Adventures in the World of No Electricity

Seeing the title of this post, you may be wondering - if she has no electricity, how is she posting? Well, I'm at a hotel. Let's start from the beginning, though.

On Sunday morning we woke up to a hot day that was rather windy. Throughout the day it kept getting more and more windy. Then, around 3:00 pm, Adam and I decided that we would try and venture out and go to Babies 'R' Us and pick up some food for dinner. Unfortunately, this was the point in the day where the wind was really picking up. We made it about 5 blocks from our house and then were attacked by an orange barrel that was flying through the air. We decided that we would keep going, but we were getting a little scared. Branches were starting to fly around and lights were dangling perilously from the stoplight wires. We headed to the grocery store to buy some gift cards (we get gas points when we shop at the grocery) and the grocery had no electricity. My parents' electricity was already out, so we really weren't sure what to do. Adam decided that he really wanted some salad from Buca di Beppo's though, so we headed in that direction to get some take out. I stayed in the car while Adam ran in to get dinner. The gutter on the side of Buca's was barely hanging on to the side of the building and was quite creaky. Finally, Adam came back with the food and we headed back home. By the time we were heading home, many more stoplights were not working and people had NOT mastered the idea of the 4 way stop. We got back home and had lots of branches down in our yard. At that point, they were mainly small branches. We flipped on the TV and decided we would go ahead and eat dinner. We had no sooner begun to eat, than the lights flickered and then went off completely. That was about 5:00 pm on Sunday night. We have not had power since. Sunday night was INCREDIBLY long! We found candles and a flashlight. We even managed to find a radio that would take batteries. But, we had winds blowing up to 70 mph and as time passed some HUGE branches started to fall from our trees. We have a GIANT branch down from our big tree in the back yard and one of the smaller trees split in half and is now dangling dangerously over our power lines. Adam kept running in and out while there was still light to assess the damage. This was making me nervous because I was worried about his safety as well and just simply worried about how the house and trees were going to stand up to all of this. Sadie had spent much of Sunday sleeping, so she was not all about the sleeping on Sunday night. This only made things worse, since Adam and I were worried about what was going on, didn't have electricity, and were already running on less than great amounts of sleep. But, we survived.

Adam did have to report for work yesterday. Only IT's were allowed in to Cardinal Health because all power was being run by back up generators. Adam spent his day moving servers around to make sure that the essentials were going to be taken care of. I spent the day with my parents. No one in Central Ohio has had school because no one has power. This has been nice for me because I have more people to help me with the baby. But, the stinky part of this is that even though I am "losing" these days as part of my maternity leave, I will get to be the one who has to make them up at the end of the year. Grrrrrrrr! It does not seem quite fair!

My parents decided to get a hotel room last night because they both use CPAP machines to keep them breathing regularly at night. Obviously, with no power the CPAP machines will not work. They ended up getting a Hawthorne Suites hotel room. It actually has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a full kitchen. They graciously invited Adam, Sadie, and I to stay with them. This was great because it meant that we had electricity and could move around much easier with the baby during the night time hours.

Adam had to go in to work again today, but he got an e-mail last night saying that Cardinal had power back up. It's kind of funny to me that they sent an e-mail since you would have had to have had power in order to get the e-mail, but anyways...

So, that's the story from here. AEP, our power company, is saying that it may be Sunday before we all get power back again. CRAZY! It's certainly going to make for some long days ahead. Hopefully they will get things back up sooner, but this may be my last post for a while.

On a final note, Adam and I spent this day two years ago with many of you faithful readers. It's our second anniversary today. I hadn't even realized it until Adam mentioned it last night. Neither of us even had a card to give the other this morning, but I guess we're both quite content with the gift of our beautiful baby girl. :) Hope you are all doing well!