The trials and tribulations of Hurricane Irene

I will say that this blog could have been a lot worse, especially if baby Bree decided to be born late. I can't imagine being in the hospital or giving birth during this event. For the weekend of August 27, much of the East Coast was bracing for Hurricane Irene to hit land. We were, ironically, in the same boat. Never would I have imagined that we'd have to deal with natural disasters other than blizzards living up here in Connecticut, but apparently I was wrong as just a few days before Irene hit an earthquake shook Virginia and Maryland, which send shocks up as north as Connecticut and Rhode Island (Jason felt it at work, Bree and I did not). So anyway, we were to brace for Irene Saturday August 27th into early morning Sunday August 28th. And sure enough at around 8am on Sunday the 28th Jason woke up to our room being in the dark. No lights, no baby monitor, no power. This is the way it stayed for 95 hours!!! Thankfully, Irene wasn't as strong as was previously predicted, but she still managed to do a number on Connecticut as a large amount of transformers and power lines were taken down by fallen trees and branches. Thankfully we still had hot water so we were able to take showers during those 4 days. And thankfully, Bree is a pretty mild-mannered little baby or else the whole Hurricane Irene experience would have been so much worse. We did not sustain any damage to our property, but a house and car in our neighborhood wasn't so lucky. We also had trees come down next to our community basketball court. A huge tree came down on our road next to Main Street causing many of our stores and restaurants to be without power as well. On the first day back to work, Jason found out that Glastonbury was 97% without power. The next day the number changed to 87% then to 76%, and finally to 50%. We, of course, were part of the 50% without power, but our power came on shortly after that! I honestly don't think Bree noticed any difference what-so-ever. It was only Jason and I who were inconvenienced as we fed Bree during the night under a camping headlight. We took several walks around the neighborhood as our home became pretty dark by 7pm. We watched repeats of the TV show Felicity on our laptop, but by 2 1/2 episodes, the laptop battery ran out. Jason took our electronics to work to charge (cell phones, laptop, etc). Dinners came from near by restaurants which had power and lunches were PB&J sandwiches for me. We had our fridge and freezer stocked with 16 pound ice bags, which thankfully kept everything pretty cold as we only had to throw away a small amount of food once the power returned. So in Bree's short life, she has been threw three natural disasters (if you count my pregnancy) to include blizzards, an earthquake, and a hurricane. Who knew?!