ice storm

Well, it's been a wretched week. The power went out on Saturday morning; it was 19 degrees and snowing, with strong winds, and you could see your breath inside our house. When the power still hadn't returned on Sunday, we went to a hotel in the late afternoon. The room was a bit small for the four of us and our winter gear and electronics, plus Jasper, but it was warm and had power and thus felt amazing.

On Monday, Liesl and I went home to check on our house, and so Liesl could sled with Ella. It was cold but the sun was out -- a beautiful snowy day -- so Jasper and I tromped around the trails of the neighborhood, navigating under and over fallen trees. Steve and Seb walked to a different hotel that had a bigger suite available. They were initially told that they'd get the room at 3, but in actuality they didn't get in until 9 pm. They literally sat and waited in the lobby for six hours -- so awful. At home, power was restored in the late afternoon and we were briefly excited for life to return to normal, but the furnace wouldn't start up, so it remained in the 40s inside. (Frozen pipe in the attic? Other blockage? Who knows?) I didn't want to drive back downtown in the dark, with the ice and snow on the roads, so Liesl and I stayed at home in the cold house on Monday night, so disappointed.

Jasper is buried beneath these blankets, trying to stay warm overnight.  

We drove back to reunite with the boys at the new hotel on Tuesday morning, and had a somewhat normal day. We walked Jasper, charged the Tesla, bought groceries, and settled in. The ice storm arrived Tuesday in the late afternoon, after which the roads and sidewalks were just a sheet of ice. You could skate down the block. We expected warmer air to blow in and a steady rain to melt the ice and snow by Wednesday afternoon, so we could all return home and figure out our furnace, but no such luck. The roads remained covered in ice, especially in our hilly neighborhood, so we extended our stay at the hotel for one more night and ordered pizza for dinner.

 

 

Thursday looked like it was finally the day to return home.  But Liesl woke up feeling sick, and started vomiting. She threw up pretty continuously for a couple of hours and we didn't want to make her move. And the final wrench in this situation is that Steve has an important brief due on Friday -- he asked the judge for an extension, given our power outage, but she didn't grant it. So he was extremely unhappy as the hours and days ticked by, to have no power or internet -- it's one of the reasons he booked the second hotel, to make sure he could keep working. So he was working hard, from 5am, feeling stressed, and Liesl was throwing up, and there was still the knowledge that a cold house awaited us. 

It's 9 pm as I write, and a second ice storm has covered everything. The steps and streets are treacherous -- Jasper slid down our stairs, poor thing -- and the power has flickered off three times but magically returned. We have three space heaters going and I baked cookies and braised lamb shanks and mulled red wine -- it's quite tolerable for now and good to be home. Sadly, all of our friends in the neighborhood lost power at 3:30 this afternoon. We hope that a furnace repair company will come tomorrow, but they wouldn't guarantee it. A tree fell across the road out of our neighborhood, so we're quite solidly trapped here for now. At least Liesl is feeling better.