Revive. Restore. Renew.: A Week in the Eighteenth Century.. Days 2-4

Bad picture quality because I was driving, but you can kinda see a tree snapped over, leaning over the road and power lines.

So crazy... this street was one of the last to get power in our area..

Woke up Monday morning still without power (Happy Halloween!). I'm still having fun. I've always loved losing power. Reading by candlelight. Walking around the house with flashlights. It's all fun to me.

R went to work today (the town he works in is along the shoreline and they only had 1% (so basically like 1 household) without power). I decided I didn't want to stay in the cold house all day by myself, so I drove me and Madison over to my parent's house. My mom and sister were home and we all camped out on the living room floor in front of the fireplace (which had only been lit once before... in 1979). It was fun! Madison loved it! Everyone laying on the floor with tons of blankets and puppy toys? It was her dream come true! And she even got to wear her Halloween costume (she was a bumble bee) all day! My dad came home about an hour later. His work had no power too.. so he had gone over there to talk to any employees who came in. My dad is worse than R when it comes to not having power. He was just walking around aimlessly... not knowing what to do.

My parents prepared a little better than we did. They got out the big beach coolers and filled them with ice on Saturday night right after they lost power. All perishables (that they could fit) went into the cooler. They were able to save mayonnaise, drinks, meat, eggs, etc. by doing this (our food wasn't so lucky..). My mom made tuna sandwiches and soup (boiled the water on the grill) for lunch. Mmmm...

My dad and I ventured out in the afternoon to pick up some things from the grocery store (ok, mainly I wanted hot chocolate...). We also tried to get gas... that was just a joke. Most gas stations were closed.. the two we found that were open, one didn't have gas and the other had lines to get in that were over a mile long. The cars at the end were turned off and just parked there they had been waiting for so long!

All afternoon I read and played with Madison and worked on a Christmas craft I'm making. R came after work for dinner. My dad made kielbasa and baked beans on the grill and my mom made some baked potatoes in the fireplace (soooooo good! a million times better than grill potatoes!). They only got 1 trick-or-treat group. My dad and R were out in the driveway cooking on the grill and the group (and their dad) walked right up to them (the house is up on a hill, on a long driveway) and wanted candy. My dad was like "uhh... Happy Halloween... Want some kielbasa?" (this is apparently Polish Halloween this year). My mom reluctantly gave up some candy (she's a first grade teacher and was mad that kids were out in the unsafe conditions... plus we had kinda been eating the candy all day).

Around 9:30 R and I left and came back home. Still no power... but we spent weeks last fall without heat, so sleeping here wasn't a problem. Also, it turned out that my parents still had hot water (gas fired, not electric), so we were able to take showers before coming home.. which was nice!

Tree in parking lot at work.. all of the trees in front of our building were like this. They were cut down by the end of the day :(

Tuesday I dropped Madison off at my parent's house (and picked up my car, which R insisted I leave there... he didn't want me driving home in the dark) and I went into work. I work from home normally and this was the first time I actually worked in the office. It was weird :) My boss was wicked nice and even said I could bring in Madison and take a shower there. For lunch, the receptionist and I got Chinese food (the only place open in town!).. and it was so nice to be warm all day! And have internet!! After work, I drove home and waited for R to get out of work. Then, back to my parent's house. Tonight we had pizza.

Branches down in my parent's front yard.

Two houses down from my parents... trees snapped and broke their fence and went into their pool.

Wednesday was pretty much the same as Monday, without Halloween. R and I stopped at Dunkin Donuts on our way to my parents and got everyone coffee and munchkins! I finished a whole book today, and broke my head (ok, not literally... but Madison and I were playing pretty rough and I smacked my head on a coffee table... I have a huge bump. I'm such a klutz). In the afternoon my mom made baked apples in the fireplace.... sooo much better than ones in the oven!!! Around 5:30 my dad came in from outside (he'd been cleaning up branches and stuff outside all day) and "fixed" the fire in the fireplace (my mom just wasn't able to keep it going today for some reason!). While he was doing that, power came back on!! For dinner my mom made basically everything in the freezer that was about to be no good anymore. We had chicken, hamburgers, kielbasa, two kinds of french fries and three kinds of vegetables. It was crazy. Still no power at our house though..