Monday, August 29, 2011

Preparedness Pays Off

Before Irene arrived, I wrote a post about how we were preparing for her wrath.  I have never been so glad I prepped for something in my life. 


(Following paragraph reposted from my other blog, Chex in the City.)


We decided against leaving, despite my parents' "invitation" (I think they were using Irene as an excuse to see Elliott).  Around 10pm on Saturday, I deeply regretted that decision.  The lights in our parking lot were out, so we couldn't see what was going on.  Our electricity stayed on (thank God), so at least we had the internet for information.  At about quarter to 2, just as I was drifting off to sleep in the living room, a strange alarm started sounding.  I woke Jason, who grabbed Elliott, and I attempted to wrangle Barney into his carrier, with no success.  Jason and I switched "dependents," and I got Elliott into his car seat.  I put my shoes on, grabbed the car keys and prepared to leave.  But hold on...what is this alarm for?  We had already experienced tornado warnings, so do we go to the basement, or was this flooding, in which case we should probably just chill on the 2nd floor.  Or, perhaps, was it a fire and if so, where do we go in this storm during a fire?  I looked out in the hall.  No one was leaving their apartments.  Hmm.  Jason finally got Barney into the carrier, and we pondered our next move.  Jason ran down to the lobby to see if anyone was down there and had more info.  He returned with the report: there was one guy downstairs just as confused as we were.  We headed back to the lobby, evac bag, baby, cat, and diaper bag in tow.  We were totally prepared to leave at any moment because of the storm.  After about 10 minutes in the lobby, where about 3 more sleepy people joined us, the alarm went off.  The firemen, who responded to the alarm, believed it was tripped by the weather.  Great.  So much for sleep. 


Jason and I spent the rest of the night watching Parks and Recreation on Netflix.  Elliott was pretty unfazed about the whole thing, and Barney just stayed close the rest of the day.  Around 4am, the storm calmed and we decided to go back to sleep.  In the light of day, we discovered that Evil Tree, whose branch had totaled my parents' car in April, had bit the dust, damaging nothing more than the fence it was adjacent to.  The tree was dead, or dying, so it's not surprising that it went.  The other trees, while they made us nervous, are very healthy, so they stayed strong.  


Good riddance, Evil Tree.




This week, we are looking forward to calm and beautiful weather, craft nights, getting back to work (La Salle cancelled Monday and Tuesday classes, so that won't be until Wednesday), and Labor Day weekend.  Elliott will get to meet his Great-Grandma Bebe, see Oma and Pappy again (my grandparents), as well as Grandpa Marc, Grandma Tay-Tay, Nana, and Grandpa Dave.  There might be some other family and friends involved, since this is our first trip "home" since he was born.  :)


How did you "weather" Irene?  We hope you stayed safe and dry.  


- J & M.  

2 comments:

  1. We had pre-storm planned to visit Chris' family in Lancaster and we stuck to it. I'm glad we did because nothing happened in our neighborhood with the storm. We would have just been stuck inside for the weekend.

    I have off these two days to, but I'm ready to get back into my teaching schedule.

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  2. Wait, is Grandma TayTay legit now? YES!

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