Last Night's Blog

I blogged by candlelight last night:

The Midwest is underwater. At about 3:30 this afternoon a storm came through that took our power out, thus causing our sump pump to stop moving the downpour of rain away from our house. Since it was still daylight they girls played quietly while I checked the pump every 10 minutes and watched the water rise in the well. We watched the storm and Abby sweetly kept telling Nora not to be scared of the crashing thunder and bolts of lightening.
I called Tim at work to tell him that we had an issue, and he immediately kicked into crisis mode (this entails a whole bunch of running around spinning his wheels and yelling “We’re FUCKED!” about every 8-10 minutes). Once he finished up at work he hopped into the “shop truck” (an extremely large quad cab dealimo that is currently parked across my lawn) and headed off to Costco to buy a generator. Apparently he also browsed Costco with his dad, picking up some random things which was kind of funny, but not really as the water was pouring from the sump pump well at this point.
After some puddle jumping between bursts of storms, a dinner of peanut butter sandwiches and ‘berry fingers’ (raspberries lovingly place on the tip of each finger), and a bath by lantern light, I tucked the ladies into their warm little beds (why does air not flow through my house? Seriously, within 10 minutes of the power being off the house went from being 76 degrees to 83 and climbing-oy!).
Tim finally came home in a fit of vulgarity about traffic, the gas station (gas needed for the generator), and the storm. I helped him put this generator together and tried to stay out of the way as he fluttered around the house seeing where there was power (our circuits are kind of screwy). Once we go the sump pump working I started mopping the 2 inches of water down the drain in the basement.
While I was doing that I kept thinking of all the people who didn’t have generators and who had to watch their basements flood and just listen to the recorded message from ComEd saying that millions of people were without power, and that it could be days before it was restored in our area. Tim then came down stairs and asked me how it felt to be the only house in the neighborhood with power. I didn’t tell him that I thought it was kind of a shitty feeling. Sure, we’re lucky that nothing has been damaged and we are (so far) coming out of this with a bunch of wet towels and a new generator, but what about the lady around the corner who is alone right now because her husband is over dying on the cancer floor at Northwest Community? What about the family across the street and a few houses down with the new baby? What are they up to? Maybe they are smarter than us and have a sump pump back up.
In the wake of this flood, I am hosting a party tomorrow night here at our house. I have been grousing about this for a while (it is a couples shower for bridezilla and her death metal lovin’ groom- I only know 6 of the 20 scheduled attendees), and I am marginally unprepared, but I was kind of getting into it while I was at the grocery store today. When the power went out my house was clean and ready to go, the food was in the fridge waiting to be prepared, and I had tomorrow all mapped out to pull this thing off. Now my house is covered in sloppy foot prints and the general crap that has been shuffled around during this “crisis”. Can I cancel it if we don’t have power by noon tomorrow?


So my update is this....we have limited power with this generator, and more storms are headed our way. We got 4.1 inches of rain in a matter of 2 hours with 50+ mph wind. It looks like a war zone outside, so the girls and I are going to breakfast to check it all out.
I am still on the fence about this party. I am kind of ready to do it in the face of adversity, but I also know that I could totally cancel and no one would notice. If I thought Tim would roll with it, I would cancel all of our weekend pack up my family and run away to a hotel, but I think that I would have to do that alone (who would watch the generator).