My Fiona Journal

17th Saturday 

The prediction is that Tropical Storm Fiona will arrive tomorrow at 6 P.M. I have the windows on the south closed, a trash can full of water in the shower, candles, and my generator charged. Time for bed.

18th Sunday

Huh! The storm decided not to wait. At six this morning when I checked, the center had already passed Vieques. At about 8:00 A.M. the power went off. The wind here was 36 MPH and peeked briefly at 44 MPH. And the rain started, heavy horizontal rain, but beating only on the south side of my apartment, so I was able to leave the other windows open and have fresh air. My generator had been charging for nearly 24 hours. The manual said it would need only six. The readout said it was only one fifth full. I used it to charge my watch and then it was dead. That’s about $350 wasted. Ugh.

I had to walk my dog. About once a year, when I walk him, he doesn’t do his business. That happened yesterday. I caught a break in the rain and headed out. A minute later it startled again full force. He still didn’t do his business! But I had to wring out my clothes and hang them in the shower to dry when I returned.

I had used my phone as a hotspot to catch the rosary with Lois Drake at 9 A.M. my time. At about noon I tried to use it again to check the weather. No phone service either.

19th Monday

Still no power, wind about 34 MPH, heavy rain. My neighbor, Reyna, loaned me her charger, and I charged my cell phone. However, the stupid phone “outsmarted” me. It has a setting that says it will wait to fully charge until just before I usually unplug it. Apparently, it was waiting for Tuesday morning. That evening Reyna set up a gas generator to power up her fridge. When hers was cooled sufficiently, she showed me how to remove my screen and passed the cord through my louver to me, and I cooled down my fridge. Things were melting, so it was needful.

Since 2017 and Hurricane Maria, news is still disseminated by a truck with big speakers passing through the streets. While I was borrowing the phone charger, Reyna translated it for me. It announced that we could go to the plaza to charge our devices. I asked Reyna when she thought we would get power back. She said, “Oh, we always have power. The town has two generators that are enough for all of us.”

“But we don’t have power,” I said.

“They’re lazy. They probably didn’t keep up the maintenance.”

Mijo and I went to the plaza. I charged my watch and my Kindle. I was eaten alive by mosquitos while there, but it is handy to have a reading light built-in on the Kindle when there is a power outage. I asked a lady there who spoke more English than I speak Spanish when we would have power. “Tomorrow afternoon,” she said. “They came over yesterday. Today they sent for parts. Tomorrow they can fix it.”

20th Tuesday

At 7:58 a.m., the lights came on, the fans started twirling. Ah! I rushed to my iPad to check the weather and to report to everyone. No internet. I did the usual, unplug, wait a while, and plug the modem back in. No internet. I phoned the provider. No phone service yet either. Went for a walk with Mijo. Hooray! The pharmacy was open at last, so I stopped in and filled a prescription. And yes! D’Frozz was also open. I’ve made friends with Eira, which she pronounces as Ada. I find that even if I don’t need an iced drink or a snack, I need personal contact with a human being. I sat and slipped and read. At home, after loading up my 20-ounce stainless mug with ice and water, I checked—internet at last. One bar on the phone. Two is all I ever get here, so one is better than none.

I still have clean-up to do. Five hundred bugs sought refuge from the storm by attempting to enter at my front door. It didn’t work, but their tiny corpses needed to be swept up. The chair and table need to go back to the front porch, and my wind chime and the second one I had just bought need to be hung. And then—business as usual!

By God’s Grace there weren’t any flooded areas here in Vieques. The hurricane passed south of us and swung north to hit the big island. I/we had plenty of prayer support here, plenty of help from the elementals and from my legion of angels. We barely had a hurricane. We wouldn’t even have had a power outage if people had kept up the maintenance on the generators for the town. People outside the town lost power, but many of them have solar power and huge cisterns for water.

In the hills where there was heavy rain, a few trees toppled over when their roots washed out, but only the smaller, shallow-rooted banana and papaya trees.

Vieques was blessed with only a slightly stronger storm than usual.

All glory to God. 😀