WIND!

Holy wind, Batman! So the sun hasn't been out since Sunday I think. Sure, fine, I can deal with that because we haven't gotten nearly as much snow as we were supposed to because mostly, aside from a slushy run on Tuesday, it has rained instead. So last night I went to bed early, like I always do, except I spent some time awake while I wondered whether or not the house was going to blow away. You know, I've heard nasty wind outside before, a few gusts here and there, but I have never in my life heard wind so consistently harsh.

A little over a year ago, a tree fell on the house during an ice storm. When that kind of thing happens, you tend to get a bit more jittery when you are hearing hurricane-force winds in the middle of the night. Granted, several of the larger trees left in the back yard after that storm were taken down as a precautionary measure, but it's all woods, so many were left.

At some point I realized that the power was out. This was another flashback to that fun ice storm when not only did a tree fall on the house, but the power went out and didn't come back on for a WEEK. That is not an exaggeration. The storm hit early one Friday morning and power was restored on the following Friday. I tried not to think about it too much and instead set my watch alarm and hoped for the best.

The alarm went off and the fact that it wasn't my clock radio reminded me what had been going on. The good news was that my clock was flashing numbers, so apparently the power was back. I also wasn't hearing any wind at all, so I figured I'd be just fine to head off to the pool to get my swim in. Well, the driveway was covered in debris from blowing trees, but hey, a lot of the snow was gone. I took the right out of my driveway and immediately came upon a huge tree lying across the road and making it impassable. I happen to live on a dead end road, so there's no such thing as a detour. For a minute I thought maybe I'd get out and try and move just enough of it to get by, and then I also noticed that it had ripped down a power line (thankfully not the one that supplies power to my house) and then I also remembered that I'm not Wonder Woman and maybe I should leave the giant-wrapped-in-power-lines tree removal to the professionals.

Ok, so what now? I had an easy run to do, so as long as I was up, I figured I might as well get at least something done. And before you get all worried, it wasn't windy anymore, so I wasn't in danger of getting hit by more falling trees, I just had to watch my step from all of the branches in the road. I managed to climb around the tree and head off for an eerily dark and quiet run. It was super early, this is school vacation week so a lot of people are out of time and of course kids aren't going to school, and it appeared that the power was out almost everywhere along my run route. And also the lawn-mower sound of people's generators running since so many of us had to buy them last year after the ice storm.

Upon my return home the tree was still across the road, so I waited a while before attempting to head for the pool again. Once I did try, I was kind of glad there was a tree in the way in the first place because the power was out at the gym so of course they're closed. I had to take some detours on the way there due to downed trees. Most of the traffic lights aren't working, and whether they are or not a lot of them are all bent at odd angles. The wind was insane. Apparently it may be days for some people to get their power back. I don't know how I got to be one fo the lucky ones with electricity, but maybe having it off for a week a year ago was paying my dues. There are something like 300,000 people without power in the state. So if not being able to swim today is the worst thing that comes out of it for me, I think I'm ok with that.