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Weathering the weather

I seem to be fated to grapple with weather-related mayhem throughout my life. Longtime readers may recall that when I was about 7 years old, my family was hit hard by Hurricane Agnes: we had to evacuate our house in the middle of the night when the Susquehanna River flooded a 36-foot-high levee and devastated my hometown. Just last fall, I was stranded in Chicago during Hurricane Sandy (although we escaped major damage to our house from that one) and we just returned to home after losing power (heat, etc.) for a whopping five days due to a nasty ice storm.

icy

Trying to find the good in stressful times is hard, but now that I’m back at home, with the house warmed up and the internet back, the washing machine chugging along, I feel a renewed appreciation for the little things in life that are essential to the fabric of our days. Turning a light on, a hot shower, being able to cook meals, watching tv or surfing the internet, just the simple pleasure of sleeping in one’s own bed….today I’m a very happy (and lucky) camper.

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4 thoughts on “Weathering the weather

  1. We lost power for four days during Sandy, and it was HARD … I can only imagine how much worse it was to lose it during the middle of the winter! Glad the power’s back on.

  2. We lost power for eleven days at the farm a few years back. It was an adventure…except that the well didn’t work. We cooked on a hibachi and kept the wood stove blazing.
    I look back fondly at that adventure and how excited we were when the crews restored our power. And I hope to hell I don’t have to do it again anytime soon.

    Glad you’re back home and happy.

  3. Carol, I remember Agnes. We were at my parent’s then, David just out of the Army and looking for a job. Pittsburgh area got lots of rain, but not much real damage. David and my dad did go with some friends up to the local Girl Scout Camp Redwing to help get it back to being usable for the season. I know what you mean about weather following you around, tornadoes in Illinois as a child and Indiana as a college student, Camille when David was in the Army, Agnes, as I said, Sandy back in 2011, and snow extremes several different winters. Why does Mother Nature have to pick on us?

  4. We didn’t lose power during this last icy barrage or during Sandy. (Did worry about the pine tree that was right behind the house coming down on us, though. Sucker was over 100 feet tall and whacked the hose pretty good when she was really going here in my neck of Pa.) But I’m not so sure about how our power’s gonna hold up during this next nasty business. We’re right on the edge of the 2-5 inches and 5-10 inches range… And let me tell ya, my left ankle is saying we’re going to get more of the 5-10 inches than the 2-5.

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