So, back in August there was this little storm, Irene, that came sauntering up the East Coast. At that time, it felt like everyone around here was going completely out of their minds. Batteries were no where to be found. Flashlights were being sold at 5x their going rate (one place was actually trying to sell a flashlight for $35. Yeah. That's right. $35. And it didn't come with beer. The sad thing is I toyed with buying it just so I could get the damn batteries...cooler heads prevailed and I didn't buy it). And, like all good New Englanders before a storm, I tried to get my bread and milk (because, apparently, I was going to have a hankering for toast and a glass of ice cold milk in the storm?), but the store was sold out of that as well. Therefore, in order to assure my family did not go hungry, I loaded up on chips and spaghettios. Yum. Once we got our food squared away, I began to formulate the family safety plan. On the news, they kept telling people to make sure they had all of their insurance and other important documents in a place where they could be easily reached and taken away for a quick getaway should things go badly at your home (Well, I was too lazy to go that far in the preparations, but I did call my insurance agent to make sure I was covered. Does that count?). The next part of my safety plan involved me taking stock of the outdoors. I moved all the lawn furniture indoors, took the swings off the swingset, and cleaned 99% of the gutters around the house. I then went inside and figured out the safest room for all of us to sleep in our home away from too much glass and farthest away from any possible trees that might come down on the house (Did I mention we live in the CT equivalent of the Redwood forest? I swear all the trees in our neighborhood are probably 100 feet tall and everyone has at least 3 of them in their yards). Needless to say with all of my tireless efforts to prepare for the storm, our little corner of the state (or at least our little corner of the neighborhood) did not suffer any significant damage. We consider ourselves very lucky that we didn't lose electricity. Hell, we didn't even lose cable. Great. Disaster averted. Yeah me! Yeah for being prepared!
With our successful navigation of Irene, I was not at all worried when they started talking about storm Alfred that was coming our way at the end of October. "This storm is going to drop 6 inches of snow or more. People should begin storm preparations." These were the dire predictions coming from newscasters in the days ahead of the storm. Now, being Irene survivors who still had an ample supply of spaghettios, we were not really worried. So, on Saturday night, we went to sleep without giving things a second thought. Ok. Sidebar. Humor me here for a moment. We have all either read or heard about the studies talking about nutrition and brain function. If you haven't or don't know what I"m talking about, let me at least make this part clear: Spaghettios are not a brain food. Nor are chips (oh, who am I kidding? The chips were long gone before Alfred came along in October). Ok, so no brain food in my pantry = not the sharpest knife in the drawer occupying my head. What I'm trying to tell you is that I drastically underestimated Alfred. He took down massive tree limbs and knocked out our power for a few days. Now, it was late October and it was pretty cold at night, so that sucked, but I still had propane, canned food (yes, the spaghettios) and the company of good friends (well, at least Cara and Marc). So, being the good hostess that I am, I offered my company a nice hot cup of cocoa (which I heated up on my grill) and, as I stood at my grill looking out over the snow and into the yards of my neighbors, I saw something interesting. The people who lived on the next street over had steam coming out of their chimney. "Hm. Maybe they have a fireplace?" I thought as I slowly scanned the rest of their house and realized, "Those bastards are watching t.v.!" And that's when it hit me over the din of generators buzzing on my street - the people who lived one block over all had power. In fact, they never lost power. They never even lost cable. Bastards.
When all was said and done, our school was closed for a full week (resulting in us losing our February vacation) due to lack of power, we lost all the food in our fridge, I had to hire a landscaper to climb the 80 foot trees in our yard to get the limbs down that were dangerously perched over the playscape, and I learned that hot cocoa on a propane grill really sucks. I laughed at Irene and Alfred smacked my ass for it. Ain't karma a bitch.
