of it. Did he really think he could hide anything from me? Everything going fine, updates whispered through the door whenever he got them, then... nothing other than: "Oh, everything is fine; they're just staying at Drew's overnight. The boys? Oh Greg got a bit excited over nothing, don't worry about it...!"

Well, between Cindy sitting & fretting, biting her nails & wearing a chronic, anxious look & the sounds of Maxine & Thomas obviously dealing with something, I'd finally had enough. I'm doing no one any good cooped up in a bedroom & obviously something was happening.

I simply marched myself out of that room, telling Cindy to stay in there & find something else to whine at; there was work to be done! Maxine & Thomas were decidedly not happy to see me "break quarantine", but too bad! From what I could hear, they were in over their heads, or simply thought they were. I'm with Anne; that child does NOT have smallpox. He's simply overwrought, hungry & terrified. Who wouldn't be in his shoes? A little mite of four who had to watch his parents sicken & die, had little enough to eat, then managed to walk half a mile, poorly dressed ;through shoulder high snow. I don't wonder he's ill. No, he simply has a bad cold complicated with malnutrition & sorrow. I'm disappointed in Thomas for not figuring that out for himself. Good gracious! We're tougher stock than that & as small as that boy is, he showed more common sense than Thomas is doing right now.

And if Thomas thought I couldn't figure out his heart was trying to cut up again! I told Maxine & we managed to get a tranquilizer into him shortly after I came downstairs & now we slipped a - what would you call it? - a Mickey Finn into his after supper tea. He's out cold, back in the dining room on the sofa & there he is staying! Anne would have his head were she here. As to a sprained ankle, Thomas forgets that girl was the biggest tomboy for miles in her day. I don't know how many weeks she spent laid up with breaks, sprains, strains & chafed at the restrictions. If she says it's sprained, it's sprained, NOT broken. She has more sense than to downplay a broken ankle. I spoke to her over that walkie talkie thing & she's doing exactly what she should be doing - keeping it elevated & on ice & not being shy to take medication for pain.

There's nothing here Maxine & I can't handle & frankly, I think she's relieved to have Thomas out of the way for a bit. Men! But perhaps I should take a leaf out of my own book & calm down. Honestly though, men can be such senseless fools. In any case, it only took about three hours for Maxine & I to get everything straightened out & the house in order again. I even put Cindy to work, in her room. She's pregnant, not dying & is perfectly capable to cutting up vegetables in there. They get cooked anyway, so no worries about any infection there.

If anyone from the future is interested in my opinion, I feel that if smallpox gets into the house, nothing but God's grace & basic common sense will prevent all of us from catching it. I've read the material young Andy downloaded, as well as some Texts Anne had brought home. That revoltingly detailed book by that Preston fellow really opened my eyes. If it moves around the way smoke does; well... I can smell the smoke all over this house from the wood stove & if I can smell it, the fumes are in the room - as smallpox would be. Instead of cowering like a scared rabbit, I'd rather be of use to everyone & keep some semblence of order if others seem inclined to panic.

At any rate, I got the little fellow cleaned up & calmed down. I took his temperature a couple of times & it most definitely is NOT smallpox. If Thomas had stayed rational, he'd have remembered that smallpox fevers STAY up until the sores break out on the skin or inside the mouth. The child doesn't have a mark on him or in his mouth; he's simply all worn out. He's had a bath, changed into clean jammies & had 2 bowls of my good chicken soup - the one with lots of garlic. I even found some dumplings frozen that I managed to thaw & put in. He'd never had that sort of thing & loved it. That, a bowl of ice cream later with a tiny bit of caramel sauce & some juice & he just nodded right off. That boy didn't need to be left alone with 2 other children, I don't care what the percieved risk was. He needed lots of hugs & somebody to hold him. He'll be just fine.

Greg, poor little one; was scared to death that he'd brouoght sickness into the house. He's done no such thing & I've told him that. He simply acted as I'd want any of my family to act; with courage & compassion. From the sounds of it, he's been a trouper, keeping both of the younger lads occupied while inside, he must have been dying with worry.

And Maxine, I don't know how much more Thomas expected of her. Oh she can easily do everything on her own, but I defy anyone to work well & efficiently with Thomas hovering over them. He's simply going to have to learn to trust the abilities of others. After all, he raised his children & if, at their age, he can't let them plan & work alone, he must think pretty poorly of himself as a parent. I'll be having a talk with that boy!

Now as to yesterday's outing. It did indeed go very well, no real surprises or hitches & they did very well in terms of what they found. Andy, (I spoke to him out of the hearing of others), came over to see for himself how his dad was doing & he brought me a partial list of what they'd managed to get at the supply store before going back to the farm. All kinds of good garden seeds, Drew was smart enough to make sure they got seeds for lots of root crops & other vegetables we can easily freeze or preserve. They've hidden all kids of hand tools, both for gardening & work around the farm & house. They brought home with them leather strapping, cordage, duct tape & several cases of batteries. They hid the few horse collars that were there as well as three full sets of harness for draft teams. Drew is pretty sure he can rig up a double team to an old plough in one of his back sheds. They "scored", (to use Andy's term!), a great deal of plastic sheeting, both thin & heavy & chlorine piece, pucks Andy called them, that we can use to disinfect water. Drew found lime & they brought home a few buckets of that & hid quite a bit more. Perfect for an outhouse!

They had a good day today, other than my poor Annie who apparently was rather upset with herself for slipping so easily. They unloaded the items they obtained into a shed, had a warm meal, cleaned up & went to bed. Noreen woke them up at about three this afternoon & insisted they eat another hearty meal before doing anything else. She was smart enough to make sure they all drank a fair amount & before they left, had another meal ready for them.

The snow last night was a real boon. Just enough to cover their tracks & not quite enough to hamper their efforts tonight. They're hoping it won't slow them too badly as tonight, the trip may be a bit more difficult. They'll be going to the mall a few hundred yards away from the feed store & they have quite a list of items to try & find & hopefully, carry home. Now obviously they can't come close to carrying anywhere close to a small percentage of it home, but the more they can get, the better. What they can't bring home immediately, they'll try & prioritize & hide somewhere, making sure SOME is left for others in order to prevent other people from locating what they've hidden.

Anyhow, Anne is now minding the farm & the radio & Noreen has replaced her for the rest of these supply runs. Anne radioed me shortly after six to tell me they'd left. It's nine o'clock now & they seem to have made it safely to the mall. Now it's just a matter of waiting for more reports. In the meantime, I can certainly keep myself busy.

There, it's ten o'clock & I've made the rounds of the house. I sent Maxine to bed sometime after nine as she'll be on watch from about two in the morning until we hear our people have safely returned to the farm. The boys are all sleeping peacefully & young Timmy is thankfully, fever free for now. Cindy seems to be asleep as well. Good, I have plenty for her to do tomorrow.

I let the two other boys out of their room some time before supper. They had more than enough energy to burn & I sent them both out to bring in some firewood from the garage. We're burning quite a bit a day, I don't know how much, but I must remember to keep track tomorrow. I showed Greg how to bank a fire for the night, to keep it alive, the house warm & preserve fuel. It's not that hard & he's old enough & capable enough. Tomorrow if there's time, I'll show him how to clear away the ashes without burning down half the house. Sam has a pretty good ash pit going out back. I wonder, if I thought hard about it; if I could remember how my grandmother made soap? That might interest the kids & it would certainly be useful for laundry & other such jobs. It would let us save the nicer soap for cleaning ourselves.

I'm making sure those children have a good bath tomorrow too. Saving water is one things, but so is fusty smells in the house- ugh! There hair is far too oily & as much as they don't mind NOT bathing, some standards have to be kept up. They'll have those AFTER they do some chores though. There's a lot of dust flying around & no excuse for it! A dirty house does nothing to keep illness away & what the boys can't reach, Cindy can. Like it or not, tomorrow that young lady is marching herself downstairs with a smile on, a better attitude & is doing some WORK! She'll have time enough to laze about in her last few weeks of confinement - to again quote my grandmother.

Now then, eleven thirty or thereabouts & Sam just radioed in to Anne. They've already loaded a number of cases of soups, stews & other ready made snacks, (you won't find ME calling those canned things meals!), & have topped them off with lighter cartoons of spices & seasonings. I told them to be sure to get plenty of salt & pepper, especially pepper. It seems there is still still a fair amount of stock in the backrooms of the grocery store; unfortunately not nearly as much rice & flour as they would have liked & I told Anne to pass on that they really should make sure they hide some of that away for tomorrow night. Anne gave them another list for the drug store, syringes, needles, sterile water & bottles of powdered antibiotics, as well as heart & blood pressure medications. I hope she remembered my water pills. Thomas may need those at some point.

It's just after midnight & Thomas woke briefly; had to use the washroom. He was still quite groggy, so after assuring him that everyone in the house was sleeping soundly & that Anne was fine & our adventurers doing well, he staggered back to the sofa & has dropped straight off. With some luck, he'll sleep right through until seven or thereabouts. Now, it's time for me to make a final round & ake Maxine for her tour of duty.

Maybe she'll write something in here. Poor woman has hardly had time to breathe, never mind write. I suspect she's rather looking forward to a night awake with no one making demands on her.

[nharrold]

"...a double barreled pump action shotgun"

CS, if there is such a thing, it's gotta be a rarity! You might want to check it out a bit; I've had double-barreled break-open shotguns, and single-barrel pump shotguns, but I've never seen such a thing as a double barreled pump shotgun...