So we had the big storm that knocked power out for 4 days. We recovered. We moved on.

Last Wednesday a man comes to my door and I open it - I never do that. He's selling meat. I know, sounds odd, it's a suburban thing, believe me, my friends that live in the city had never heard of such a thing.

Anyway, so he has a refrigerated truck and I examine the goods and end up buying close to $400 worth of meat and seafood. Everything looked phenomenal and the timing couldn't be more perfect after the last storm.

The next morning the baby wakes up around 7am and I notice how unbelievably dark it seems for being so late. Okay, must be a little rainy out...go to the living room and see that it's thundering, lightening and raining pretty hard. Well, that was just the beginning. I swear I thought I was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz...It was such a violent storm that at one point the rain and wind were so conflicted that you couldn't see ANYTHING. It was like looking outside into a gray mass. The dog was scared to death. The baby was growling back at the thunder (my how the behaviors have switched). And all I could think was "PLEASE, DEAR LORD, DON'T LET THE POWER GO OUT!!!"

The power flickered a few times. No big deal. Then...BOOM! Gone, out, darkness...The power went out again. This time it went out for only 2 days but somehow I think it's all my fault. I jinxed it by restocking our freezer. So, once we were able to venture out and assess the damage we could see that the damage was extensive! There were numerous trees down on my street alone. With those trees came the power lines. When we were finally able to venture out of our hood in the car it was frightening. It looked like a war zone out there. I am assuming it was another tornado because there were actual areas where a whole cluster of large trees was just cut off as if they were chopped in half. Leveled. It was strange. We went to my in-law's for one night and one day. No matter how "lovely" it is to visit people. It's never like being at home. I just wanted to be HOME!

Lights were out for days and days. Traffic was a mess. It is amazing and scary how dependent we are on electricity, but more so, the power company! Yeah, power's great but you kind of need the power company to come out and restore and maintain it...

I contacted the meat guy to ask him to come back and pick up our lot but he gave me a lesson in dry ice! Did you know that they sell dry ice at Safeway grocery stores? I didn't but I sure do now! He also taught me how to use it in a fridge and freezer. I was thankful for that because it saved us lots and lots of money and headache! Anyway, power is back and we're back to normal, until the next time. Really considering investing in a generator...