Season 2: Day 40—Where have I been?

[dreamer]

So, here it is, Day 40, and I’m making my first blog post of my season two. Where have I been, indeed! LOL! Living a little contrast, some of which involved having no internet connection. Or power, phone, or cable TV. Or, even more importantly, heat. On Jan. 26, my area was hit by a devastating ice storm that lasted for 36 hours. I had seen extremely damaging ice storms before, but this one was the “mother” of all ice storms I had seen in the past. Trees and utility poles were crashing down at an alarming rate. At the peak of the event, there were 4,883 utility poles down or severely damaged (for just my power company alone--there is another that serves our area) and 14,498 spans of wire down. They brought in over 5,000 linemen, field workers and tree trimmers (some from other states, as far away as Florida) to get things going again. Our region was declared a Federal Disaster area and the National Guard finally made it in a few days later to also help.

This dramatic contrast certainly made me send out some rockets of desire! LOL! It also gave me a deep appreciation of those folks working so hard to restore our utilities. I also appreciate my heat even more. That first night without heat, the temperature dropped to 15 degrees. It was a little chilly in my house. I later joked with my friend Cindy that I could see my breath in my house. Or rather, I could see my breath if I had any lights! LOL!

I was very lucky in that my home sustained only minor damage. (Years ago, a co-worker remarked that I was the luckiest person she had ever known. I thought silently to myself, “Yes, I am.” LOL!) My Dad and another fellow managed to remove all of the tree branches on my home but one. A really large walnut tree branch is still there and will have to be removed with heavy equipment. An insurance adjuster came last week to look at it and they will handle it. He climbed onto my roof, to see what specific damage that branch did. I only have one cracked shingle. Can you believe that? He just shook his head in amazement. The gutter on the back of the house will have to be entirely replaced, but I just giggled about that, because it already needed to be replaced as it had begun leaking badly. I feel so fortunate and blessed. A few folks actually had their homes become inhabitable. In fact, my Aunt and Uncle had four trees not only breach their roof, but actually come through the ceiling. My Aunt would have been impaled if she had been sitting in her computer chair, but fortunately, she had no reason to be at her computer as the power had already gone down. However, they “weathered” the storm and are doing just fine.

Everything here is pretty much back to normal now, except for the landscape, which is forever changed. I felt a little sad when I saw a row of beautiful Bradford Pear trees that were pretty much annihilated, but I know that the landscape will heal and come back even more beautiful. With spring around the corner, I feel sure that we will see evidence of that soon.

Things haven’t all been contrast for me. In fact, the last week or so has left me just plain giddy a few times. (Cindy may be able to corroborate how darn near “obnoxiously giddy” I may have been. LOL!) I sure have been having fun lately. And feeling SO GOOD!

At any rate, this blog post is getting long, so I’ll save some fun stuff for another time. Now that things are mostly back to normal, I hope to blog more regularly. In the meantime…it’s all good.