Ice Storm II

After a few more days of ice storm madness, we are still powerless refugees. We have moved from the hotel to my sister's house now. They say power will come back on today, so we'll see. It does not look likely based on the number of power lines still down on our street, but who knows. Maybe they worked all night.

As I was saying previously, we certainly were not prepared for the magnitude of this storm. However now that we have seen how many days we were (and are) without power, maybe it didn't matter so much anyway. It was rather stressful at our house on Tuesday though, as trees and branches started falling all around us, some of them onto the decks around the house. We lost power early, then it came back, so we were foolishly hopeful it would stay on...so much that we had the TV on, so when the power surges began in the early afternoon, I think it fried the TV. Even after the power came back briefly, the poor TV did nothing at all. Maybe it can be repaired, maybe not. That was one of the first real downers of the whole storm. That and losing our huge willow tree that really defines our yard.

We decided early afternoon that we needed to get a generator just in case it stayed out overnight. (yes, we were still thinking short term). So James went out and bought a huge generator. He parked by our house and scooted and pushed the box across the yard. After he moved the car back down the hill, an enormous branch fell right in the exact spot he had been just minutes before. A related incident that really freaked me out...I heard a noise and looked out my kitchen window to see an SUV slowly making its way down the hill. I saw it stop suddenly and the people inside look behind them...turns out the noise I heard was not the car, but a gigantic tree that fell across the road just a few feet behind the vehicle. So these people escaped being crushed by a tree by about 1 second, literally. I am still thinking about that!

So back to the generator....we get it ready to go, then realize we have no space heater or electric blankets, or anything to actually plug in to it that would help. DUH. After James risked his life by walking under the crashing trees over to the neighbors, still finding no space heater, we made the decision to pack up and find a hotel. I tell you, there aren't many times in life that I am truly afraid for my safety or my family's safety, but walking the boys out to the car was one of those moments. I cannot describe how scary it was with trees falling constantly.

The first hotel we picked lost power just a few minutes before we got there, so they recommended the Candlewood (which is one of our very favorite hotels anyway) and we got the very last double room in the place. We found out later our hotel and one other one were the only two in the area not to lose power at all. Thank you God! We had visions of sleeping in the car or wandering around the SuperCenter to stay warm. Charlie had skipped around all day like this was a great adventure, but when we asked him that night if he had fun, he just said, "No. Scared". So it was not lost on him either. But they did have fun in the hotel, especially Henry, who got to explore every inch and pull up on all the furniture.

Fast forward a few days. Still in the hotel, still no power at home. We sadly emptied the contents of the indoor fridge. We managed to salvage a little from the freezer. Then we moved to the outdoor freezers where my stash of breastmilk was maybe a couple of hours from getting slushy, but salvageable, and I saved a few prepackaged meals. Everything else was tossed out. I guess that's one way to clean out your appliances!

Last time I was there the house was in the 40's and my houseplants were starting to wilt, and I'm trying not to think about it. We did manage to snag a tree cleanup crew from our neighbor's house so most of the large debris has been cleaned up. Now we just have to figure out what trees we can keep and hope they grow back, and which trees we have to remove altogether. So sad. We had so many beautiful huge trees. But I suppose in time they will grow again.

So that is our story. Here we are at Jenny's, driving them crazy. But through all of it, we stayed mostly warm and dry and unharmed, and we know we are in a better situation than many. At least we have a home to return to, unlike hurricane or tornado victims. We may have lost a TV, part of a fence, multiple trees, but we are counting our blessings!