For those outside of our area, several severe storms crossed our path last Thursday, wreaking havoc on our neighborhood throughout the day. So when we arrived home from work, we were none too surprised to find that the power was out.
48 hours later, however, we were really surprised to find that the power was still out.
On the first night, we made the best of it by eating Subway sandwiches (The Subway within walking distance of our house had power), lighting lots of candles (Apparently, electric company officials advise against using candles in these situations, but if the colonials could manage it without burning down their homes, so could we.) and taking advantage of modern conveniences that run off of batteries (A laptop battery holds just enough charge to make it through Toy Story.). Unfortunately, there was little we could do about the sweltering heat and the incredible racket created by someone running a generator the next street over.
With little sleep and frayed nerves, I decided to take a vacation day on Friday. Lauren and I spent the day with my parents, because not only did we not have power, we no longer had phone service. My father had taken the day off as well, and around 1 o'clock we drove back to my house to assess the situation. Not only was the power still out, but poor Daisy had taken ill in our kitchen. After making sure that she was okay, we drove back to my parent's home to wait for Mark to finish work. We stopped at home again to find out that Grandma Gert, who was also without power, had fallen and was taken to the hospital to make sure she wasn't seriously injured.
That evening, we ate at Wendy's and went shopping at Target to kill time. This proved to be a bad decision, for afterwards, Lauren took a temper tantrum of major proportions because on the ride home, we wouldn't let her hold a storage basket that we had just purchased. After listening to her scream for a half an hour (She continued to wail once we returned home, even though at this point she could have went to sleep clutching the storage basket for all I cared.), I decided that for the sake of my sanity, Lauren and I would spend the night at my parents. Mark decided to rough it with Daisy at our house. On the ride to my parents house, we past a Get Go convenience store that had had just set up a generator. The sight was disquieting, as the owners must have had some insight into the length of the power outage for them to go through the trouble of renting a generator.
Hoping to take our mind off the situation, Mark picked the two of us up early Saturday morning to go to an antique fair. My heart really wasn't into it, so I don't have any photos or purchases to share.
After we were home, the power had finally returned. To celebrate, I took a three hour nap.
Aside from a priceless amount of aggravation, the power outage cost us roughly $50 - $75 in groceries as well as our microwave, which must have been damaged by an electrical surge. On all counts, we were very lucky, as we didn't have to cope with the major flood damage that affected so many people. And some are still without power today.
To top off our delightful weekend, today one of the tires on our car was punctured and rendered flat when Mark drove over a large screw lying at the end of our street.
Now if you will excuse me, I'm off to have some Double Fudge Brownie ice cream.
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