For those of you who know me, I live about 10 miles from the coast of Massachusetts, not too far from the Merrimack River. We breathlessly watched the forecast for Sandy as she trounced all over Cuba and Haiti making her way north. Last year we had a blizzard right before Halloween, so they were calling this storm the Frankenstorm because it could coincide with Halloween AND because it was going to meet up with arctic/cold air coming from the west and north. It had the potential, if it moved just right, to hit New England as a Nor'easter hitting an arctic front, and we'd be digging out from feet of snow, instead of the inches we had last year.
Well, Sandy banged a left and went into New Jersey. Walloping my beloved Manhattan, wrecking the Jersey Shore.
The irony of a storm called Sandy hitting the boardwalk of Atlantic City brought a smile to my inner Springsteen fan. I thought that was sort of fantastic.
I spent most of the day yesterday monitoring facebook, getting reports from friends who were watching waters rise all over Long Island, including my home town. Photos were streaming in. One friend had a tree land on his house, crash through his kitchen. He decided to get out of there before the next tree came down and once outside discovered transformers exploding all over the neighborhood as power lines cascaded with the trees.
My favorite area of Manhattan, the south end where Stone Street and all the Colonial buildings are, was flooded out. My heart breaks for that area. And for Breezy Point in Queens, which burned to the ground, losing 80 homes. It's ridiculously sad. With all that water surrounding, watching the buildings burn.
Nothing happened here. Our lawn chairs got blown over. Doug had a frustrating day because he got an email saying he was an "essential employee" and that he had to come into work. He locked his keys in the car in the parking garage at the train station. He got to his office, and after working for a few minutes got word that the MBTA was going to be shutting down train service at 2pm, so he had to basically prepare to get the 1pm train home. I looked for his extra set of keys, couldn't find them, went and picked him up where I sat in the train station for over an hour waiting... there was a phone poll across the tracks a half mile south of the station and they sat there waiting for a crew to come move it. Eventually, they got buses to come and transport everyone to their stations. He said he could have walked it and we would have been home hours earlier.
That was the only problem with the storm, Doug being inconvenienced.
Which is a blessing. It was nice when all of us were home together eating dinner and watching Netflix. Our tv and internet never failed. In fact, our whole town lost power in very few spotty places. We were incredibly lucky.
Geoff had 2 days off of school. He used yesterday to clean in the "man cave" and rearrange his drum set. Today we washed the dogs, and now I need to clean the bathroom as a result. Stupid dogs. Stupid wet shaking all over the place dogs.
If you got hit hard, my heart to you. My sister and Ronnie are surrounded by down trees and power lines. But they have friends with power so they've got somewhere they can be. I'm glad the storm is over.
And now Halloween can happen tomorrow, without feet of snow.
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