So I am finally back to writing posts after a week off. The power at our house did not come back until Thursday afternoon sometime, but having essentially our whole family, including 2 dogs at my parents house, we made the decision to spend Thursday night at their house and return to our humble abode on Friday. To be perfectly honest, I really didn't get that upset or frustrated that the power went out (OK, maybe a little because it went out just as I was about to start assembling kitchen cabinets). We had a rare October Nor' Easter that dumped heavy wet snow over our whole region. It was practically a given that the trees, most still laden with their leaves, would not be able to sustain the weight of all the snow that fell. But being a resident of New England, you come to expect the unexpected. The weather can turn on a dime and you just deal with it. So when the power went out, we had to figure out what to do. Having an infant changes everything. Where once we probably would have just toughed it out, remained in our cold house, and gotten through the ordeal, we had to make different arrangements so our little one didn't catch a cold or become uncomfortable. Luckily my parents never lost power and we were able to cart our necessary belongings over to their house. That first night I stayed at our house "just in case" the power came back on. But it didn't and the next few days were spent away.
Looking back at the experience, the first thing that came to mind was that it was similar to being in a refugee camp. (Granted, we still had access to our house and it was only for a few days, but that's what it felt like.) We had only our necessary belongings all crammed into one room at my parents house. With in infant, I am sure that you can imagine the clutter we had. I can't imagine losing our house entirely, or having an incident happen where we were forced to leave, but even five days in a little room when you know your own cold house is only 20 minutes away is, for lack of a better word, different. Don't get me wrong, I am forever grateful that my parents had the room to take us and our dogs in for almost a week, but with 7 people in a house plus 2 dogs, finding a little space for yourself is not the easiest thing to do. I can't imagine what it would be like if we had no where to go, no family to ask for help, no place warm we could retreat to. We were lucky compared to a lot of people. The other saving grace through this whole ordeal was that I was able to borrow a generator to keep our freezer and refrigerator going so we didn't lose all our food. All in all, last week felt like a blur. I technically could have brought my laptop down to my parents house and continued writing here, but there wasn't nearly as much time as I have at home. Every morning I had to leave earlier in order to fill the generator up before going to work, and on top of that, work was farther away than I was used to. Then, in the evenings, I had to fill the generator up again and finally made it home by 730. That's 13 hours out and about and by the time dinner was finished at my parents house, I just wanted to crash.
One of the biggest concerns that I had was looting. As I drove to our house day after day and saw no signs of life in our neighborhood, I wondered if this would be an opening for some people to break into people's houses and make off with their valuables. It was seriously like driving through a ghost town when I went to our house. There were a few cars driving, but most houses had no cars in their driveways and everything was obviously dark. There wouldn't be much I could do if someone did decide to break in as no one was around. Luckily, I didn't hear of any incidents of looting. Chalk one up for the good of humanity there. However, looking at it now, it makes me wonder how these criminals can break into houses with people in them, or when they know a family is at a funeral, and not when there are large swaths of houses uninhabited due to a storm. Maybe they just got too cold themselves and didn't want to break into cold houses. We could speculate for hours without ever understanding their mindset.
Unfortunately, there are still people without power in our state. Its ironic that we in Connecticut pay some of the highest utility rates in the country, yet have to wait the longest to get power back. From the looks of it, the main provider of electricity in our state, CL&P, was grossly unprepared for an incident of this magnitude. It probably wouldn't have been as bad if we didn't deal with Hurricane Irene just 2 months ago and experienced wide spread power outages then as well. Such is life. You deal with it and move on. Whats the point in getting frustrated if it does no good. I am just glad to be back in our house, with our king size bed instead of a pull out couch to sleep on and a little more space to freely move around in. It was a short refugee stay at my parents, albeit a good one unlike so many others in the world. To come upon an ordeal like this makes you appreciate family so much more, what they are willing to do for you, how they help you out, and how valuable they are. I only hope that more families out there went to the same extent that mine did to help out in a time of need. As I said before, this incident was mostly an inconvenience and nothing more. No one died that I know, the power came back on, and life returned to normal. Life goes on.
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