Back in the Saddle After Hurricane Irene

Our power, and more importantly, our cable and Internet, are back on.

And it’s a good thing, too, since we were down to our emergency food supply.*

We told her it was a bath. She likes baths.

We went dark Saturday afternoon and had nothing to do but eat all the ice cream from the freezer and listen to the oak trees crack for the next ten hours.

Luckily, the storm passed by the time we went to sleep. I did stay up after everyone else, listening to the wind and hoping a tree didn’t bust through our house.

The storm didn’t hit us quite as hard as Isabelle in Aught-Three, but I think part of what limited the damage here now is that Isabelle dropped every weak tree in central VA.

It was a huge lesson learned well. People here have made sure to clear dead limbs and take down trees close to houses.

I stocked up Wednesday, so I beat the rush at the stores.

Sunday morning after the storm was clear and beautiful, as it always is the day after a hurricane.

My son had an emergency call in to work. No, he’s not a doctor—he’s a barista. His store had power, unlike everywhere else in town. People were lined up out the door for coffee and wifi.

He worked all day and didn’t get a chance to look up from the espresso machine.

For future reference, be patient, be kind and drive slowly when society derails for a day. Also, tip your barista.

Tuesday I drove to Louisa, epicenter of the recent earthquakes. We have a homeschool co-op there with some friends and were kicking of the school year with a pool and park day.

The pool we usually go to was out of commission because of earthquake damage, but we made do somehow with the lesser pool.

How we suffer.

We’ve had dozens of aftershocks since the initial earthquake on August 23, some of them pretty scary at one or five in the morning.

 

While funny pictures of a patio chair tipped over are amusing, the earthquake did serious damage. The only high school in Louisa County is kaput.

The Thomas Jefferson Elementary School is also badly damaged. School was in session and it was a miracle no children were harmed when some of the interior walls collapsed.

The elementary school and Louisa High School are closed for the rest of the year and may be beyond repair.

Although schools will be closed in Louisa until September 12, the opening high school football game will be tomorrow night. 3,000 of the area’s 30,000 residents have rsvp’d for the game on Facebook. That rival team is going to get creamed!

Now that I can watch the news again, I see Hurricane Katia is brewing in the Atlantic, but I’m not going to worry about that until I see the whites of Jim Cantore’s eyes.

And I hear there should be swarms of locusts on Monday, so I should move up my pedicure.

Have a great Labor Day weekend! Any plans? Still cleaning up after Irene?

~NOTA

*My chihuahua always looks like that and was not harmed. I swear the broth in the pot was lukewarm.