I can tell that I'm a bit on the stressed end of a scale between being not stressed at all and being so stressed that one could power a small city. What's made this clear to me is how quickly I've been wanting to snap back at situations. While I can have a pretty hot temper, it's usually only when I'm under pressure, not feeling well, or in pain that I tend to lash out as my buffer for my hot-headedness drops.

Unfortunately, it's usually family who gets the brunt of my aggravation as there are not as many physical or social barriers between people living in the same house as there are between people meeting out in public. Even with social media, there's a bit of a time delay as it takes longer to write out my vitriolic comments than it does to just say them directly to someone. I've been fortunate that I've generally been able to cool down by the time I've written the comment, that almost all of my angry retorts to people online have been deleted rather than sent. However, I do wonder if capping that outlet might be leading to a greater build up of frustration, as I have found myself mentally rehearsing diatribes more often than normal as of late.

This has affected my dreams. I did not sleep well last night--partially because I had to wake up at midnight to pick up Connor--and every time I woke up, I could remember that I was in an argument in the dream that was just disturbed. I still remember some of them and, unlike other dreams I have, I was clearly myself--not someone else. Also, the people who were arguing with me were real people whom I personally know--which is also not always the case in my dreams. 

Nor has this been limited to sleeping dreams, but these arguments have spilled into my daydreams. For the last several months, I've had this bizarre idea of running for Alaska House against Ben Carpenter--the Representative for my district that includes Sterling and Nikiski. I absolutely do not want the job and would have no chance of winning, but I so tired of his anti-education, regressive stance being the only option at the ballot (he has run unopposed for at least the last several races) that I've been having internalized arguments with my mental vision of him (and, of course, winning each contest soundly).

I'm hoping that I can catch up a bit this weekend on both work and sleep. Perhaps being better rested both physically and mentally will help rebuild my buffer. 

Despite no precipitation today, the weather has produced winds past 55 miles per hour. With the many dead trees in our area due to the spruce beetle blight combined with these high winds, our area was filled with fallen trees, many leading to widespread power outages. It seems that the winds are calming, hopefully giving our linesmen the breather needed to return electricity and internet connections to thousands of households.

My first hint of how bad the winds were getting was during my first period class. My AP World students had a test which I set for them on Canvas. About ten minutes in, many of them were complaining that their tests weren't loading the next question. Only students who were using their cell phone data rather than the school's Wi-Fi were able to continue taking the test for a period of about five minutes. Thankfully, the problem rectified itself.

At about the same time, I received a set of pictures from Janelle that showed a downed tree across our road and then in several stages of being cut and moved to the side of the road. Apparently, a tree fell directly in Janelle's path as she was driving to work. She went back to our house and picked up our chainsaw--which she learned how to use recently--and proceeded to take the tree apart and get it out of the way before continuing on to work. She managed to do so unaided in about 15 minutes even though she was concerned that one of the other trees was going to fall on her considering how much they were rocking in the wind.

Halfway through the school day, Janelle informed me that Trevor informed her that our power was out. She reported the outage to HEA right away. However, the outage map showed that we were probably the least of their problems. Reports came in all over on the internet that there were trees on lines and even broken lines all over the western side of our peninsula. 

After school (and having my stop sign for the busses blown around), I headed to Skyview to watch Rowen's cross country meet. The wind was really blowing then too. Rowen said that it felt like he was being pushed backwards at times. He came in 45th, but was happy with the race.

At Chatty Catholics (our get-together of families from our parish), we discovered that many of us were without power. Thankfully, the power outage did not reach any of the parish buildings. Even better, while we were there, Janelle received a call from HEA asking if what they had done had restored our power--which it had. We were quite pleased to find that our garage door openers worked when we finally arrived home.

I pray that power is restored to the thousands who are still without it. Meanwhile, I'm waiting until after midnight to pick up Connor after his team returns from their games in Anchorage. It's certainly been an event-filled, blustery day.