Aftermath of Yet Another Storm ...

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.

"So it is."

"And freezing."

"Is it?"

"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."  A.A. Milne

In case you haven't heard, we are out of power yet again. I'm not sure what they are showing on the news down there, so here's a brief recap in case you haven't seen:

Damage from storm five times worse than Irene.

More than 2.4 million people in at least five states were without power early Monday, a day after a rare October snowstorm buried parts of the Northeast under more than two feet of snow .... Connecticut power officials told reporters Monday that about 748,500 people were without power, down from a peak of more than 900,000 ..... Some of the heaviest snow fell in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, but snowfall amounts of at least a foot were recorded from West Virginia to Maine .... Officials said it could take days -- or more than a week -- before all power is finally restored.

The number of outages between Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating at 7:30 Sunday night was still more than 800,000 -- more than 100,000 more than the peak outage total in Irene's aftermath.

Malloy, who declared a state of emergency Saturday, said Sunday that the state was urging President Obama to declare Connecticut a federal disaster area, paving the way for federal emergency funds to pay for cleanup efforts. "This is the largest number of power outages we have ever experienced," more than Tropical Storm Irene Malloy said. "We are expecting extensive and long term power outage. This is a historic storm, never before in anyone's recollection or anyone's review of history has such a storm hit the state so early."

Good times ... good times.

Remember this familiar map? I didn't get a photo of the legend. Let's just put it this way, black is bad ... 100% out of power:

As of 11:00am on Monday morning, out of the 146 towns listed by Connecticut Light & Power, Hebron is 48. We have 46% power now. (Of course our little neighborhood is still out, but our grocery store, pharmacy, the restaurants, etc. are up and running. So we actually have it better than most.) Of those 146 towns, 43 of the towns have 100% outages, some of these are really big towns!

So, those are the storm facts ... here's the Kimberly Oakes take on it all:

Sunday, August 28 (a mere 2 months ago) after Hurricane Irene hit and the power went out, you walked with me through my first adventure with a power outage. You saw the photos, the downed trees, the damaged power lines. You read the stories of generators, bathroom toilet motor upsets, showering at Dan & Linda's. You sat with me at the laundry mat and all the rest. You were joyous with me on Sept 3rd when we got our power back (just in time for Mom and Marsha's visit). It was interesting blog material, no? It was something different. It was a "new" experience. It was awful and horrible and really not that bad all at the same time. But, regardless, it was "new".

I giggled at the light snow dusting on Thursday, October 27th. So early. The frosted pumpkins were cute. I groaned a little as the snow started really falling Saturday afternoon. Too soon for this. Too soon for a snow day. But it was a Saturday so we hunkered down and watched tv and read and ate chili in the toasty warm house. Not great, but not terrible. It is New England after all and it had snowed Oct 16, 2009. Snow this early was not unprecedented. It wasn't until I woke up at 11:30 Saturday night to go to the bathroom and heard David mumble, "You might want to take a flashlight, the power is out", that the dread started to sink in.

It's not "new" anymore, you see. It's old. Real old. We've just been through this 8 weeks ago. Only now it's cold! I went back to bed that night hoping to wake up and find it was all a bad dream. But waking to pitch black, I knew it was all very real.

David left the house fairly early to buy a generator from a friend down by the coast. (The coast wasn't hit very hard at all. A lot of places along the shore didn't even get snow.) He got back and hooked up the little generator to the fridge and the pellet stove. We had food and heat. The water company hooked up a generator and by late Sunday afternoon we had running water.

Thankfully, we do have everything we need. Good people helping us out. Access to technology and electricity during the day at work. A time to re-charge. We have food and water. With the generator, we even have ice! We have much to be grateful for. David even hooked up the tv to the generator last night so I could escape for an hour and half into the world of Iron Chef. I cheered on my Chuck and rolled my eyes at Geoffrey and had a great time!

I did have to laugh when I saw our pastor facebooked this: Someone find Jonah and get em out of Connecticut.It has been quite a year. Tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, rain and snow.

My Facebook page is full of photos - trees down, accidents, snow. There are depressing photos of destruction on the news sites, both local and national. So tried of looking at these sad sights, so I decided to post this:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!