Irene, you were a scream

More like a muffled one though. At least for us. I know some people, both in this area and across New England, were not so lucky.

I promised you an update on what happened, so here goes.

We knew Irene was on her way up here earlier in the week. My awesome husband started prepping the house during the day on Thursday, and that evening, I was able to go out for a farewell happy hour for a coworker, while he ran errands and bought some survival gear. When I got home that evening, we discussed what else needed to be done, made lists, sketched out contingency plans.

Friday, I went to work, and C busied himself by mowing the lawn, reenforcing our garden's stakes and cages, filling up buckets of water since we have well water(no power = no water), and other things like scrubbing out our coolers. I got home, and found that my awesome husband struck again with all of the things he did that day! Including buying me flowers :) (I don't get them very often, since C isn't like most guys who buy their ladies flowers all of the time. That's pretty cliche. It's very special to receive flowers, because I get them so infrequently.) We ran through the things that needed to be done on Saturday, not fully knowing when the storm would hit.

We woke up bring and early Saturday morning, heading outside to gather up our potted plants, harvest the last of the "ready" veggies, and a few other things that I cannot remember! I knew that if we lost power, it could be for days, leaving us unable to do laundry or dishes and without hot food, running water, flushing toilets, not to mention no lights or Internet! We had a bunch of laundry sitting in the hampers; it was time to get work done in that department. For the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon, I did laundry, cleaned all three bathrooms, filled the guest bathroom tub with water, vacuumed the entire house, and did other silly housekeeping tasks. We had buckets of water in the bathrooms, we had batteries and flashlights. I pulled out the unscented candles that we hardly use. C went out in search of ice. I reorganized our upright freezer in the basement, which is the size of a large fridge! By dinner time, we were READY. All of the dishes were clean. Laundry was done and put away. Food was prepped. Coolers were brought upstairs. I don't think I'd pulled the house together this quickly and this fully EVER.

As we watched the weather, and saw the forecast we knew that there was no way we'd make it to liturgy on Sunday. I put in a call to Fr. T, to let him know, especially since C is an altar server. We were dispensed, which made me laugh, since that was the LAST thing on my mind!!! Honestly, I didn't care. After the phone call, there was a lull. There wasn't anything left to do, really. Oh yeah. We needed to shower as late as possible, just in case we did lose power, we would be clean longer. When we finally went to bed, it was raining and a bit windy, but nothing too bad.

Sunday. GOOD MORNING!!!! We awoke to power, but within the hour it was gone, the sun was trying to peek through the cloudy skies and rain, but without much luck. It was strange because we couldn't see much, if any, damage, and there wasn't power. We thought, maybe the storm wasn't as bad as predicted, and maybe we'd get power back soon??? FAIL. The day passed, and more rain fell. I napped. C napped. I started listening to an audiobook, while cleaning out some drawers. I paid bills and updated our calendars. It was pretty productive!!!

The rain stopped and people started going out. Soon we were also heading out to see how our town fared and to attempt to score free firewood. We didn't see too many homes with trees or limbs that would be easily transported back home. But we also had a problem. We were worried that water was running out faster than we'd liked. While we were out riding around, C realized that the cemetery right near our house had an old fashioned water pump. We could use that! And so we did. It took about a full minute of straight pumping before water started flowing, but flow it did! Yes, we stole from a cemetery! I think it was funny, and it's not like people would be coming to water any flowers in the next week or so, as the ground was saturated.

To be continued...