This has been quite the weekend!
I am finally able to post again now that we have electricity. Oh, let me tell you. It was one of the coldest, strangest weekends of my life.
It all began Thursday afternoon, as rain turned into ice showers. We stayed tucked in all evening and went to bed around 10pm. Suddenly, I awoke to the startling sound of silence around 2am.
I knew something was wrong because it was too quiet, not to mention the fact that our electric Christmas candles, previously burning orange in the windows, had gone mysteriously black.
Oh well, I thought. I knew a black-out would eventually happen in an ice storm. Back to sleep.
As the storm continued, however, things got worse. I awakened once again to the sound of what I thought was ice breaking off of the roof of the house. It turned out to be trees and branches falling all around us, up and down the street. You could hear the sickening crack of branches, weighted down with ice, cascading to the ground like an avalanche.
Around 6am, there was still no sign of any electricity. As the sun rose, we got dressed and went outside to survey the damage. The sky was clearing, and there was only a slight drizzle of rain, but what the ice had wrought was painfully evident all around.
We were blocked in on either end of the road with giant tree branches. Smaller branches, coated in ice, bent low and shining against heavy electrical wires. In the distance you could hear chainsaws attempting to destroy the wreckage.
We definitely weren’t going anywhere for a while. The rest of the family were doing fine in their respective homes – cold, but ok. So we put on some extra layers of clothing, covered up Cheekers’ cage with a blanket, and waited for the power to come back on. We waited… and waited some more.
Sitting there in the living room, staring at the blank television, thinking that the power would come on at any minute was proving futile. We searched for something to do, but we just cuddled up and napped for a bit. That cozy plan was disrupted by the screeching of smoke detectors throughout the building. As we were the only ones left at home – the other tenants and the landlords had attempted to go to work – we were at a loss. The fire department said there was nothing they could do. So we dismantled our smoke alarm at least, but the wailing could still be heard in the upper echelons of the building. Knowing that nothing was truly wrong – it was just the alarms being weird from the power loss – we took a walk to try and keep our sanity.
What were we to do? Back at home, we made warm tea by heating water in a pot, balanced precariously on two small soup cans, with several candles blazing beneath. It would have to do.
We went to bed that evening praying that sleep would see us through the rest of this calamity, but no such luck. The next morning it was 50 degrees in the bedroom, the warmer room of the apartment. It was right then and there, freezing, unshowered, hungry, and with a cold Cockatiel, that we decided to go see the in-laws. They had a generator, but it would be a drive to get there. I didn’t care though, and in a flash we stuffed some laundry in a basket, packed supplies – human and bird alike – and headed to my husband’s parents’ house.
There, we took hot showers and had food, drink, and merry times. Cheekers was pretty jolly herself, peeping happily and taking in her new surroundings.
News that the power had returned came through to us 6pm last evening. So this morning we headed out for home again.
The ice was still thick on all the trees and grass, as if a million diamonds had been threaded through them. We got home, and thanked our lucky stars that the power had returned for us. Apparently both Massachusetts and New Hampshire had declared a state of emergency, and thousands of people are still without power.
Thanks to the kind and wonderful people from surrounding states, we have workers flooding in to help our state clear debris and repair power lines. God Bless ‘em! It’s been a heck of a holiday!
