Hurricane Irene

After 5 days, 9 hours, 48 seconds without power, I found myself staring at a light bulb in my ceiling fan. I don't know why I was staring at this light bulb, maybe I was recalling a better time in our lives when we turned lights on with a flip of a switch.
Maybe I was dreaming about flushing a toilet by simply pushing a lever instead of with a bucket of water.

I found myself tearing up when I thought about cable TV. The only station I could receive on our battery operated radio was a local station that was giving updates on some lawn furniture that blew into the road.

It also could have been a self imposed timeout after I beat Jeanne and the kids at Jr Monopoly and danced around calling them losers.

So I found myself staring at a dark light bulb, when suddenly it flickered. At first I thought it was my mind playing tricks, perhaps a mirage, then SHAZAM! we had power.

I stared at this illuminated light bulb as if it was the first time I had ever seen the miracle of electric lights. I then rose to my feet, and proceeded to preform the, "POWER DANCE". I think 88 percent of Connecticut residents know the Power Dance, although there could be thousands of different versions.


For almost a solid week before Irene hit the east coast, we listened to its progress on a daily basis. You would think we here in Connecticut were on the brink of Armageddon. The entire state of Florida was probably saying, "Welcome to our world".

Leading up to Irene hitting Connecticut we had warnings for hurricane force winds, tropical storm winds, tornadoes, severe flooding, coastal storm surges, and something new, warnings for Landslides. We might have trees, lawn chairs and maybe a rodent or two picked up by a strong gust of wind and crashing through windows.

I admit I was glued to the TV updates and I followed this storm with a certain amount of intensity. I will also admit I was a bit concerned.

We had moved the goats up on the porch, we brought the Tortoises into the house, moved the cars out into the middle of the field away from any trees that may come down.
We lowered the scaffolding we had setup on the back of the house, parked the canoe in the carport,and brought in many of our potted plants.
We had gas for the generator and I spent $70 on new chains and accessories for the chainsaw. Money well spent, but not needed. We had a barrel and many buckets filled with rainwater for the toilets, and I even went as far as boarding up some windows because of the threat of wind blown squirrels.

I suppose now looking back I might feel a little ashamed about the feelings I harboured towards Connecticut Light and Power for not restoring our electrical service sooner.I am sure the Line crews out in the field are working as hard as a person can. But I do feel with all the information and predictions that we had ahead of time for this storm, the management from CL&P could have brought in more outside help sooner. I am sure Ohio would have sent help. The people of our State should not be forced to put up wanted poster to locate a CL&P truck.


With all things considered, we did very well during this storm. If you think about the poor souls who lost their lives in this storm, and the folks that lost their homes, our little bit of inconvenience was nothing.


For the two boys below who love water, there is nothing better then living on a occasional island.