Storm nightmares revisited

Waves at Beavertail ahead of the storm

So Hurricane Earl really came by without much ado.  The day felt strangely tropical and calm and we did get many bursts of rain that were quite hard, but really we dodged a bullet, as they say (although Harry will tell you from lessons learned on Mythbusters that that myth is busted and you cannot dodge a bullet).

At the same time, we had our own little emergency here that brought back memories of one in Hickory in December 2005.  During an ice storm a large part of a tree hit the side of our house where the power came into the house and pulled the whole thing off the house.  I was alone with Harry (who at the tender age of 2 was napping) and the power surged through our house.  Our Christmas tree glowed brighter than any Christmas tree is meant to glow and then boom out went the power and slowly I smelled smoke coming from the basement.  It turned out that the wires to the cable in the basement were fried and burned a bit.  We had to evacuate - the fire department came and Kevin or the fire department kept an eye on the house for much of that night until power was reestablished to the neighborhood (who also lost power around the time we did) and we knew that it was safe to come back, since the reestablishment of power didn't start a fire in our house.  I think now it took a couple of days before our house got power again because we needed an electrician

After lunch we were sitting in our kitchen and heard a thud, thud, creak.  Both of us kind of looked at each other and then looked out the window.  There was a branch on the power line coming into the house and the power cord was pulled off the house partway.  At this point we still hadn't had anything weatherwise from Earl, but we were still told a storm was coming.  So luckily besides some fear on my part, we managed to get everything together and get National Grid and an electrician to the house before winds came.  Today is actually quite windy, so I am glad we got it done and we were very lucky this time that it only took the powerline partway down.  No fire in the cable wires, no power outage, we dodged a bullet.  I also took both boys to TaeKwonDo where Harry got his yellow striped belt!  Yeah Harry!  That way Kevin could deal with the house without a semi hysterical Julia and two excited little boys watching the workers and wondering if they would get in the way or get hit by a falling branch and/or power line.

During naptime, before the powerline debacle, Harry and I went to look at the big waves at Beavertail.  It was pretty.  I was a bit nervous that if I brought Robert we'd lose him, but I knew that Harry would listen and keep safe.  He did and here he is on the rocks with the surf and storm clouds behind him.