Sandy Has Come and (Thankfully!) Gone!

Yea, right. "See you in a day or two." That's what I said in my last post.

Well, I last posted on October 29, the Monday Hurricane Sandy was supposed to arrive.

And arrive she did!

Please note: today is Saturday, November 3, and this is the first time I have had a chance to blog anything. We have been without power or heat since Monday night at around 8:45pm. Just to be sure that we knew we were without power or heat, the temperature dropped every day since the storm.

We don't keep our house very hot: 60 degrees during the day while we're at work, it bumps up to 68 degrees the hour before we arrive home and it drops to 65 degrees from 11:30pm to 5-something am, where it bumps up to 68 degrees again so I don't freeze in place when I get out of the shower. At 6:45am it drops to the daily 60 degrees. And normally 68 degrees feels really warm to me. If it's a particularly cold night we have a room heater we turn on in our bedroom which heats the room up so much that I snore all night from the dryness in my nose. (TMI?)

Well, we had no heat this week, and right now my thermostat is set at 65 degrees and I have a jacket on and I'm thinking "I hope J turned on the room heater 'cause it's really cold in here..."

We were not meant to be colonists. Every time we walked into a room this week we hit the light switch and were totally baffled when the light didn't turn on. (Personally I want to leave a light on now, all the time, just because I can!) It's such an automatic habit that I never dreamed I could miss light so much...

We went to bed at - are you sitting? - 6:30pm every night and slept until 7:30am every day. That is unheard of in this house! J is of the "Get up! We're burning daylight!" ilk and sleeping past 7am is just - well, too decadent for imagining, let alone for doing...

We had to throw out all the food from our refrigerator/freezer and our extra freezer in the basement. And I knew this would be the worst part of the whole experience for my husband: all that wasted food and money... To you, my readers, I confess that over half of what we threw out I couldn't even remember buying! We are were wasteful, conspicuous consumers and I will NEVER do that again! Effective immediately the only things I will buy extra of is stuff we use on a regular basis: an extra pound of butter in the freezer is okay. 5 extra pounds of cavatelli or tortellini is not. An extra package of bad-for-you processed American cheese slices, even an extra TWO packages, is okay. We go through cheese like crazy in this house. A 20# turkey from 2009 is not okay. 3 containers of peppers and onions, frozen when we make a large batch, is okay. 3 extra packages of hot dogs in the freezer is not (we'll discuss ONE extra if we actually make hot dogs more than a couple of times a year). I am LOVING seeing the clean, empty shelves of my refrigerator/freezer, and while I admit that my intentions are all honorable, I do know that I'll probably fall off that wagon at the first big can-can sale, but I really want to try to stay on the straight and narrow - have what we will use, plan what we will need, and eat whatever it is we buy. Keep whatever you can cross, crossed for me. I'm taking Mom to the Shop Rite tomorrow to "replace only what is absolutely necessary."

We finally got our electricity and heat back this morning, at about 9:45am.

Thank you to all the linemen, the groundsmen, the tree-guys, every one of you who has helped me get my life back to my normal, which I'm almost ashamed to admit, includes electricity and heat.

I had a mini-meltdown on Thursday. I was cold, I was bored, and I was hurt (another story I won't be sharing here), and I lost it. No one cares about us, we have no lights, no heat, it's cold, this is awful, etc., etc. Once I calmed down, we got out of the house (stir crazy, anyone?!) and we went for a walk around the neighborhood.

My friends, I am so very blessed to have what and who I have in my life.  We have neighbors literally a 1/2 block away who had two trees fall on their house.  NOT one.  TWO.  One on the front, tearing off part of the siding and crushing a corner of the roof.  The other crashing SQUARE on the side of the house, damaging the entire side of that house, the roof, and settling on the second floor.  Or should I say IN the second floor of the house.  And the one in the front?  It was large enough that when it landed, it crushed and totaled the neighbor's TWO cars, one so new it didn't even have it's license plates yet.

There were literally TWELVE trucks from Pennsylvania on that street alone, cutting down and removing trees, and that was before the power companies came in and restored service, IF they got service already.  I am looking across the street onto the next block and it appears they have power...

Meltdown?  I have SOME nerve.  Sure, there's an excuse for it, or perhaps I should say a reason for it.  There's NO excuse for feeling that sorry for myself when all I was was a bit chilly and a bit bored for a few days.  I'm in my house, my family and friends are okay, no one was hurt or lost their home, etc. 

When I go to church tomorrow morning, I'm going to say some extra prayers for all who are suffering, and I'm going to do a little penance for my selfishness and thoughtlessness, and pray for a little more of the "right stuff."

I am praying for all who are suffering, all who have lost loved ones, all who have lost their homes...  Know that I will be finding my own way to help you, somehow, very soon.