Survival

We are doing pretty well here. I am actually updating from home. We returned home early Sunday morning. As we got closer to home things were very ominous. There were more and more fallen trees, the streets were covered with leaves and limbs, the power lines were just mangled, and people were waiting in hours long lines for things like gas and generators.

As we drove down our street it looked like the site of a bomb explosion. The street was covered in inches of debris. Every one of my neighbors had large trees down in their yards. One neighbor has one on his garage. We had huge piles of limbs and leaves. We changed clothes and got to work....it took 3 solid days of cutting, raking, sweeping, and mowing to clear our yard up.

I can't complain though. The only damage we have suffered is one limb that was in our roof like a dart. I have a perfect 4 or 5 inch hole in my roof where it landed...just like a cookie cutter cut out the hole. The weather is beautiful though. We have been outside working along with our neighbors. There is a strong sense of community going on at the moment. Neighbors are helping neighbors and checking on everyone.

All of our needs are met for now. We have a generator that we are running for a few hours a day to keep our deep freeze frozen. I have a gas stove and hot water heater, and we have a well too. As long as we run the generator we have nice hot showers and all of the water we need. I can even wash clothes in the washing machine, but we are hanging them out on the line to dry. We don't expect to get power back for at least another week(optimistically). There is major damage to the power lines in our area....there is one line almost down on the street just a few houses down from us. Cell phones are working, but coverage is very spotty.

This evening we heard a sound we almost didn't recognize because we hadn't heard it in so long. Our home phone rang! It took us a few minutes to realize that that meant that the internet was working too.....YAHOOOOO!! So 20 minutes later here I am.....running the computer on the generator.

I have pictures we took on Steven's cell phone, so as soon as I figure out how to get them on the computer I will post them.

Take care!!