Awful Autumn or the Fall F**k Up

What a month. What a season! First Hurricane Irene. The power outage was extremely inconvenient, but at least we could go outside, use the grill and once the wind stopped, we really didn’t worry that a tree would fall on us. We survived Irene to escape to Italy for an idyllic if somewhat whirlwind vacation and returned home to fall pray to the weather change and the upper respiratory infection that was, according to the pharmacist, “going around”. But the Halloween Nor’easter that ripped through the northeast last weekend was another matter altogether. My faithful readers, (the few of you) are you all right?

“Ripped” is really the wrong word for this storm. It rather crawled across the land depositing a blanket of heavy, wet snow that crushed trees and our spirits with equal force. The sound was incredible. Snowfall is generally quiet. But this pre-season interloper set siege to the leaf-laden trees and simply overwhelmed them. All day and night the sounds of limbs and, in many cases, whole trees cracking and crashing to the ground was like something out of a science fiction movie with giants stomping over everything in their path. Or a war movie: the “BOOMS” sounded like bombs dropping in the distance. Except the one that hit the side of the house; that sounded like a direct hit. Being outside to clear the driveway was a nerve-wracking, futile endeavor. I’ve never seen such heavy snowfall for so long. I’m surprised they haven’t named her/him/it. It deserves a name. Something seasonal: the Awful Autumnal; the Halloween Horror; the Fall F**k-Up. It has certainly f**ked up my fall.

There’s no power, no heat, no running water. On line at a local Red Cross relief shelter, waiting for two hours to take a shower after four days of filth and freezing, one woman I spoke to said she got a cell phone call from Ohio and another got one from INDIA! Apparently, our little town burg made international news as the worst hit even in hard hit Connecticut. On every street, trees lean on power wires forming terrifying tunnels for our cars to pass under. The utility company is overwhelmed and absent. I’ve never seen where a tree limb on a powerline didn’t bring an immediate response. Well, on Saturday, at the height of the storm, we first lost power in the mid-afternoon. Within fifteen minutes I saw a utility truck pass by and moments later power was restored… for an hour. It went out again and has stayed out. And I have not seen another truck. We honkered down in front of the fireplace to discover that all our wood was wet except for the very bottom of the pile which we unpiled to retrieve the ten pieces of dry wood. We live in a forest and my son took his SUV out in a blizzard to find wood. You can’t make this stuff up. He returned some time later with a bag of salt we would not need, five packs of wood and Chinese food. Like Christmas, you can always depend upon your local Chinese restaurant to find a way when all others are hiding under their beds. Isn’t it fascinating that restaurants are the only ones to think ahead and buy generators?

We are in New Jersey now, staying with our older son, his wife and our terrific granddaughter, babysitting, hanging out and making a conscious decision NOT to freak out about the stuff we are SUPPOSED to be doing.