Tales of Ike, pt. 1

Well, loyal readers, it's been a long time since posts and much has happened. The big joy here is that we have electricity back. The boys seemed pretty much untraumatized by the storm. We put them to bed as normal that night and then as things started to get a little crazy around 11 we brought Connor downstairs, and there we all stayed for the night. Jamie woke up several times but thunder seems to scare him more than wind so, as unbelievably noisy at it was, he never seemed alarmed. Connor just slept through the whole thing.

The real story, however, started the next day. Our power had gone out at about midnight after several false starts. We got a tantalizing flicker of power at about 7, but then nothing. We all walked out to see a river on Calumet St., a pool in our backyard and a lake in the park next door. That day itself was fine, but the hurricane left muggy hot weather in its wake and the first night without air conditioning was hot hot hot. Jamie, for reasons unknown, INSISTED on sleeping under the covers despite complaining vociferously about the heat. Amazingly he did fall asleep, but when he woke up at 4:30 (more on that to follow) he was soaked in sweat, as if he'd been in the bath. Sarah and I slept not at all, her because she and Connor were being tormented by the mosquitoes, me because of the hot still air. The experience has scarred Connor, who has something of a complex about mosquitoes, whom he refers to as "e-bogs", as in "ladybugs." Unfortunate to lump the lovely, harmless ladybug in with the mosquito, that proof of the imperfection of the world, but there you have it.

Things got even better at about 4:30 when the alarm started going off. Seems as the battery ran out it put the system into some kind of panic mode. But because the power was out and the batteries were gone we couldn't turn it off. Even in the midst of the ear-splitting noise, which was soon joined by a chorus of screaming children, the irony of the fact that there was somehow power for the alarm to sound, but not for us to turn it off, was not lost on us. Eventually, however, it seems to have worn itself out and stopped. Sitting on the stairs in the aftermath of this, and in a surprisingly chipper mood, Jamie opined, "This is a SPECIAL night!" Special, indeed. We decided more or less on the spot to avoid more special nights and decamp to Corpus Christi. More on that to follow.