Tropical Storm Irene blew through here not too long ago. It was Saturday night when she started. Sunday morning around 3 a.m. we lost power. We didn't get power back until Monday afternoon.
So, we missed church on Sunday. We had no way of finding out if our church had power or not. We didn't know about the condition of the roads or anything either. Friends stopped by and took some of our cold foods since they had a generator, super, super nice of them. What's funny is I loaded them up with 4 different kinds of milk, not unusual in our house. Lactaid for Dan, regular for me and Madelyn, Almond milk for Elijah, and some leftover Soy milk from when he had his tonsils out. He doesn't like to drink Almond milk. And, I'm not quite sure why I felt I needed to capitalize the types of milk.
Oh well.
So, we spent the day reading and playing. Thankfully I was completely hooked into The Hunger Games trilogy so the time went by pretty quickly for me. Later in the day we went to the park to kill time. We kept expecting the power to come back on soon because we rarely lose power, especially for any extended amount of time. The whole neighborhood seemed to be out walking or at the park that night. There wasn't much else to do.
While we were at the park we could hear all the generators in the neighborhood running so we told the kids when the generators stopped we would go home because that meant we had power.
Well, they never stopped. And, it was starting to get dark. And, they had their first day of school the next day. And, they needed showers. And, we found out Dan's Uncle's funeral was on Tuesday and we were going to have to try to get to his parents' house by then.
So, we buckled down, got the kids to school Monday morning, realized neither of our cars were going to make the 4 hour drive to Western PA so we set up a rental. I pulled clothes together from whatever we had clean. Made arrangements for the dog. Since it was only one night Megan was able to just drop in to let Daisy out. The cats would be fine for one night.
And, the power came back on. Yay! It was so funny because as I was scrambling to get things together I walked through the kitchen and thought, "Oh, that light is blinking. That light is blinking!!!" We had power again. I felt like Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life because I was opening my fridge saying, "Hello fridge! (like 'hello you old savings & loan!' or whatever that line is) Hello coffee maker, and microwave, and phone and ..." You get the picture.
It was a good feeling, but I had to leave so I couldn't really take full advantage of my electricity.
The kids got home. Dan got home, and we rushed out the door to get to the rental car before the place closed. It was hectic, but we made it.
Vern and Pam came up for the funeral as well. Of course, poor Vern had literally flown in from Afghanistan that day, met up with Pam, flew to Dulles and drove from there to PA. Oh, and he forgot his suit so they had to stop along the way to buy a new one.
So, Tuesday morning Vern says, "What do we have to do to get you to stay another night?" We planned for just one night because the kids were just starting school, Dan runs said school, and we thought we should probably be there for the beginning of the school year. Plus, we didn't know what everyone else had planned as far as how they were staying, etc.
Anyway, I said we just needed Daisy to be let out, but I figured if Megan couldn't do it another night she could at least get the key to a different neighbor. Well, it was 7:15 pm by the time I got in touch with Megan. She had an all day training class and never got my cell v-mail I left her. Once I did reach her she informed me that she had locked the key in our house since she knew we were coming back that night.
WHAT?! I totally understood why she did it. I just couldn't believe what I had to tell Dan when I walked back into the house where his whole family was gathered, namely his 2 brothers whom he so rarely gets to see at the same time. But, I did. Thankfully, Megan was willing to try to break back into our house so I was waiting to hear back from her on that.
It turns out she did. She brought her six year old with her so the neighbors would think too much about it. Now THAT is a good friend. Oh my. I was so relieved.
We eventually made it home in the same clothes we had been wearing for almost 3 days straight since I only packed for one night. And, one of us may or may not have come home with no underwear on, but that is a story for another day.
We pull in the driveway and I say, "Okay, let's all try to get into some kind of routine now ..." That's when we found out our lawyer had been trying to reach Dan all day.
Yeah. We're being sued. Remember that? Ugh.
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