Hurricane Irene

While away in Maine, we kept an eye on the storm warnings, each one seeming to inch the hurricane's arrival closer by 6 hours. Luckily for us, our departure day coincided with the day before the hurricane and we managed to get home, unload our borrowed kayak, unload our own kayak, throw all the lawn furniture and toys into the shed and workshop, unload the car, and watch one last movie before the storm hit.

In my opinion, our town was not hard hit. We had a lot of downed branches and trees, but most of them missed houses. The photo below features a landmark house we use to give directions to our road. Someone asked the owner, "Are you a religious woman?"



In case you can't tell, that tree is only inches away...

We were fortunate in that we are on town water, so we always had flushing toilets. I took a shower on Monday, and the water was still hot. Jonathan took one on Tuesday and got warm water...and then it was gone. I heated several pots of water on our gas stove and had a bath with Nuala. Wednesday we gave up and went to the Red Cross shelter at the junior high for showers and to meet their rescue and therapy dog Cassie.



She speaks 5 languages! She looks unimpressed in several more. She was lovely.

Before leaving, we charged our phones and computer, but there was no wifi, so we had to head to the wifi shanty towns in Old Saybrook (Jonathan's description of the Starbucks and OS library). But that hot water and the immediate kindness of all the shelter workers was really lovely.



Nuala and I made the Red Cross a chalk sign and hopscotch before we left. I hear someone was carefully washing it away later. Ah well. At least we didn't use paint.

We regained our electricity on Thursday morning, about 2 hours before a planned retreat to Massachusetts to do laundry and escape the darkness. The Canadian power workers showed up on Saturday, looking like Chippendale dancers with their jumpsuits unzipped to display their ripped abs. We would've been just as excited if they had looked like John Goodman.

In the time it took one of my neighbors to walk out to gripe about not having electricity, they had the wires live, returning electricity to our neighbors, and wifi to our home. There are rumors of residents deep on wooded roads still without power, but all the world is beginning to feel right again. We are gorging on electricity to make up for the deprivation. I even ironed. It's been so long that Quinn asked what ironing was.

Jonathan's reply: "It's when what you say is the exact opposite of what you mean."