Fay strikes

So Friday night around dinner time the power go off, since it is ready my family eats dinner, my husband not liking to be without power says “what do you think we should do?” I am thinking I am not sure, maybe go to bed early, I don’t know so he says to me that maybe we show go to his mom’s (going in to the storm), or maybe we should go North? Hmmm…….. I guess if we are going to leave in the DARK we should leave and head north so I call a hotel they have a room and well I did not have to give them an arm and a leg, so that is where we headed in the dark. On a normal day it would have taken us about an hour to arrive to our next location but Friday nit it took us not quite twice that (just for power). So here my happy family is at our hotel I check in giving them my appendage, the attendant says “Your room is closest to the third door on the right when you go around the building.” Wanting a first floor room for a two year old so that we did not receive a complaint I ask “well is it really far down the hall?” The attendant stated that it was “OK thank you, have a good night” as I walked to my car. We drove to the third entrance I tell my husband it has to be further down because it is so close to the main entrance (that is covered) he asked me to just go check so here I get out of the car (in the sideways sheets of water) sure enough there is our room maybe twenty feet from the desk. So I go out and get my husband daughter and junk with an umbrella (when the wind blows leave the umbrella in the car) so here I am caring Lena her doll and the umbrella. I had to walk in circles to get the umbrella to turn right side out, I am not sure how it was doing it but about every three steps it would turn inside out so I would have to turn again. So I get her to our room along with our stuff and a very wet husband. So we the complete idiots decide we want dessert, so here we are about eleven going out to get dessert. I am thinking Chick-fil-a is right next door and we could get a milk shake FYI they close early none of this open late for them. So here we are driving around to fine a dessert we figure we will go somewhere that we do not have, so here we are at Stake and Shake. We go in to the restaurant because we do not know what we want again with the umbrella inside and out again. We get our food and back to the hotel, all the while not parking at the front or letting me take Lena in under the cover we all get wet and with that Dam umbrella. Well dessert was nasty a hard biscuit with strawberries and ice-cream the only part that was good was the vanilla ice cream (how could you mess that up).
Saturday, so after a night sleep on a brick we got up about 7:30am and laid in bed until about 9 got up. We went to Cracker barrel for breakfast again it was raining so with the baby in one hand and the umbrella in the other and I still got wet, at least she stayed dry. So now we were on our way to the house home sweet home. We drove home roads were washed out on both sides trees down that were cut so that we could get through. I prayed the whole way home I could see all kinds of trees down on roofs, houses, and just everywhere. I just knew that we had three large trees in our yard and anyone of them could fall. As we pulled in to our neighborhood I gasped when I saw a large branch down on a power line (at least I thought at the time it was actually a phone line) but that was the only limb that caused any problems. Well we went in the house and guess what the power was off again. So my dear Hubby says “what should we do now? “ I had no clue; should we stay at home with no power and the risk of a power line coming down, go back to the hotel or to Eric’s moms, I had no idea. Heck I didn’t know so I say lets head south to the Mother-in-law’s (thinking Lena will have someone to play with). So we head south (into the storm) as we get about 1/3 of the way there hubby says “I think we should have headed north to the hotel”. I just wanted to kick him sure now tell me that…. Thanks. Any way we get to his mom’s we are all having fun no big deal, the rain lets up a little, so Eric and I go get some dinner while we are out I decide to call some friends to see if they have power and alas they do cool. With it getting dark, raining and the wind was blowing so we opted to stay. No big deal we will just head home in the morning……..or so we thought. The late news comes on and all roads to our house are closed Yes all the roads all possible ways in to our home are CLOSED!! OK, so I am thinking, no big deal it is just like back home they will send out the snow plows and clean off the roads, sure. Yeah, wrong type of precipitation (there is a difference in rain and snow people can move snow, rain moves people).
Sunday morning I call the Sheriff office, they are so kind to tell me that all roads are still closed and have no time line on openings. OK deep breath, now what I am an hour away from home and I WANT TO BE AT HOME! So we eat breakfast that my mother-in-law was so nice to prepare. Then I thought it is mid morning hey they should have things cleaned up so I called……..well they had one way patched up enough that we could get home so I packed up and off we were, I wanted to go home. When we left it was not raining but there was a little thunder nothing like it had been, so I thought OK this is going to be easy. Ten minutes out it is a down pour so bad that Eric turns to me and says “You know that if the road is closed I won’t be able to see it….” Great vote of confidence, thanks! Thank goodness about the time we are to turn off on to the smaller road the rain slows to a drizzle. Then he asks “why are you in such a hurry to get home?” What am I supposed to say “I thought that we both want to get home?” As we drove I saw many, many, many down trees some were up rooted and some broke off. There was one tree that was up rooted and laid right next to a trailer most of the limbs on one side were on the trailer, I just felt sick because I knew it could be my house. There were parts of the road with no shoulder that had been washed out. Again when we pulled into the neighborhood, there was that same limb on the power line and one in the front yard but that was it, along with the pool being very full of water and leaves. I held my breath until I flipped the light on……..thank goodness the power is on. If it was not on I knew I was going to get a ration. So we carry all of our junk in, cleaned up a bit and then tried the phones, still no phone service and since our phones, Internet, and cable are all grouped together we had nothing but power, at least Eric did not give me a bad time.
What a weekend but what did I learned:
1. Umbrellas suck
2. Even if you do not have power don’t leave at dark in the storm
3. If you have left don’t leave second location until the storm is gone, you know you have power, and know that the roads are open.