We have survived the Ice Storm of 2007 with no lasting damage other than fewer branches on our trees. However, it did start to feel as though the walls were closing in around us as cabin fever set in. Edward has not left the house since we got home from work/daycare on Friday. I left once yesterday and John left once today. John also spent time outside clearing the walks--some shoveling and a lot of salt throwing. (Ed wanted to get a closer look, so we let him stand on the bookshelf with both of us standing with outstretched arms just out of view of this photo! He actually didn't try to move much except up and down rubbing his face--and tongue--against the window. Good thing I keep them so clean--yeah, right!)

It was quite a spectacular storm in terms of paralyzing our area. A section of Interstate 80 was closed as well as parts of a couple of state highways in our area. The ice-coated trees brushing against our roof sounded like some sort of monster trying to scratch his way into our attic. The wind blew the branches enough to cause chunks of ice to fall off onto the patio and in our yard. Lots of us lost power, but our tale of woe pales in comparison to our hardest hit friends and neighbors. We had a 15-minute outage around 3 p.m. and a 3.5-hour outage from about 4:45 to 8:15 p.m. Others were still without power this morning and may still be now. Hotels are full of stranded travelers as well as locals seeking warmth while waiting for their power to return. The only good thing was that this happened on a weekend so most of us could just stay where we were, keeping the roads relatively clear. For myself though, I must say I've never looked forward to a Monday more. I love John and Edward and we had lots of fun together this weekend, but it's really time to get out of the house and talk to other people!

Our power outage coincided with my departure to lector at 5:10 mass. It wasn't my turn, but one of my fellow lectors called around 1:30 to see if I could possibly sub for her, as she had no hope of safely traversing her mile-long (!) driveway. I have less distance than that between my house and the church and it looked like cars were OK on our streets so I said I'd go. Just as I was stepping out (wearing my YakTrax, purchased lovingly by my husband for my winter pregnancies because he knows my checkered history on ice) I heard a loud sound that we know to be the beginning of the end for power. Sure enough I turned around and looked back in the house where all had gone dark. Still, John said he and Ed would be fine so I kept going. Once in the garage, I realized I had no idea how to open the door without power. A quick call (oy!) back to the house and John instructed me to look for a rope to pull to disengage the motor. A ha! That proved the most difficult thing about the trip to church. The roads were really fine and even with no power for the stop lights, it wasn't bad, since, as I noted, hardly anyone was out. There were about 80-100 hearty souls at mass, amazingly enough. Power was out when I first got there and we were all set to have our seminarian intern hold a flashlight for the essential reading, but just before mass time the lights came back on.

Unfortunately, they did not come back on at home. When I got back there were candles flickering in the kitchen and I called from the front door back to John, "You guys OK?" "Well, we're just playing lids by candlelight." Ed took the whole thing in stride, sensing nothing abnormal about playing in the near-dark. He enjoyed the flashlight when we turned it on occasionally (not wanting to use up batteries since we didn't know how long it would last.) He also was fine with a dinner of yogurt, a clementine, bunny crackers and milk. The planned beef stew sat half-cooked in a pot on the stove. He played some more after eating and then we dressed him in three layers and put him under a down blanket for bed. If it got too cold, we figured we could bring him into our bed, but wasn't necessary. Just after John and I finished a cheese and crackers dinner and were contemplating putting some fridge essentials in a cooler outside before starting a game of candlelight Scrabble, the lights came back.

So all's well that ends well. One of Ed's ice-weekend discoveries was the fun of playing with the couch pillows as seen in this video.


One of the things that made the weekend particularly long was his fondness for crawling under the table to grab the phone cord and other power cords. After what seemed like the millionth "No, Edward!" of the weekend, I got online and ordered him a play tunnel, which I hope he will like so much he'll forget the table. But I may be delusional on that one. The first section of this video ends just as he's reaching for the phone cord, since I had to stop the camera and crawl under to drag him out.