The Storm

Getting hotter. That portable DVD player SAVED us during the power outage, since it was too hot to let Charlotte play outside. And for the life of me, I can't remember why the child is wearing socks in that heat. She must have insisted on them or something. 

Look at those cute little ringlets! It took MAJOR humidity for us to realize that Charlotte's hair can automatically coil up into little-girl curls. Who knew?

Monopoly by candlelight. Oh my goodness, I'm getting too hot just looking at this photo and remembering that night.

Playing Monopoly, with nighttime humidity in full swing. Obviously.

The morning we got our power back. A certain little someone decided we were the type of family that co-sleeps. We're not.

Ugh. We had a storm. It knocked out the power. During a heat wave. On the East Coast (translation for West Coasters: heat plus HUMIDITY). For 52 hours.

Forgive the length of this post. I had A LOT of time to draft this sucker.

On Friday night, after a record-setting day where temperatures hit 102 degrees and, with the humidity, the heat index reached 112 degrees, we settled in for a frozen pizza and an episode of Friday Night Lights. We learned a huge strip of storms was heading straight for us, so around 10:00, we started bringing in outdoor furniture cushions. The air was so thick, I felt like we could swim through it. I could barely breathe, it was so moisture-rich. Even at this late, dark hour, the heat index was over 100 degrees. “Thank goodness for air conditioning,” I joked.

Hardy-har-har.

The storms approached us kind of like a C, so we saw lightning—constant lightning—encroach from about three directions. Well, we’re no strangers to summer thunderstorms, including the doozy from 2 years ago in which, out of nowhere, dark clouds suddenly swooped in frighteningly low like Voldemort on the hunt for Harry Potter, then mercilessly slammed our area.

So, we waited for the storm. Seemingly out of nowhere, our power went out. This was odd—the storm hadn’t seemed to arrive yet. All of a sudden, a huge gust of wind hit—we later learned it was around 92 miles per hour. It had arrived. Deck furniture zipped around as though possessed—like a freaky part of a haunted house—until each piece got lodged and stuck somewhere, or smashed against the house. Charlotte’s plastic water table—her Ariel mermaid doll included—went flying. Post-cap lights on the deck were ripped off (Chris’s fault—he hadn’t sealed them on). And our neighbor’s enormous wooden play set was LIFTED off the ground, thrown back about 10 feet, and demolished upon coming back down to earth.

It was at this point that Chris thought he should go outside and save the super heavy furniture umbrella and stand from toppling over.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “No, no, no.”

“But it might crash onto the deck and damage it!” Chris said.

“I don’t care!” I replied. “You are worth more than a thousand decks! Flying debris is how people get killed in storms like these. I’m not kidding—don’t you DARE go outside.”  Never mind the constant lightning that lit up our entire neighborhood like it was high noon.

Chris sighed and complied, thank goodness. (And yes, the umbrella did indeed blow over. It crashed onto the outdoor table, not the deck railing.)

The wind was incredible, and we got 1.5 inches of rain in a half hour (you can thank Chris’s super nerdy weather station in the backyard for that little tidbit of information). We later learned that this was not a thunderstorm, as we had thought. It was a “land hurricane,” often referred to as a derecho, and this sucker was categorized as a “super” derecho. In short, derechos cook up like tornados, sort of out of nowhere (unlike cold or warm fronts that generate our typical East Coast thunderstorms). Despite thinking this was a thunderstorm, we knew something was weird about this one. The thunder, though rumbling, was not hugely loud, the wind was unlike anything we had seen before, and the lightning was absolutely constant. It practically looked like daytime—perhaps daytime during Armageddon, but daytime nonetheless. So, there we were, unknowingly watching a land hurricane, idiotically standing next to rattling windows.

The storm raged for about 30 minutes then passed. We settled into an overly warm night, though the storm had temporarily cooled things a little (though the humidity was still VERY high). Fortunately, our house did a good job holding in the formerly air-conditioned air. Overall, not a rough night.

The next morning, Charlotte burst into our room at 6:00 a.m. Still no power. This was a tad surprising—I mean, we didn’t even lose power with Hurricane Irene! Charlotte wanted to watch cartoons, which was impossible without power, so I told her the TV was broken. “Oh. Okay,” she said, and busied herself building a tower with blocks.

Chris, like every other dude in the neighborhood, went outside to assess the damage and compare stories on how the wind must have reached AT LEAST 4,824 miles per hour, how close the lightning struck, and so on. Chris hunted down and got all the outdoor furniture back in place before I could take a picture of the upheaval. Sigh. It’s like he doesn’t know I blog about this sort of crap.

In the meantime, Chris saw a neighbor with ice. Apparently the grocery store the next town over was operating with generators and had ice. It was still very early, so thinking we had a shot at ice, our family jumped into the car and zipped on over.

Both our cars’ gas tanks were close to empty, which had me worried. I didn’t want to get stranded at home, away from AC, because of gas. Miraculously, we found an area with power and a gas station. We waited in line for awhile, but we filled the tank with gas!

In the car, we were able to hear the news that a couple million people were without power, which could be out for days. Obviously, the current heat wave the biggest concern, because of lack of air conditioning.  I was apprehensive, but now that we had gas, and it’s not like the supply chain was screwed up (like snow or something), we could reasonably count on being able to get all the gas we needed, which meant we had the freedom to drive wherever we needed to go. The store ended up being out of ice, but oh well. We had gas.

Lots of folks in our neighborhood high-tailed it out of town, heading to families’ houses or hotels. Seeing as how our closest family dwells in Nevada, and the fact that our small town’s utility provider has a MUCH faster track record than the rest of Maryland’s, we were optimistic that we’d get power back and decided to stick it out. Besides, we had a LOT of food to get through in the fridge and freezers.

After a trip to the playground before it got too hot, we put Charlotte down for an early nap, before the house became too warm for her to sleep. Situations like this tend to make me fear that our house will, without great vigilance, descend to the chaos and grime level of the New Orleans Convention Center during Hurricane Katrina, so I (hand) washed all the dishes, sanitized countertops, and explained to Chris for the billionth time to use PAPER TOWELS instead of cloth ones to wipe up spills, seeing as how I had no way to do laundry. Amazingly, I had thought to charge the Swiffer the night before (which I never do), so I was able to clean the floors. I had also done a big load of laundry on Friday night, which again was something I never, ever do on Friday nights. So, domestically, we were in pretty good shape.

Once my house was in frighteningly perfect condition, short of a lot of food preparing to spoil, I realized I had practically nothing to do. I couldn’t do laundry, work on my manuscript, watch TV, screw around on Facebook, or even call my folks (no cell signal and 3G totally wiped out). Charlotte continued to nap, so Chris took the opportunity to read his entire Wall Street Journal, and I finished my book club book! You don’t realize how much access to the outside world takes up your time until you lose it.

In the meantime, the town informed us that strict water restrictions were in place, as the water filtration system was down, and officials drove around monitoring the prohibition on outdoor water use. This was fine by me—maybe it was the heat, but I felt that any asshole selfish enough to water his or her lawn while the town’s water supply was dangerously low deserved to be shot.

When Charlotte woke up, we headed to the closest city, thrilled they had power. We meandered through Target, soaking up the air conditioning and shopping. Chris then had the brilliant idea to hit a nearby grocery store off the beaten path, hoping they had ice. It worked! They had ice! We bought three bags, plus some new milk to replace that which had already spoiled.

Once we got home, we started to realize that we were just getting started with the heat. The hours from about 5:00 p.m. to midnight proved to be the most miserable. I gave Charlotte a loooooooong, cool bubble bath to cool her down, which she thought was super fun. I dressed her in only a diaper, and at about 7:00, cringing the whole time, I put her to bed. I felt terrible about it—the upstairs was clocking in around 85 degrees, but downstairs was super bright with evening sun. She’d never, ever sleep down there. So, in her own room she went to bed. I checked on her a couple times as Chris BBQ’d the best burgers ever (we had a lot of meat to use up) and grilled some veggies. After dinner, I checked on Charlotte again and was horrified to find her absolutely soaking wet. Her room was now about 90 degrees, plus humid from the evening humidity. I wrapped her in a blanket, which I had to do to carry her downstairs because she was so slippery, spread her out on the couch where I had placed some cotton sheets, and fanned her with a magazine until her hair started to dry.

I’m not sure if we were right or wrong in putting her to bed in her room. She got an hour and a half of sleep she wouldn’t have otherwise gotten, of this I am sure. But ugh, finding her like that? Not fun.

Charlotte was groggy enough that she smoothly transitioned to sleeping on the couch, so Chris and I started a hot, sticky, candlelit game of Monopoly in the dining room. I mean, what else were we going to do? (Okay, there’s one obvious other thing we could have done, but have I mentioned how hot and HUMID it was?)

The nighttime humidity was thick in the house, causing me endless worry over the state of my precious piano. Pianos and humidity are not friends. Eventually, we called the Monopoly game. We were just too hot to concentrate on dice rolling and property-buying.

As I went into the candlelit kitchen to obtain my billionth bottle of water, I saw a cute little grinning head peeking out from behind the couch cushions. Crap. The kid was up.

I made up a second bed on the couch (it’s a sectional, so there was plenty of room), as I intended to sleep with Charlotte downstairs. Upstairs was just MISERABLE, and I wasn’t willing to leave her alone anyway. Around 11:00 or so, Chris opened the windows, which brought the humidity up a couple notches but the temperature outside was a couple degrees cooler, plus there was the tiniest possibility for a slow-moving breeze. Charlotte was wired, too hot and antsy to sleep, and was eventually hopscotching along the couch cushions. We decided extenuating circumstances meant we didn’t have to be terribly good parents, so we plopped her in front of her portable DVD player, so she’d be STILL and hopefully doze off.

I started to doze while still on the couch. Around midnight, I vaguely remember Chris taking our child upstairs, which I hoped meant that upstairs had cooled a little bit. I was too tired to follow and stayed put. I slept surprisingly well, considering the sauna I was sleeping in, and woke up for good around 6:00 a.m., with a hell of a crick in my neck and a baby thrashing about in my belly.

I tiptoed upstairs, a bit surprised to see Charlotte’s room lit up with sunlight (the shades were up because the windows were opened), but I had heard no sound from her. I slipped into our bedroom, my achy body dying for my precious TempurPedic bed, and I stopped in my tracks, my heart swelling with love. There in our bed, in the exact same sleeping position, were my husband and daughter totally conked out, one clad in just boxers, the other in just a diaper. They looked as identical as a 30-year-old man and a 2-and-a-half-year-old little girl could possibly look. Charlotte was in the middle of the bed, so I snuck in on my side, and attempted to doze. A little bit later, she stirred, popped up, saw me, grinned, and laid down on top of me. Fortunately, it only took her about 30 seconds to realize that it was way too hot for cuddling.

That morning (Sunday), we were hot and cranky, trying to not throttle each other. Chris was in desperate need of “real” coffee (the Starbucks Via wasn’t cutting it for him), so I sent him and Charlotte off to a Starbucks 45 minutes away, instructing him to sweeten up and treat his daughter to whatever the heck struck her fancy in the display case. I took the opportunity to eat breakfast in peace, take a cool shower and rejoin the human race (including make-up), read a little, start this blog post, and enjoy not chasing Charlotte around. Chris returned in a much better mood than before, what with a good dose of caffeine and a couple hours of air conditioning under his belt. Charlotte (who was short on sleep) had drifted off during the drive home, so she went straight down for another early nap.

Post-nap, we went to the closest mall, which is a truly crappy mall, but it had air conditioning. The highlight was probably sharing a strawberry sundae with Charlotte. She had never had something quite like a strawberry sundae before, so you can imagine her joy.

On the way home, we stopped for roadwork around a fallen power line (a tree had fallen on it), which feeds our town. The flagger dude—in a crew sent down from New Jersey—explained they were just finishing up and that our town should have power within a half hour. JOY! Our town’s Facebook page corroborated this tale, saying some official person had just given the green light for the Jersey crew to turn on the power.

Back at our steamy house, I held off on cobbling together a dinner for Charlotte, wanting to wait until I had a microwave to use. I separated laundry, ready to play major catch-up in my domestic duties. We waited. And waited. And waited.

Chris, a tad worried and probably looking for an excuse to plop his sopping self in the air-conditioned car, drove off to see the rest of the town. When he FINALLY got back (I have no clue what took so long—our town doesn’t even have a stoplight), he reported that only part of the town (the majority of the town, but still) had power. He had driven down where he thought the lines fed our neighborhood—a rural, not-at-all-dense area, and said trees were fallen on lines. Who knew how long we’d continue to be without power? The utility company said it could be 5 more minutes or 5 more days. Nobody knew.

Well, at this point I cracked. I was SO EFFING HOT, so tired of being hot, and overwhelmed with the thought of another steamy night, especially with Charlotte. I shed about 3 quick tears, then Charlotte ran through, screaming like a banshee. “See, copy your daughter,” Chris said. “She’s not upset.”

“Charlotte didn’t think she was 30 minutes away from POWER!” I cried. But it was time to suck it up. I gave Charlotte another cold bubble bath. Chris, meanwhile, realized that the outlet in our car MIGHT be able to provide enough power to blow up our two Aerobeds. If he could pull that off, we’d have the option of sleeping in our comparatively cool, unfinished basement. “Try it,” I commanded. What could it hurt?

Miraculously, it worked. I set up a bed in the office—Charlotte’s room was already 90 degrees—around her bedtime, since I knew putting her in the dark basement from the get-go would scare her to freaking death. Well, Charlotte was absolutely in a tizz about being left in the office and hysterical. It was too hot to let her get so worked up, so I asked her if she wanted to sleep on the couch instead. “Yeah,” she blubbered. She promised she’d stay put.

I doubted her, but what the hell. Chris made up the couch while I fanned her and sang songs to get her to calm down and, more importantly, COOL down. Well, Charlotte didn’t sleep, but bless her heart, she stayed on the couch while Chris and I crankily ate the steaks he had rescued from our defrosting freezer and BBQ’d outside.

We cleaned the kitchen, Charlotte watching all the while but not daring to move from the couch, and finally it was dark and there was nothing to do but go to bed.

Charlotte, once again, was up WAY past her bedtime. I carried her downstairs to the basement, where Chris had swept the floor and set up the beds. I set up four flickering candles (fake—I don’t do open flames with toddlers) on the floor around the beds. It almost looked cozy. Charlotte refused to get in bed. I promised I’d sleep with her, all night long. Daddy would sleep on the bed right next to us. That finally convinced her. She got in bed, and my usually squirrely, wiggly sleeper nestled against me and almost immediately conked out. Chris and I weren’t far behind—we were exhausted.

Around 1:00, another storm came through, so Chris had to get up and close all the windows. I started to drift back to sleep, and at 2:30, the VROOM! of the air conditioner woke Chris and me up. Hooray! POWER! I was so relieved I could’ve cried, but I was too tired. I wanted my own bed, so we headed upstairs. Chris put Charlotte down, while I (yes, at 2:30 in the morning) started the dishwasher and cleared out part of the fridge.

Just as we were about to turn of the light (oh, to have a light to turn off!), we had a little, sleepy-eyed visitor. Without saying a word, Charlotte hoisted herself onto our bed, took her spot in the middle, plugged her thumb in her mouth, and closed her eyes. Chris and I looked at each other. We are NOT a co-sleeping family. I’ve never slept with Charlotte, except for when she’s sick.

“Oh, let her stay,” I said. “I promised her we’d sleep together all night long. I didn’t realize the power would come back on.”

Chris didn’t argue. Within seconds, all of us were asleep.

The next morning, even with my alarm going off, Chris and me talking, and me e-mailing my boss to tell her I’d be bringing in Charlotte to the office (her school was closed), Charlotte didn’t move. Most of the shades were still up from the night before—our room was as bright as can be. And still, Charlotte slept. The poor girl was just exhausted.

I brought her in with me to work, after which I learned her school had regained power (which means she can go to school Tuesday!). I had some things I needed to do that were not conducive to telecommuting, so Charlotte watched Lady and the Tramp (her current favorite movie) on her portable DVD player and played with post-its until we could leave.

At home, the over-tired girl slept for almost 3 hours while I worked from home. Since then, I’ve hustled to DEEP clean the fridge, grocery shop, catch up on laundry, and finish up this post.

All in all, we’re lucky. We got our power back after 52 hours. Nobody got hurt, damage was minimal (if you don’t count all the lost food), and we didn’t kill each other.

Charlotte, the only East-Coast-born-and-thus-far-bred family member among us, was a star, hot but coping with a grin. The two West Coasters--cursing humidity and longing for the so-called heat waves of Seattle, where folks freak out at temps above 78 degrees (I exaggerate but not by much)--coped with fewer grins, but we survived. The West Coast--East Coast disconnect was best illustrated when, as we were facing another sweltering, moist night, my Mom said, "Why don't you hang up some of those Damp-Rid bags, like we use in the camper?"

I could barely keep the snarl out of my voice when I explained that a 6-inch bag of pebbles would likely do nothing for my home's 3,700 square feet of thick summer air.

I remember my first summer on the East Coast, thinking IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE for air to be so hot and humid, especially at night. Even with AC, I thought I'd surely die before autumn. Eight years later, I do think we've adapted--as much as the human body can adapt, anyway--but I believe Chris and I are West Coasters at heart.

Oh, how I love air conditioning.