What a week!!!

Well I am sure that many of you know that the Northeast of the U.S. has suffered a very bad ice storm this past week. Unfortunately, we here were right in the middle of the madness. Last Thursday night we lost power...and if you me then you know I am a big city girl at heart and do not enjoy anything remotely resembling "Little House on the Prairie"! Not that I am high maintenance or anything because I am not but I NEED the basics. Those basics have been electricity, cable, phone, internet and HOT water! If even one or two of those elements are missing from everyday life then I am not very pleasant to be around. So, imagine if NONE of those elements are present? Now add the fact that those elements are all missing and for 4+ days!!! We didn't even know what was going on around us as we had no access to local tv broadcasts..everything we have for phone, cable internet are with one company and when that company is down then we are screwed...But the absolute worse part was no electricity..and no means to heat our hot water tank!! WE did however have a generator that is wired in to our electrical box but the items on it are limited. You would not believe the expense we have gone through in gasoline to run the generator for all those hours!! Yikes!! But it could have been worse..we could have been dealing with last month's gas prices.. I had no access to my etsy shop for all of those days too which really put a huge damper on my holiday sales as I had many great promotions set up to offer...My daughter was able to travel to her college to check on internet correspondences...so she was able to get back to those customers who contacted me during that time..But that is it...The ironic thing about being without all of my usuals is that once I got them back..like cable, there was NOTHING on..over 200 channels...so I shut it off and watched some more DVD's like I had been doing all week...I have to say..taking a shower..a hot one..was an absolute joy today!! It does make one appreciate those small things we tend to take for granted...We are very fortunate to have gotten our power back as there are still over 100,000 homes still without power! Many of those homes are being told that they may not have power back until Christmas!!! Some areas were so bad that the town's entire electrical system has to be rebuilt! Amazing and a testament to the awesome-ness of nature...all of this was created from rain...then the temperature plummeted that evening...and voila!! We lost quite a few large branches from our big trees in the backyard..a few hitting the house but no real damage..If you stood outside you could actually hear all of the trees cracking and falling down all over the neighborhood..The damage was unbelievable...along with those downed trees were an astronomical amount of downed power lines...The thing that really sustained me was knowing that so many others were experiencing the same thing as we were..and everyone else we saw was unshowered too..so the stink and dirty hair was acceptable..I don't ever want to go through that again BUT I choose to live in New England....so the possibility is always there...That's it for now....I am trying to get myself get caught back up on all the missed work and laundry and everything else..so...until later..