Survival Mode

I used to joke that when Loran travelled for work, the girls and I would be in survival mode. I was only partially joking when Lily was a baby and Ella a toddler. But, we eventually found our groove and did okay. That didn’t mean that it was always smooth sailing. There would be typical disasters while he was gone: snowstorms, flooded basements, sick kids, sick me…but for the most part, we did fine.

I also use his absence to do larger projects. Whether I’m renovating, building something, destructing something, organizing something, or redecorating something, Loran never really knows what he’s coming home to.

A few weeks ago, Loran had to take a trip to Japan with a bookend trip to Chicago to attend a conference. We were doing pretty good. I did come down with the cold that the girls had passed to one another, but took some Tylenol and powered through. I managed to convince my achy body to paint our bathroom, and finished the final decorating touches a day before Loran’s Friday arrival. The only thing I hadn’t finished by Thursday afternoon were the curtains. I decided I would finish those on Friday so the girls and I celebrated by going out to dinner at the “Pasketti and Neatballs” store late Thursday afternoon.

Completely finished room, with curtains.

After returning from the restaurant, I knew there were some storms headed our way. The girls were pretty wound up, so I got them ready for bed and set them up with a movie. I was hoping to get them relaxed enough that they’d fall asleep before it started thundering loud enough to bother them. As they were watching their movie, I turned on a few lights to lessen the effect of the lightening in the distance. Once their movie was done, I ushered them towards bed, speeding through stories, turning on some relaxing music, but I was a little too late. The storm was really starting to kick up. The girls were nervous. I promised them I would keep them safe. Once they were tucked in, I turned on the weather to see giant splotches of red and purple moving right towards us. Words like “take cover” and “seek shelter” were being thrown out by the meteorologists. My phone was exploding with severe storm warnings and tornado watches. The lightening and thunder wasn’t really the issue, so much as the wind. Once that kicked up, I started to get nervous.

I have our emergency supplies in our master closet. It’s centrally located in our house, no windows, spacious, filled with soft things. I was actually getting nervous enough that I got the girls out of bed and had them go in the laundry room. I ripped comforters off of beds and grabbed flashlights. Plugged my phone in, and got us comfy in the laundry room. Why not the master closet? To get to the master closet, we would have had to pass three large windows in the living room facing the backyard. The wind was so high, I didn’t trust those windows not to shatter. We hunkered down in the little laundry room while the wind howled outside. Wedged between a wall and the washer/dryer. I looked at the heavy detergent boxes lined up on the shelves and the large doll houses I keep up on high shelves when they aren’t being played with. My head hurt just looking at them. The lights flickered and I texted between Loran and the neighbors, getting updates as to whose fences/trees were down. Loran was in Chicago and was able to tune into our local new station via his computer and watch the reports for us. Eventually, our power did go out. The girls took all of this in stride. Mostly because I wasn’t freaking out. The only reason I wasn’t freaking out was because I was in contact with others, and had to be strong for the girls. We laughed and joked and when the power went out, we switched on flashlights and Twilight Turtles that bathed us in starlight. We made up stories about princesses in castles, and eventually, Ella fell asleep. There were two times that I came close to laying on top of the girls

Loran let us know that the worst seemed to have passed. After 45 minutes in the laundry room, I cautiously peeked out the door, I felt a little like Dorothy. Everything was dark, dark, dark. I helped Lily get situated in bed, with flashlights. Carried Ella into bed. Left some glow sticks through the house to illuminate a path between the girls’ room and the master bedroom. Then I started to assess and damages. Reports from neighbors had fences down, trees down, roofs and windows leaking, trampolines MIA, missing shingles and some broken windows. We were okay. No leaks, all shingles intact, fences up. I cautiously opened the garage door, expecting to see the big garage doors blown in, but they were standing strong. Our only problem was a tree that was leaning.

Within an hour of emerging from the laundry room, it was a completely clear, moonlit night. I crawled into bed at midnight. The power came on around 2am, I knew this because our overhead light in the bedroom came on. I popped out of bed, excited that our power outage only lasted a couple of hours, knowing that 60,000-some people were out of power when I went to bed. And as suddenly as it blinked on, it was gone. Five minutes later we were back into darkness.

Once morning came, we had one patio chair that had fallen off of the patio and our big, heavy grill came precariously close to going off the patio. We still had no power, so without showers we hung close to home. I manually lit the stove so I could boil water to make coffee (priorities). The girls kept asking to open the fridge for food, wanted to watch tv, and would have minor freak outs when they would flip the switch in their bathroom and no light would turn on. I had a terrible itch to finish the bathroom curtains, the only missing piece. And couldn’t. I contemplated stapling them… Thankfully, it wasn’t terribly hot, *only* in the high 80s. Morale was pretty low. We all ended up taking almost a two hour nap. Finally, the power turned on at 4:30pm for good, 18.5 hours after it went out. I quickly checked the temps of the refrigerator/freezer and deep freeze. The fridge was the only item where the temps rose slightly out of my comfort range. I filled three trash bags of food. Always a bit disheartening.

Loran arrived home shortly after the power came back. His flight was filled with business travellers who were feeling guilty about being out of town for the storm. The girls were eager to tell Loran all about the storm. Loran was eager to purchase a generator and powerful lanterns, thereby ensuring we’re never without power again. A few days later, with a brand new, shiny generator, we broke it in by hosting a ‘Generator Party’ in our driveway, where we invited the neighbors and made margaritas using our blender powered by the generator. Because, why not? The brilliance behind this? If Loran’s out of town and I can’t start the generator, now there’s a whole posse of neighbors who know exactly how our generator works! Brilliant!