So Close and Yet So Far

Well, as I suspected, things did not go well after my Raspberries and Frankenstorm post on Sunday, October 28.  That was the day before the “biggest storm in 100 years.”

However, keep this in mind as you read this:  on the day there was sun again, there was one, lone, bright, ripe raspberry in the very middle of the raspberry patch.  It was gleaming, just begging to be picked.  In the middle of the patch means you cannot get to it, because raspberry vines are covered in thorns.  Okay, do you have that visual?  Let’s proceed.

So on Sunday after my post we discovered that the hot water heater was leaking.  We have a PSE&G “Worry Free” contract, so they came out within hours, as promised, to check it out.  I had said to Marc beforehand that no matter what they said, don’t let them turn off the hot water heater—I would rather deal with a leak or minor flood in that section of the basement than no hot water for days.  The tech said the hot water heater could break and water could go all over.  He shut off the heater and left.  Then Marc told me it was off. 

And so it began.

Because of the impending storm, none of the plumbers in the Worry Free system would come out to replace the hot water heater, but one promised to call after the emergency to make an appointment to come out right away.  Heavy sigh.  No showers Monday morning. (Thankfully I had done laundry all weekend, so at least we had clean clothes.)

Monday, October 29 we were taking the storm seriously and preparing for the hit that was to come sometime Monday evening.  I had convinced Rachel to stay here and not go back to the city on Sunday, so it was the 4 of us at the house:  Marc, Rachel, Wil, and me. My entire company worked from their homes to stay safe.  All day Monday there was unbelievable wind.  Trees wer bending 45 degrees or more, stuff was flying everywhere; I could not fathom how most of the leaves were still on the trees.  I had a surprisingly productive day and was ready to call it quits at 6:00 when I made dinner for everyone. 

It was right around that time that the real rain came.  And the wind that we thought was bad…it got worse.  A lot worse.  I don’t think I’ve experienced that kind of wind except once when I was a small child and lived closer to the shore and there was a hurricane.  Not sure what year.  I was very small.  I just still have an image in my mind of the world gone black and white and grey, with pine trees bending over unspeakably.  Lightning, thunder, and being told to get away from the windows.  So this was familiar in a prehistoric memory kind of way. 

Then a little before 9:00 the power went out.  It had been flickering most of the evening but kept righting itself.  This time, the ship went down.  I said aloud, “Well, that is real and it’s going to be off for a long time.”  Just didn’t know how long long was going to be.  Well, let me tell you about long.

I insisted the kids sleep on the couches in the family room rather than in their beds upstairs as a precaution against breaking glass.  Marc and I slept in our room on the ground floor as usual.  The cat was happy for the kids’ company and slept between them on the floor.

The worst of the storm was over by the time we woke up on Tuesday morning, and foolishly I thought “it” was over.  Marc went out to reconnoiter as he likes to say, and came back with dismal news.  Trees were down everywhere, he’d never seen anything like it.  So many roads were closed, it was almost impossible to get around.  There were hardly any traffic lights working, even on the major roads.  And there was no power at the office.  In fact, there didn’t seem to be power anywhere.

With no power and no hot water, Wil went to his dad’s house.  Rachel decided to hang out here. She started hearing how badly hit Manhattan was, and after the talk of parties turned to talk of dismay at no power and no water pressure, she seemed glad to be with us and not in the city.

I worked to get Internet connection on my devices, but it was tough.  Everyone at DBE worked remotely using their smart phones to connect to the Internet.  We had no email because our ISP that hosts our website had no power after his generator died.  No website meant no domain level email.  We created temporary Gmail accounts and alerted our clients to use those or texts to reach us—as predicted, texts worked better than phone calls.  Phone calls didn’t go through, texts went through slowly, eventually, or after you resent them several times.

With no hot water, we heated water on the stove (lit the burners with matches) and then cooled it with cold water to wash ourselves.  I became the family shampooer.  I didn’t mind.  It was kind of nice washing their hair over the kitchen sink in the morning light.  It felt spiritual and primitive, a necessary rite. 

Wil’s dad came to pick him up because it was his day with Wil and he had power at his house.  Rachel decided to stay here.  We took a ride around in the afternoon to reconnoiter again.  Things looked bad.  Marc said they were no improvements from earlier.  We saw not 1 PSE&G truck.  Rachel was doing well during the day, but as night approached and the thought of another night with no creature comforts encroached, she was open to being driven to her dad’s house.  She seemed to feel bad about leaving, but of course it was better to be warm, showered, and Internet-connected than not, not, and not. It took us almost an hour to get there with all the downed trees and detours, coming back the way we had gone there included a few additional detours we hadn’t expected.  By the time we got back to the house, we just went to bed and hoped there would be light and heat by morning.  Wrong.

Wednesday was spent trying to get an Internet connection and to stay warm.  The temperature was dropping.  We lit the fireplace and left it on all day.  Our neighbors generously allowed us to keep recharging our devices because they had a generator at their house.  Made a note to research generators, the new “must have” item for climate change survivors. 

Honestly, the day was a blur.  I prioritized my work down to the most essential things to keep the time on the Internet to a minimum because the connection was so slow, unreliable, and aggravating.  Wil showed up unexpectedly—he was taking someone’s shift.  He said he was staying the night and I was trying to imagine what that was going to be like—where would he sleep that he would be warm.  When 5:00 rolled around, I declared the work day done and had a shot of bourbon.  We were going to go to dinner but I didn’t want to put on makeup and I didn’t want to risk Wil coming back to an empty house if we were delayed.  We ate prepared food from McCaffreys on the couch in front of the fireplace and chatted. 

When Wil came home, we talked for a while and then I insisted he sleep in front of the fire on the couch instead of upstairs.  He agreed.

In the middle of the night, the carbon monoxide monitors started going off.  The first one went off at midnight.  Two hours later, the other one went off.  I was now convinced the monitors were trying to tell us something. The fireplace!  Of course, it must be the fireplace.  Try Googling carbon monoxide monitors at 2:30 a.m. and you’ll see that they are set off by gases from an assortment of things, including faulty furnaces.  Fireplace =furnace to my bedraggled mind.  Of course!  That’s why the day was such a blur!  I was being poisoned! 

So we shut off the fireplace and told Wil he’d be fine and that there was low risk of becoming a popsicle.  Then the other monitor went off at 4:00 a.m.  Marc decided to read the manual.  I fell asleep, exhausted beyond imagining.  Maybe I was being gassed to death, but I was too tired to care.  Marc discovered that the monitors are meant to run on electricity,; the batteries won’t last more than 20 hours.  He pulled the batteries on both monitors and went to bed.  That seems logical.  And I was surprised to not wake up dead.

In the morning the temperature was easily less than 50 degrees.  Even if I could see the temperature app on my iPhone, I didn’t want to know.  Marc was going to work at Deepa’s and I was going to work at Bethany’s.  Marc reconnoitered like the dove leaving the ark but came back with no olive branch.  He learned that a client had power and decided to work there since he needed to meet with them anyway.  Bethany wasn’t feeling well, so I went to Deepa’s.  It was very nice there.  Warm people, warm home.  They kept trying to feed me all day—Deepa worries that I don’t take care of myself.  They don’t understand that I don’t like to eat during the day, and kept bringing me fruits and crackers with peanut butter, almond milk, and some salty water beverage that Deepa insisted I drink when I stood up too fast after sitting for 4 hours straight at the computer.  (I had no idea when I’d have broadband Internet again and wanted to make good use of every second before I headed out at 5:30, grateful for their hospitality.)

I got back to the house before Marc but after a series of unexpected detours due to closed intersections.  I saw my first line for gasoline and felt panicked.  Lines anywhere make me nervous, even if they’re for something nice, like cheap theater tickets.  I always sense agitation on the part of the people in the line and am fearful of an eruption of tempers.  I don’t like crowds in general—when they line up, it only makes them a little less scary.

When I did finally get home, the house was cold.  Bone chilling cold.  I wrapped myself in a blanket and wandered through the house.  It felt sad and forlorn and that’s not good karma for a house.  Marc came home and we headed right out for dinner at KC Prime, a local steakhouse that has an identity crisis.  On the way there, we saw 30, maybe more, utility trucks just sitting silently in the mall parking lot.  Just.  Sitting.  There.

KC Prime was warm and our reservation got us a table right away.  The food is consistently good and the drinks are awesome—that’s where I discovered my favorite cocktail, the sidecar.  The servers are always attentive but not unctuous.  You can show up there wearing sweat pants if you want to—I’ve seen people do it—and that’s okay too. 

Joe Queenan has this very funny piece in his book Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon.  He writes about how the people who regularly eat at Red Lobster think it’s upscale and they dress up in their leisure-suit best for it, and then look down their noses at the people who “just don’t get it.”  I’ve turned into that person at KC Prime.  Not that I’m rude about it, but to me, it’s where we go after work so we’re usually wearing our business-casual best.  We’ve had a hard day and we want a nice cocktail in an upscale but relaxed environment, close to home.   So it’s funny when people show up in shorts or sweats because, well, hey, “they” just don’t get it.  J

Our waiter Thursday night was friendly and smart.  He didn’t need to be told that we were two of the barely washed masses who were there for a meal.  He paced everything beautifully so that a dinner we typically have in 90 minutes-- if that--lasted well over 2 hours.  I blessed him the way one best blesses waiters—with a sincere verbal thank you and a tip that relayed the same message in the coin of the realm. 

Back to the house.  Icy cold now.  My brother and sister both had power and offered for us to stay with them.  We can’t go until Saturday, after Wil takes his SATs that morning.  We make plans to go to Barnegat on Saturday to spend the night.  Marc found us a hotel room for Sunday and Monday night.  Tuesday we’d already made plans to stay with friends after the election.  But how long would this all go on?  My friends Carol and Mark texted—they had a hotel room and had offered us to stay with them.  We thanked them and didn’t want to intrude.  But we would take them up on the offer of a hot shower the next morning at 8:00.

But first we had to get through Thursday night. Marc brought Rachel’s twin mattress down to the family room and we repositioned the couches to be opposite each other, perpendicular to the fireplace.  The mattress went in the middle.  After a few rounds of “Do you want the mattress or the long couch?” I flopped on the mattress and ended the game.  I was exhausted when I managed to get through to my sister on the cell—4 bars!!!—and we talked until the call failed and we texted our good nights.  

The cat slept on the edge of the mattress right next to my head all night and as cats do, he considered me the intruder and was annoyed every time I moved around, which I do a lot when I sleep.  It was so cold!  All I kept thinking through this whole ordeal was, “What are people with little kids doing?”  I really felt bad for them.  I fell asleep thinking about the stilled trucks in the cold outside and the stilled children in the cold inside.

It had to be in the 40s when we woke up and got ourselves dressed to head over to the Westin and our showers.  On the way there, we saw that the traffic lights near the office were working.  After our showers (thank you Carol and Mark!) we swung back to the office instead of to our client’s office in Pennsylvania where we were going to work. 

Delight! Sheer delight.  The office had power and wi-fi!  We worked there all day.  We offered our space to others who needed power.  We planned to sleep there if there was no power at the house, but Wil texted at 4:00 that yes, power was back at the house!

I texted Carol but she said they were still out of power, so I offered for them to have dinner with us but they had plans for that night and would come Saturday instead.  We offered them to stay with us until they got power, and they said they would. 

I cleaned the house up, went shopping, arranged for the cleaning lady who usually comes on Thursday morning to come on Sunday.  Bought thank you gifts for our neighbors of the generator, Dave and Donna, and met Donna for the first time.  Their generator was still running; they didn’t realize power was restored.  They thanked me.  And I thanked them again.  Lots of thanking back and forth.  We’re going to have them over for dinner soon.  I like them a lot.

Back to the house.  Wil was supposed to go out with friends but plans fell through.  He was stuck with us, poor kid.  Friday night is pizza night.  Yeaaa. 

“What’s on TV?”

What?!?  Comcast is out.  No TV, no Internet.  The DVR worked but nothing else.  We assumed we would have lost everything on the DVR as happened with other outages but there must have been a quantum leap with technology when we weren’t looking because all our recordings are still there.  Sweet.  We watch Jon Stewart’s Night of Too Many Stars and laugh our butts off.

Bedtime 11:00.  I didn’t sleep well, have no idea why other than maybe too much coffee during the day.  Gotta work on that.

Up at 4:00 a.m., can’t sleep any longer.  I didn’t try to go back to bed because I had to drive Wil to take the SAT in Princeton.  At 5:30, Wil came downstairs and said the SAT was postponed according to the email he got.  Made Wil French toast and chatted a bit.  I was convinced he would stay with me because there’s no Internet so no video games.  Ha!  How foolish of me!  He said he was cold and invited me to go upstairs with him.  I said, “What are you going to do up there if there are no games?” 

“Well,” he said, “I’m going to sit, or lay down.”

“Really?” I asked.  “You can do that right here where I am.” 

“Well, I’m probably going to get warm and stay in my bed,” he said.

“Oh, so you’re going to, what do they call it, sleep?” I asked.

He smiled and headed up stairs.

And so he’s upstairs, sleeping I think. 

I’m training the cat to be more doglike than he already is, and finishing this blog post.  I’ll upload it via hotspot if I can get one going.

The hot water repair guys are here.  They forget you can hear everything they say, they’re just below me in the basement.  I am enjoying their conversation.  Work banter.

I’m picking Rachel up from her dad’s house at 3:00.  Carol, Mark and their boys are coming over at 6:30.  I think I’m making chicken stew.  Ali and Marc will be here.  It will be nice to all be together.  Am I asking too much to have hot water and Internet by then? 

Honestly, as long as there’s Internet at the office on Monday, and heat here and there, I will be thankful.  Because you know what really sucks?  Five days after the storm, half of my neighbors still don’t have power.   This isn’t a remote location.  It’s New Jersey--the most densely populated state in the country. 

So after all of this, I’m wondering about that raspberry out in the patch outside the kitchen window.  Is it a sign of hope, or is it taunting me?  So close and yet so far….