Our Experience with Hurricane Sandy

I'm not sure our "harrowing" experience necessarily warrants a post, but for the sake of documenting our life, here is what you get.

It wasn't until the Thursday before (October 25) that I actually heard there was a hurricane headed towards us.
Friday I went to the store to make sure we had extra water and candles.
Saturday I made bread and cooked up a bunch of meat in case we were out of power for very long. My thought was that it would take a lot less energy to reheat and use it then to actually cook.
Sunday we got a list at church with essential emergency items to have on hand. I love my parents. Over the course of a few Christmases they stocked us up on 80% of the items on the list. We filled tubs with water and left them in our bathtub and felt just about as prepared as we could. Bring on the storm.
Monday Matthew went to work, but only for a little bit as they were closing the office at noon. The wind had definitely picked up by then, but nothing very major. By evening, the wind was buffeting the house causing me some anxiety, but again, nothing too traumatic. We lost power at about 9 pm-ish, and figured it was as good a time as any to head to bed. Baby and I slept in the basement as it was a lot quieter down there. Matthew toughed it out upstairs. The noise of the wind didn't bother him nearly as much as it did me and sleeping in a bed sounded infinitely more desirable than sleeping on the floor.

Tuesday morning, even though the storm was a lot closer geographically to us, was calm. By all measures it was done. I couldn't believe it. It took the better part of the day for me to come to terms that our storm was over and we weren't just in the eye of it. We were still without power and Matthew didn't have to go to work, so otherwise it was a nice day off to spend together. We had leftovers that were better served cold than hot and other sundry convenient food to eat. We ate off paper and plastic and had plenty of all basic necessities. Really the only tragedy of the storm was our puzzle. We were working on completing the first fourth of a 24,000 piece puzzle. It was probably about 85% completed when I had the brilliant idea that we could take it upstairs and work on it where we would have more light. It all seemed so reasonable at the time. (I should mention that just that fourth of the puzzle was about 3.5' x 5'. It's going to be a massive puzzle.) We almost got it halfway up the stairs before two thirds of it crumbled to the floor. It was pretty heart-wrenching. We brought what was left with the completed part back down the stairs and left the fallen pieces where they lay, too dejected to do anything with them.

For the rest of the day, we read, played games, and cooed at baby. The next day, when we were still without power, I made the decision to take little Zachary and drive to my parent's house in VA letting Matthew fend for himself at home. Thankfully he was able to get a shower, albeit cold, at work, charge his phone and have something to do with himself. I spent the next several days, including Halloween and my nephews last high school football game, with my family. The power was back on sometime that Wednesday, but it gave me a good excuse to spend time foisting my child on eager family members for a few days.