Sorry for the delay in getting these online, but you wouldn’t believe the last 48 hours we’ve had. More updates to come too!  

It’s funny that I wrote the title for that last post at the time that I wrote it (Thursday night), because I assumed (since I had no TV or Internet access) that the storm was only affecting us out in the boonies. As it turns out, not so much. There are close to a million people in this area who still don’t have electricity tonight, and it just happens that our happy little home is one of them.

Last night was quite possibly one of the scariest nights of my life. Even in a house as solid as ours, 70 mph winds make the entire house (including our bed) shake, and every time I heard some unknown noise, I was convinced that it was someone in the house. Who on earth would go out looking for rape or murder victims in the middle of massive windstorm? I have no idea. But I was sure he knew that I was alone in the house. So even with the benefit of Unisom, I didn’t exactly have what one might call a restful night’s sleep. I was more in a drugged state of panic for hours on end.
 
This morning I got up and checked out the damage. There are branches everywhere. A tree in our front yard came down and took out part of our fence (that’ll be a fun expense). There was this big white metal thing in our front yard, and I couldn’t figure out what it was, until I saw that Carol (our across-the-street neighbor) had her entire fence taken out. Then I remembered that she had a little shelter for her horses in her yard (sort of a metal framed carport-style thing with a canvas roof), so that solved the mystery of the big pile of metal in our yard. Apparently when it came rolling out of her yard and into ours, it took out our mailbox. Carol was very apologetic about it, and said that she’d pay for the mailbox, but seriously, if she hadn’t said anything, I would’ve just thought it was the wind that had done it.

I drove all over the Eastside today looking for what, I’m not exactly sure. At first I thought I’d just find a Starbucks, get online for a while, charge my cell phone, and head back home. I quickly realized that every retail establishment imaginable was closed, because no one had electricity. I stopped at a hardware store to see if they had any regular old-fashioned phones (you know, so I could just plug it into the wall and have a dial tone? Instead of stupid cordless phones which need electricity to work?), but they were sold out. I managed to play the “I’m 8 1/2 months pregnant” card so they’d feel sorry for me and let me use their restroom. (There were 2 candles on the counter. The guy handed me a flashlight on my way in. Lovely.) I did manage to find one store that was running on generator power, and they happened to have a car charger for my particular model of cell phone, which made me ecstatically happy. That’s the best $7 I’ve spent all year. 

Finally, I gave up and headed home. Carol, the lovely across-the-street neighbor (oh she who has helped me break into my own home before) came over and helped me start our generator, which I didn’t know how to do because that’s always been Dave’s job. (Figures that the one time I really need him for something like this, he’s in another state, hmm?)

With the generator running, I was able to get online for a little while and get that last blog post up. The generator has since run out of gas, so I’m back to typing in the dark with the laptop on battery power. It appears that the wind took out a lot of cell phone towers in the area, so my one source of communication is pretty flaky. Oh, and the stupid, stupid well – our home’s source of water, which I hate with every fiber of my being – apparently runs on electricity too. So I have no tap water, and I can’t flush the toilets. Niiiiice. 

Just about the only good bit of news that I’ve heard all day (oh yeah, forgot to mention this earlier) is that DAVE GOT THE JOB!!! Which is awesome-awesome-awesome, and I’ll fill in more of those details when he gets home tomorrow and I can talk to him for more than 30 seconds without my cell phone signal breaking up.

For now, though, I have another date with my good friend Unisom. Maybe he’ll be more effective when there aren’t freight trains of wind whipping past my windows.