The week following the storm, I kept an eye on my modem. While I had electricity, water (albeit I had to boil it) and telephone, my internet was still down. I was slightly disappointed but knew that there were so many people who were so much worse off than I was that I was just grateful to have power. By the end of that week, our county still had 3100 people without power so I was a lucky one. Since I had no way to feed my addiction, I cleaned. We left in a hurry while the power was out and the house was a mess, so I started in the worst room. The kitchen. While the washing machine and dryer continually ran, I washed dishes, cleaned countertops, swept floors.
I even mopped!
By Thursday, I had not only cleaned my kitchen but kept it clean. I had cleaned bathtubs, toilets, sinks and mopped both bathrooms. I straightened my bedroom. I had tons of laundry folded, put away and was almost caught up. All while the kids were out of school and complaining about being bored. I called and found the boil water order had been lifted (there were so many rumors going around and no one ever confirmed it had been lifted on the news) and determined that the tower that supplied my internet was indeed down. I went about my business, trying to keep the kids busy in the meantime. My parents power came back on Thursday as well.
Friday, it warmed up enough that I could send them outside to play. Limbs were cleaned up around my property (i.e. we didn't have trees big enough to have limbs) so I sent them outside to burn off all that pent up energy. Brady had basketball practice Friday afternoon, which the coaches graciously burned off even more energy. (If you know Brady, then you know that he has enough energy for 15 kids.) They shot baskets and ran. And ran.
That afternoon, we made it home after the practice and the kids were soaking up the last bits of daylight while I was getting ready to start supper. I walked through the living room (for a reason that is completely lost to me now) and glanced at my modem as I had done a thousand different times since we got home. And it wasn't blinking the little red light screaming "Ha ha I'm still not working!!" Instead, it had a nice, bright green light that said "Go on, have a seat and try me." So I did. It was like the fog was lifted from my home. My browser pulled up. My email accounts came up. I was back online! Then I had to leave.
Saturday, we had plans to go to Indiana to visit Hubby's sister and purchase some gas logs. She had found four sets at the Lowes there and on Thursday they still had them. They were gone by the time we got there Saturday but we found the last set at a Menards not far from their home and snatched them.
Hubby and Dad installed them a week ago yesterday. A nice set of vent-free, carbon monoxide free, thermostat controlled, heat producing logs.While we were there, my sister-in-law gave Brady and me a much needed haircut (and me a color). Brady looks like a completely different kid now.
For me I told her I needed something that I could just wash and dry but I wanted different. So she made the color much different. Red underneath again.
Orange-y colored streaks on top instead of blond.
And the overall color. No this is not how I usually wear it but let one of the streaks show so the entire effect could be seen. 
I love it! It's set up that I can have small streaks or wide streaks depending on how I part my hair and show off my red at the bottom with a simple ponytail. And it's different. Just what I asked for!Sunday was spent installing the logs, breaking in the Wii Fit game we bought while in Indiana and trying to get the kids ready for school to start again on Monday, so I was limited in my time to spend online. So Monday, after I shipped the kids off to school and Hubby off to work, I got some quality time with my internet! How I missed it so!
Last week kept me busy with school starting back up. Not only did school start, but so did basketball practices and strings rehearsals. High winds caused my power to kick off and on all day on Wednesday, so I had to shut down my computer for much of the day. Hubby also came home early last week so that we could get him to a doctors office. Thursday he was diagnosed with the later stages of strep, a severe upper respiratory infection, as well as some virus that's going around. Two prescriptions later, he's feeling better and back on the road today. I sat down many different times last week trying to start this post only to discover something that required my immediate attention and I had to get up to tackle the task at hand. So on to this past weekend.
Because ice had prevented the last two weeks of basketball tournaments, the wonderful coordinators of our local little league basketball decided that the tournaments must be completed this past weekend. So for three very busy days, we had tournaments. Belle and Bryce played on Friday night and both teams advanced to the second round of their tournament (Brady played his first round the weekend before the storm and had advanced). Saturday morning, Bryce had the first game at 8am, which his team proceeded to win. Belle played next at 9:40 and they lost, much to their disappointment, but they put up a great fight. We moved on to a new elementary school to watch Brady's team win his second round of the tournament at 12:30. At 1pm, we moved to the middle school to watch Bryce's team lose in the semi-finals. They did a wonderful job and fought hard to stay on top but just came up short. Finally we went back to the elementary school at 4:30 to watch Brady's team advance to the final game. Unfortunately, he was feeling bad just before the game, thought he felt well enough to play but after his first rotation on the floor, he realized he just couldn't do it. So he sat out the rest of the game.
Yesterday, his team played the championship game at the middle school. They were behind most of the game, until they managed to tie it up at the end of the second half. There was eleven seconds left on the clock and we had the ball out-of-bounds under our goal. Brady's teammate got the ball in to another player who missed the shot but was rebounded under the goal on the other side by another teammate. He put the ball back up with four seconds on the clock for the winning two points! They kept the other team from scoring to win the 2nd-3rd grade championship undefeated! They were ecstatic!
Now we're up to today. The kids are in school for a make-up day from Ike's storm last fall, Hubby is on the road as of this morning and basketball season is officially over. Time to start a new round a normal for us while others are trying to create a new normal for them. All because of a bit of ice.
1 comment:
Way to go Brady!
Isn't it amazing the stuff that can get done if there isn't television or internet to distract us. I can't remember the last time I REALLY mopped the kitchen well! LOL!
Post a Comment