When I named my earlier blog post the other day I’m sure you noticed that I had “normal” in quotes. It seems like things haven’t been “normal” here for quite some time. We had an earthquake, then Hurricane Irene. After Irene we had tropical depression Lee who dropped just as much rain on us as Irene had the week before! Roads are still washed out with gaping swathes where the pavement used to be.

Then we went to Colorado to the cabin. After being home for not quite two weeks we went to New Mexico. Then the big freak October snow storm comes along and dumps 19 inches of snow on our fair township and we are without power for four days. What’s normal about any of that?

Now we are finally feeling like we can settle down to normal New Jersey life again. I’ve been in the West so much lately that I am having a little trouble adjusting. But maybe that’s due to the power outage. It was strange, I have to tell you. But now at least we know what it’s like and that we can survive just fine on our own for a while. Any longer than four days might be pushing the limit. Especially in the dead of winter. If that happens and we know something is coming we’ll be sure and blow up the air bed beforehand so we can sleep downstairs in front of the fire. Just in case ...

Before we left we made sure to get up most of the leaves that had fallen. I’m glad we did because now we have more than ever. Too bad Johnny is in the shop—again. The belt on the deck broke again but this time there was a pulley that was broken as well. So, back to the John Deere hospital Johnny went on Wednesday. He’s due back mid-week but rain is expected by then. I’m sure the leaves will be taken care of eventually, but I hate to see them blanketing and stifling the grass.

This morning we will head off to the farmer’s market at Warwick in search of really good bread for our cheese fondue tonight. The market is looking very sad this year due to all the crop loss with Irene and Lee. All the squash and pumpkins were lost along with the other late season crops. It’s pretty slim pickins’. Usually we would take Mia but it’s pretty chilly out there. We’d have to bundle up for sure. Even our seat heaters and Mia’s adjustable temperature controls wouldn’t make a dent. Maybe we’ll give it a go anyway.

We should get out the chain saw and take care of some huge limbs but I don’t think either one of us feels much like it this weekend. Our beautiful big oak tree in the back yard suffered the most damage. A whole part of the upper trunk broke off plus a huge limb. It’s sad but we can’t see the damage too much from this side of the tree. A few other trees in the front yard lost significant portions of their tops, most of which ended up straddling the fence on neighbor Aileen’s side. Poor trees.

I did so enjoy spending alone time with my in-laws. I’ve never done that before and I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. We kept busy with lots of little drives around the area and eating great Mexican food. I’ll be sharing some photos very soon. We also had a special day where we drove to meet up again with Rick to the tiny town of Cloudcroft at an elevation that equals that of the cabin (over 8,600 feet) where it had snowed the night before. We ate a wonderful lunch sitting by the window watching the fog roll in and blanket everything in soft white and grey. Very magical.

on the way up to Cloudcroft

Rick and I then drove back together, stopping at White Sands (more pics coming of that too!) and Aguirre Spring.

Aguirre Spring is right at the foot of the Organ Mountains, but on the opposite side from the town of Las Cruces. Here are the Organ Mountains as seen from Las Cruces.

And a shot of them with the late afternoon sun on the opposite side.

The following two photos were taken at Aquirre Spring. It’s a beautiful place!

I rambled a lot more in this post than I expected too and was just going to talk a bit. Instead I ended up doing photos of my trip to New Mexico! Oh well. Sometimes it just goes like that. I hope you enjoyed both the rambling and the photos! More coming soon!

OOPS! I almost forgot! Did I ever tell you that my mother-in-law makes THE BEST Chile Rellenos in the world? Yum!!!!!!!

I have this strange urge to run around the house turning on every light and every single thing that is electric. I stood under the shower with hot water pouring out of the shower head for as long as I possibly could this morning. It felt so good to be truly clean again since it was Sunday at 5:00 a.m. when I had last felt that way. It was so nice to get up to a warm house with heat pouring out of the vents!

It really makes you appreciate the things we all take for granted. I’ve read a lot of books and seen many movies where people are struggling to live in a post apocalyptic world, and believe me, it felt that way to us this week. It makes you wonder what it would be like if something cataclismic did happen to our world and there was no longer any power, no gasoline to run our cars, no food being delivered to the grocery stores.

Yesterday when Rick got home from work he was very excited to see a utility crew working on our problem. We walked down to take a look. Lots of activity!

Several neighbors had gathered to watch. One neighbor who lives near where the trees fell across the road said that they saw the flash as power was lost. He also said he heard at the sound of tires spinning and took the flashlight out to see. The trees had crushed a car as they came down! The person in the car walked away unscathed. I think it must have been their lucky day!

We were optimistic even after we asked one of the crew if this meant our power would be back on shortly. He said non-committally “depends on where you live.” Both Rick and I pointed back up our road and he just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

One of our neighbors at the end of the road had just bought a brand new generator and it was chugging away. The opened box was still in his driveway. Rick had brought home a generator too on loan from someone at work. We knew this would guarantee that our power would come back on. It just had to!

When we got back to the house we checked the web site for Rockland Electric once again. It said we could expect to be back on the grid by 6:00 p.m. But 6:00 p.m. came and went with no change. We cooked by lamp light for what we hoped was the last time, then settled in by the wood stove for some good conversation.

You know how the story ends, so I’ll stop here!

What a year this has been for weather!

At 9:05 p.m. I sat by the wood stove. I had just let the dogs out. I heard water trickling and didn’t think too much of it because Rick had just taken a bowl of hot water upstairs to wash with. I went to let the dogs in and noticed that the light in the garage was on.

Whoa… light? That trickle of water? The kitchen faucet that I guess must have been left on.

Hurrah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let there be light.

And electricity.

And heat.

And cable. (maybe?)

And wireless internet.

And love.

Giving thanks to the power Gods tonight.

GOOD NIGHT!


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I think this might be the root of our problem:















Our street is the only one accessible because of this “minor” problem! It’s been like this for days now. The new estimate for us having power has now been moved to Thursday sometime. Until I see them working on this I won’t get my hopes up too much. This scene is played out all over the county.

Yesterday I heated water on the wood stove and washed my hair and took a sponge bath. Rick went to work and showered there (lucky man!) I suppose I could go down and take one too but it’s a long way and the traffic is not good because so many roads are closed. If I had a job I would probably take advantage of the public showers but no one sees me during the day except the cats and dogs anyway.

It’s hard to imagine in my little post apocalyptic bubble, but just a few miles down the road life is going on like normal. People have power, the ShopRite is open and restocking all their frozen goods. I went there yesterday just to get out of the house and then drove around to charge my iPad! I will probably do the same today.

Here are a few scenes from around the house.

Any ideas I may have once had about losing power being romantic and exciting went out the window on the second day.


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The parking lot at the ShopRite.

I wrote this by hand earlier today to save my iPad charge and am now typing it in.

Well, at least from a weather perspective our little town was put on the map for a brief period of time. And we missed it. I am still bummed about that. All we get is the aftermath and none of the excitement and fun of watching that much snow come down in a short period of time. I’m not sure how much snow we actually got here at the house because it was melted quite a bit by the time we got home around 5:30 p.m. last night. My guess is around 15 inches of wet, heavy snow.

Here I sit cozy by the wood stove in the sun room where there is enough late afternoon light to write by. Still no power today. I am writing by hand instead of typing and it’s kind of a pain.

This morning we went to retrieve the dogs as early as possible. On our way, we noticed that the main road further up from the turn off to our street was closed off by a few traffic cones and a hand-written sign that said “lines + trees down.” Sure enough, we could see the line lying across the road (probably the cause of our power outage).

We found the McDonald’s open with power and pulled in for some much needed coffee and a bite of fast food breakfast. The ShopRite (pictured above) had power but was not open. The Walgreen’s was open and we bought some “D” batteries for the lanterns there. On the way to get the dogs we saw many trees on Union Valley Road that were lying across the power lines, barely being held back. One tree was completely across the road, suspended miraculously.







When we got home we took stock of what we had and what we might need before the shelves of the grocery stores were laid bare. We quickly realized after last night’s splurge on dinner of spaghetti where we dirtied a huge array of dishes and pots that we would have to curb our enthusiasm for the time being and cook simpler meals that didn’t require a huge amount of cooking or clean-up.

Paper plates and bottled water for first on the list and not necessarily in that order. Pork chops were added to the list to compliment our can of baked beans already sitting in the pantry as well as hot dogs and good old almost-prepared macaroni & cheese. More batteries. A percolator for making coffee (found at Bed, Bath & Beyond). Ground coffee instead of the beans we already had but could not use because we had no way of grinding them.

It’s amazing how much our daily lives lives depend on flipping that switch for electricity. Just about everything in our house is run by electricity.

Of course, the first thing is that there is no light in the darkness of night. I roam the hallways of my house, my oil lamp raised high in one hand like some character out of a Jane Austen novel. (Where are you Mr. Rochester?) We have three battery-powered lanterns, four old-fashioned oil lamps for which we bought oil today, and various candles. The light from the wood stove provides a cozy ambiance. We are living in just one area of the house. The rest is pretty chilly.

Without electricity there is also NO WATER. Think about it. Without water there is no flushing of toilets, no showers or bathing, no washing of dishes. Conservation is a must since we only have a few large many-galloned jugs that we filled up with water for Hurricane Irene. We filled as many pails and an empty semi-clean garbage can with snow for flushing the toilets with. We brought out coolers and packed them with snow for keeping the thawed meats cool and milk. The coolers are out on the deck where it will reach near freezing tonight.

With our rapidly thawing fridge and freezer we will try to use up the chicken breasts, but the rest will have to be thrown out, like the frozen pizzas and any ice cream. Tonight we will fire up the charcoal grill and do chicken breasts with thawed-out-frozen corn. We bought Black & Whites (an Eastern thing) at the store, but instead of the traditional black and white frosting, in honor of Halloween (of which we have more of the trick than the treat), the cookies are iced in Black & Orange.







And a peek at our high-tech cooling devices for water and wine.














And, our method for melting snow for boiling our thawed corn that was already in a boiling bag. Pretty ingenious I must say.





Our power is due back on possibly midnight on Wednesday so we still have two more days of survival-house-living to contend with. I need to find a way to wash my hair. We have a kettle on the wood stove heating with water to take a “sponge bath” with tonight, but that’s about it.

It’s not really like living at our cabin because there we would not be without electricity unless the sun gave out and there was no wind. Neither scenario is likely at the cabin.

A few shots from the yard today. eBay likes to go out in the snow, so we let her, knowing that she will soon be inside!

Okay, Elizabeth. Thanks for bringing some humor to our situation. Now you have a few pics you can click on!

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