We severely underestimated how much snow was coming. Neither of us watches tv or news. I’m pretty sure my source for all things news is twitter. It really felt like it was all being blown way out of proportion. I’m sure that if I had turned on the tv and actually watched the news, we might have had a better clue of what the storm was shaping up to be. NOT US! Nope, we were going to be just fine, thankyouverymuch.
It snowed Friday night and most of Saturday. We ended up with something like 18″ – 20″ of wet, heavy snow. Saturday morning our power cut out. I tweeted it at 8:25 am. We both expected it to come right back. We actually both laid in bed, as still as we could, not breathing, waiting for it to return. The sound of the VCR whirring back to life did not great our still and quiet world. Yeah, we still have a VCR. What?
He bundled up to shovel. I bundled up to take pictures. We fought about the camera’s lens freezing. Typical stuff really. I won and took pics until my battery died. But I’m still to lazy to pull the pics off the camera. He shoveled our sidewalk, both neighbors’, and up to their doors. Really it’s the least we can do since Bill is always mowing our lawn and trimming our hedges. Sue is always feeding me or looking after the house. We have such lovely neighbors. As a thank you, Sue made us breakfast on her trusty old gas stove. Yay for hot meals.
After all that fun we did the only thing we really could. We went back to bed. I am a champion sleeper. Champion! But by 4 pm even I was not tired and also bored out of my skull. We heard a truck drive by making some kind of mumbled announcement about being without electricity and heat, should go to the municipal building, something a phone number. I couldn’t hear it all because the cat was purring loudly in my ear. Stupid cat. She just wanted us to stay and freeze probably.
Oh this is when something in the basement started beeping. Talk about fun. We both thought it was a carbon monoxide detector. Scary! Until I remembered that we don’t have one. It was the Fios battery finally dying. We decided to pack some stuff while it was still light. (Some stuff is; 3 days worth of clothes, pillows, blankets, soda, board games, and you get the point.) We’re a block from the municipal building, so if it was a wash we could walk back. It turned out to be fun. So we hung out and played games.
Around 8pm they moved us to Word of God Church, again right around the corner from us. The Red Cross brought cots and pillows/blankets. There were a lot of nice and helpful volunteers. Plus we all chipped in carrying cots down and setting things up. We were warm, fed, safe, and entertained. It was a pretty fun time actually. More people showed up and we all made sure they had what they needed. It was oddly comforting to be community oriented in that moment.
We heard that that power was back around 1am Sunday. I wasn’t able to sleep so I was reading when the volunteer fire fighters came in to tell the Red Cross people. Some people wanted to go home. We wanted to make sure that our power was back. They drove some people home, past our house, so they could check for us. How awesome is that!
We ended up getting back home at 2. A block from our house the power went back out. So.Not.Funny. Because we were in a volunteer fire fighter’s truck we got the inside scoop. Duquesne Light had cut power again because so many transformers had been blowing. It was back on by 3 am.
I must say that I am incredibly grateful for all the emergency workers, fire fighters (especially the volunteers and the people that stayed beyond their shifts), police, road crews, dispatchers, and anyone one else that coordinated efforts to help out. I’m grateful for the Red Cross for organizing a place to put us all and providing whatever comforts they could. I have never been on this end of community help and I have a brand new respect for everyone involved.
I should also thank my twitter peeps for checking in on me and offering places to stay.
Thank you.
Now to go about digging out our driveway and alley…
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