A week not to be remembered

Back in December of 2007, K and I were knee deep in any home project you can think of. Since moving into our home in February of 2007 we have removed wallpaper and painted the foyer, removed wallpaper and painted the dining room, sanded and painted our kitchen cabinets, sanded and painted our dungeon-esque family room wall paneling, painted all three kids rooms and upstairs hallway, removed four trees, removed the brick landscaping in the front yard, and removed all the ivy that the previous owner had let pass as a front yard. I'm sure there is more I just cannot remember or am blocking the more painful projects from my conscious memory.


The most recent project was removing the wallpaper from the laundry room and downstairs bath and painting. After everything we've accomplished in such a short period of time, this was not a daunting task at all. And we moved through it like nobody's business; got everything put back in it's place on a Sunday night.


Then it happened...


Between 2 and 3 am on Monday morning we were woke up by cracking branches. It had been forecasted that we would get freezing rain throughout the night. That was an understatement. It was pouring and the weight of the rain freezing on the branches was causing them to break. And we're not talking about sticks, oh no, we're talking about limbs six to ten inches were falling down. Every time that a limb would start cracking we would cringing hoping it was not ours and would not hit the house. The limbs were falling throughout the neighborhood and I'm sure everyone was thinking the same thing. At one point we heard the newspaper deliverer stop in front of our house and move a limb that had fallen, making our street impassable.


So from 2am on we did not sleep, then also noticed we did not have power; which was to be expected with the amount of limbs coming down. What made it especially frustrating is that the rain would not let up; and it ended up raining for the rest of the day.

It was so much worse than anything we could have expected; and we kept thinking that the power would come back on at some point during the day. That wasn't the case. We ended up in the dark for 6 1/2 days. It wasn't the longest of anyone in town but it didn't matter to us; we were without power.

But we made the most of it. We put our fireplace to it's fullest use since our arrival in this home. We got it nice and hot and started cooking meals on it(ok, two meals then the novelty wore off). Several break-ins were reported in our 3-4 square mile radius and we were determined to weather the storm in our house(absolutely no pun intended). The kids were all shipped off to grandparents who had power in the outlying communities; so it was me, K, the cat and the dog. Luckily we have a gas water heater and could bathe in comfort only to step out into 40 degree temperatures and freeze immediately.

The biggest downer in the whole deal was the fact that so many people blew Christmas money to get through the week. Hotels were booked to capacity with locals, many streets completely blocked off by downed trees and an all around pervasive miserable feeling due to the lack of sunshine as clouds and rain stuck around for days.

Somehow we made it through and have survived the clean up of debris. We lost another tree and it has now become firewood. The power is back on and we now cringe every time we hear a branch crack.