Here’s some math: 48 hours without power=a household grateful for heat, light, working refrigeration, and Internet.
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I probably flashed to the mind-numbing routine that was essentially waiting out storms in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter about 100 times over the two days without power, light or so much to do.
I probably chatted with Al Gore (he resides, at least sometimes, upon my shoulder) about 100 times as well. He talked about more wetness and bigger storms and seasons as we depended upon them changing in An Inconvenient Truth. By golly, he was right! I am unsurprised, but had to tell him so and wonder aloud whether we can reverse this scary trajectory. And although I hadn’t thought about how leaves on trees plus snow=terrible damage to trees and electrical wires, now I know.
Gratitude abounds: for National Grid workers, police and fire departments and the DPW, the mayor’s office, the Red Cross, and of course, the way people just reached out to help one another just because that’s what people seem to do.
We had a stream of friends in and out of our house and a bigger stream of offers for all sorts of help. We had a lot of laughter, lots of games were played, lots of cute girls racing in circles occurred, and again we were struck that living near a college campus has its perks. Two evenings marking time in the warm, bright Campus Center affirmed this. It will no longer remain solely my post office of choice, but now seems a great place to pass winter days or evenings when the weather isn’t so inviting.
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Oh, and I learned that sometimes high stress situations with lots of uncertainty and a bit of discomfort yields the need for some high octane parenting. My guess is that it’ll take us all a few days to recover from Snotober 2011.
Regularly scheduled blog programming will resume… tomorrow.
