Up And Running.....

No more than 30 minutes ago, I joined the real world again. My power was finally restored and I'm grateful that we survived with barely a scratch. My town was very hard hit with wind, leaving in it's wake power outages and lots of downed trees all over the place, but now that the power is restored I feel anew. I can hardly complain. After three days of no power, I was finally able to put a TV back on and see what happened around me.

Look at New York City and New Jersey. Oh my.

NYU was clobbered and almost all of the dormitories were evacuated due to power outages and flooding. The school will remain closed until Saturday and classes will resume on Monday. Frick is fine, thank God. She and her roommates took the train on Sunday to New Jersey, hours before the rails were closed for the storm (inland not the Shore) to stay at one of the roommate's home. The family has 2 generators, and while they lost power and are still powerless, Frick reports to having generator power and having a ball. They are being treated like Queens and last night she text me, "Porkchops on the grill and macaroni and cheese! Can't get much better than this." I am eternally grateful to that family for watching over my baby girl during the Hurricane.

Frack is pumped...
Day three and no school and I'm thinking that he is liking this. The downside is that Frack's super excellent Golf team was scheduled to play in the State Championships on Monday, but that has been postponed until next Monday, which gives him a few more days to get prepared. GO WILDCATS!

My store never lost power, My Guy's office never lost power and all is well here in the aftermath. Driving to work, I see more and more fences, trees and power lines down, and I'm grateful that my home survived quite well. I'm thinking we are on the road to normal. That new normal I told you about.

Who Lobbied For Murphy To Pass His Law?

Get a load of this one...

So yesterday was day three and counting of no power. My mom and I decide to get a hotel room so the children could have a hot shower before the first day of school today. A hot shower for myself wouldn't have been a bad idea because the shower I took yesterday was so COLD that it gave me a headache. Anyway, My Guy and My Dad stay at home (because we have 3 dogs) and we pack up everything, have dinner and settle in to the hotel room with the TV on. I have never been so happy to watch a re-run of NCIS, I tell ya.

I turn out the lights and I'm just about to fall asleep in my air conditioned room, when My Guy texts me. I know what it's gonna say, because he went to bed almost an hour earlier. "The power is on", the text says. I chuckle to myself and think if we hadn't got the hotel room, we wouldn't have got the power back. That's just how that Murphy's Law thing works, doesn't it? I call him and he tells me that the power surge woke him up and that it took him a good 20 minutes to shut everything off because every single light in the house was on. Great. No really, I'm so happy, but I tell him we are staying put and we will enjoy the hotel for the night. Why not? We drift off to sleep. Or so I think.

Frack is tossing and turning and Frick is sniffling. Loud.
12:30 AM, Frack wakes me to tell me he can't sleep. Being the caring and understanding mother that I am, I respond with,

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"Nothing," he says. Poor Kid.

It's now about 2:00 AM I think and I see Frick's waif-y little silhouette sitting in the arm chair next to my bed. After blinking so hard that I practically break my cornea, I ask her what the HELL she is doing?

"Nina (her grandmother) is snoring and I can't sleep," she responds.

I already know this because the snoring was keeping my slumber at bay also.

"Go back to bed," I say, and she does.

Miraculously we make it through the rest of the night without much disturbance. Save for the snoring....and the alarm goes off at 5:30 AM. We snooze it a few times and Frack rises for his shower.

"Mom, there's no hot water."
Frack is now standing in front of me with a towel wrapped around his waist. If this is a joke, it's a bad one and I look at him with that WTF face you make when you are half asleep at 5:30 in the morning.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes mom. There's a snow flake on one side of the shower knob and a sun on the other side and the water is cold on the sun side," he says.

Oh yes, I get out of bed and guess what? He had the knob on the wrong season. Problem solved. Hot water flows. Except now I'm WIDE AWAKE.

Frick gets up and starts banging on the door. "Frack, I gotta pee. Let me in!!!" "
"No way, I'm naked," he says.

About 20 more minutes of them fighting over this and that and sure enough, they wake my mom. She starts screaming at them to grow up and stop it, and I'm so grateful when they leave at 6:30 AM. My mom and I start to relax again and we are talking about where we are going to have breakfast when the hotel FIRE ALARM goes off, loud and screeching.

Over the loud beeping we hear, "Attention guests. We have been notified of an emergency. Please exit the building immediately."

Are you kidding me? It's 6:40 AM and we gotta leave the hotel. I look at my mother and tell her to get up and get dressed cuz we are getting the HELL OUTTA HERE and I start throwing everything into a suitcase. Lord, I'm not even sure I got everything from the room, but I didn't care. I think I left black skid marks as I was speeding past the multiple fire trucks and hotel guests outside the building, but I didn't look back.

All I know is that I took an hour long shower this morning and turned on almost every electrical device I could find.

And I'm grateful that I could, dont' get me wrong.

I'm Powerless

I woke up Sunday morning thinking this whole storm was a bust.

I didn't see any serious weather outside my window, really.

Anything that looked treacherous. "What a bust!" I announced and sort of chuckled at myself and the weathermen who were documenting every second of Hurricane Irene.

That was three days ago and I should have known better because I have been without power for three days since.

I have to be grateful, really. No one is hurt. Everyone is ok, we have food and we have money to buy food and each other to keep company. Half of the town I live in has power and half does not. My little store has power and Internet today and I'm back to work.

BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WILL SOMEONE PLEASE PUT THE POWER BACK ON SOON BEFORE I LOOSE MY FRICKEN MIND.

I've never experienced this for this long before. If you'll indulge my selfish whims for a moment:

Things I'm freaking out over:

• No TV. You know I'm having withdrawal. Three days and counting.


• Cold showers. Are you kidding me? No, just no.


• No Air Conditioning. No Internet. And did I mention NO TV?


• It's fine during the day, but when the lights go out all bets are off. Candlelight begins to become less romantic.


• We have a generator, but it's keeping some food cold in the garage refrigerator and our sump pump working in the basement. We plugged in phone chargers and a lamp but nothing major. I'm actually JEALOUS of my friends who have power.


• I feel completely discombobulated and disconnected from my life. You begin to question how dependent we are on the modern conveniences of electricity. If this is a test I FAILED.

I'm off tonite to a hotel. Screw this.

Last I heard, power will be restored by Saturday.