There were a few raspberries left on the vines outside in
the little corner between the kitchen and laundry room windows. As I was bringing in the plants from the back
deck, I realized most of them were dead or dying, which shouldn’t have
surprised me because it’s October 28 in New Jersey. I was bringing them into the garage because “Frankenstorm”
is coming. Every update shows it moving
10-14 mph up the east coast and at this point it’s projected to hit NJ tomorrow
night.
The storm is actually 3 storms: Hurricane Sandy coming up the coast, a cold
front pushing snow and rain from the west, and a blast of cold air from Canada
coming down and east. So, NJ is right in
the path of all 3. To make matters
worse, the vast majority of the time there is a low-pressure system over
Iceland that tends to draw hurricanes away from the east coast, but as bad luck
would have it, this is one of the .2% (point 2 percent!) times that it’s a high
pressure system pushing the hurricane towards us. Not bad enough? Well, there are still leaves on the trees, so
when the snow and rain weigh the branches down, they will pull down the power
lines under them.
I have lived in New Jersey all but the first 2 years of my life, and
I’ve never been without power for more than a few hours. That is, until Hurricane Irene last August
when we were out of power for 4+ days. Some
areas had it worse—10-14 days without power.
The only good thing about that was that it wasn’t hot and humid those
days so being without air conditioning was bearable, though being without hot
water for showers really sucked.
This time, we get cold air too.
I’m thankful that Rachel decided to stay here rather than
going back to the city. She was
stressing over a meeting with an advisor that’s supposed to be on Tuesday, but
I tried to help her see that the advisor might not be able to make it into the
city either that day. When they cancelled
classes for Monday, I think she started to realize that it could be pretty bad.
Regarding Rachel, I’m not worried about the power being out
per se, but more about the potential for rioting and looting that tends to go hand in hand with
power outages in the city. Glad that she’ll
be here with us. I think she’s not too
thrilled because I’m getting on her nerves, but frankly, I would get on my
nerves if I were her so I’m trying hard not to do the things I do that make us
both anxious, like over planning and over anticipating.
So, we’ll have something with fresh raspberries tonight and
I’ll keep praying that the hurricane swings out to sea where it will just
bother the fish.
But I have a feeling that’s not how this is going to play
out.
Stay tuned.
