Well, we’re here.
We went to our friend’s house last night for a hurricane party (basically a potluck dinner!)—something that’s a bit of a ritual, and which actually has been good luck for us as we don’t get hit with much of the expected weather. By the time we were leaving around 8pm, the storm had already been downgraded to a Cat 2 from a Cat 3, so that was good news.
If you hadn’t heard a hurricane was coming, you’d probably not even have noticed—there was just some light rain and a little bit of wind. By the time we went to bed around 11:30, we could hear it getting a bit busier, though some of that might just have been since we didn’t have the TV on anymore. 🙂
I woke up about 3am to go to the bathroom and it was definitely more fierce and I slept fitfully until 5:30 when the power went off (at which time Tom had to get up and turn off all the UPS backup units because they beep to let you know they’re using internal power—we had thought about turning them off before we went to bed, but we really didn’t think we’d lose power), and then I didn’t get much sleep until we got up at 8 (when we both woke up with a start with a huge blast of wind that shook the house).
Owen was a little cranky because he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t watch his shows or play with his puzzles (iPad), so we tried to explain that the big wind and big rain made things broken. He had his snack as normal and I tried to keep him occupied with his train set, some puzzles, and a few new toys. He told us when he was ready for breakfast and he had a normal breakfast (PB&J and yogurt!), played some more, and then went down for his nap at his usual time with no problem.
Tom wasn’t feeling well and had a major headache so he was already napping when I came in after putting Owen down. About 15 minutes later—after I had JUST fallen asleep—the power came back on (noon) and got us excited…except, of course, it woke us up from our naps because the house alarm was beeping an annoying “I’m ready again” beep and one of the UPS units upstairs was beeping. By the time we got them both fixed, the power was off again. I had just fallen asleep AGAIN when Tom’s cell got a text—which beeped twice because he didn’t look at it—and he was sleeping so didn’t even hear it (and hadn’t turned it off after the last beep which woke me up—GRR). So when the power came back on at 1pm, I had to go down and reset the alarm again…and my shot at napping was over since I had been awoken three times. Tom and Owen had no problems with their naps.
So for the rest of the afternoon we just kept our fingers crossed that we didn’t lose power again…and that the cable stayed intact (I was actually surprised it was up and running). We have a small tree blown over across the street and tons of leaves and small twigs around the yard but not anything I’d consider actual damage. The only thing somewhat “damaged” was when the screen came off our sliding screen door.
We did post this photo to Facebook about our damage… :p
We haven’t even really seemed to get that much rain—probably because it was coming down slow enough that the system could handle it (usually when we get a thunderstorm deluge, the drains back up and the streets start to flood—but we didn’t even see that). The rain and wind mostly tapered off before dinner.
A surprising thing? Maggie, our scaredy cat little dog who trembles at the mere thought of rain? She apparently can sense that there’s no thunder with this system and is pretty damn calm. She even went out twice to pee!
The best thing? Other than our house is still standing with no damage…we can return the $800 generator! WOOHOO!