It also gives loved ones time to freak out. Not that any of ours panicked or anything, but I'm sure it happens.
As I'm sure you know if you watched any of the Irene coverage, it had already been raining a ton leading up to the big storm. In fact, it had rained so much that my neglected garden was somehow managing to survive even though I'd given up on it a month ago. So as Saturday night hit and the rain we already had turned into more, harder rain, we knew This Was It. Irene had arrived.
Our main concern with the storm was trees falling over. We live in a neighborhood with some massive trees, and there are three or four within falling distance of our house. Massive trees that would do some serious damage. So we decided to camp out in our main floor office to weather the storm. Then at around midnight or 1, we had yet to go to bed because we had too much adrenaline going. But in fear of overnight pop-up tornadoes (you can take us out of Kansas, but you can't take the tornado paranoia out of us), we took ourselves and Avery downstairs to sleep. Even though it's far from cozy quarters down there, we figured we wouldn't be jumpy at every gust of wind, and if a tree came barreling through, we'd have more layers of house protecting us.
As expected, the power went out at 3:45 a.m. But when we woke up at 8 (Avery slept a little longer thanks to our fitful night), it seemed calm. Raining. Windy. But not bad. No trees down. Just this:
And this (the leaves, obviously):
I make light of it, sure, because that's how I cope with stressful situations, and, well, life. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Mother Nature and the damage she can do. I realize we got extremely lucky. Because you can compare the hurricane to a tornado in that while your street may be spared, a few streets over may not have been so lucky. And a couple of towns over there are entire roads blocked from fallen trees and flooding. We were also lucky in that we only went 26 hours without power and two days without cable and internet. So now we're back in business and thinking of all of the people who didn't fare so well. And thinking of making We Survived Irene T-shirts.
*Alan did feel the earthquake that hit last week. I didn't feel it, although from looking at receipts, I've pieced together that I was walking from the pharmacy to the bank when it struck. The clerk at the post office on the same street didn't feel it either, so I think the street was spared.
