Irene

I haven’t written at all in September.  It is not that I don’t get the topics and I have plenty to write about.  Afterall, who in the northeast doesn’t have something to say about the Hurricane, or rather, Tropical Storm Irene?  We were out of power for 3 days and we had to use flashlights and candles to get around our house.  We would come home from work and leave again to go to a place that had power, and lights and ability to cook food.  We ate out way too much.  We did have an idea to bring some food to a friend’s house and some food to my work fridge and freezer to save some of it since we just went shopping before the storm.

We tried to make it an adventure for A who is 5 and got to carry around a flashlight throughout the house but with no TV or ability to read or play in her room, it was a hard 36 hours.  The first day, I worked on my cross stitch project nearly the whole day while the storm was blowing hard around us.  We watch through the window and played with A’s preschool books but the day went by quite slowly.  It is a good thing we had a battery operated radio to have some music and news about the storm  or I’m sure we would have gone stir crazy much earlier than we did.

Poor A was so terrified of the pitch black dark that she screamed the first night wondering why she didn’t even see street lights outside or her nightlight from the night stand. The second night we put her in our bed while she was still sleeping and she didn’t know what was going on until she felt another body next to her and and she asked what was going on.

I feel sorry for people named Irene as I’m sure, like Katrina, the name brings back bad memories of a bad storm.

Lights are all back on for almost everyone and there was not many injuries during the storm or for the days in the dark afterwards.

The power of nature is amazing…

Snow, Snow, Snow… Oh My!

For those of you who are not around snow much…I’m jealous!  Not really and I will get to that at the end… Well anyway, we got a lot of it overnight and I think it is still snowing.  The snow is so heavy that the trees in our yard are drooping and one fell and broke our daughter’s slide.  It is so sad.  Good thing, her swings are the part of the swingset that is more important to her.  This is a picture of our yard with all the snow.  Rhode Island and Massachusetts stopped short of declaring a state of emergency.  Pretty much every school and business closed, stranded motorists, accidents, problems with getting out of driveways, and yet people were expected to go to work.  Interesting…

We have gotten 12″ and it is still snowing now.  It was supposed to stop by 2pm.  It is 3:30 now.  We went down the street dragging Alex in a sled, she wanted to stay out all day but my fingers were frozen in my gloves that were supposed to work to temps way below zero (maybe I should take them back), so I went inside to make warm lunch and hot cocoa and coffee.  Much better inside than outside…

Ok, I guess this can be in response to the post idea of “How do you keep yourself entertained in snow?”  We shovel, spend time together, do crafts, take naps, knitting. We have to watch Ellen though, for certain! I am so glad that we were not without power all day though, that would have been a very bad thing… lots of things we could not have done today, especially with a nearly 5 yo child.  When we woke up the power was out and we snuggled for a little while and that lasted only so long with Alex.  We got up and ate cereal for breakfast and went into the fridge VERY quickly to get the milk so that everything would not get warm or spoil. 

How do we deal with it? We just take it as it comes and I have to say it is the best of all the weather evils.  I would rather the snow and cold over tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes… THAT is why I stay here – and I have asked that question nearly every winter.