Irene at Toad Woods: Update 2:14 am Monday

We're luckier than I knew. The National Grid outage map has Toad Woods solidly in the Wales outage area affecting 1,062 customers since 6:37 am Sunday. I'm glad we're not among them.

There's a teeny, tiny bare slice on the map about 1/3 mile away -- it's the only clear space between this outage area and another one affecting 3,398 customers since 8:49 am Sunday. There are 26 separate outages in all in the 18 mile wide, 8 mile tall map I looked at first. Zooming out to see the whole map is even more sobering. For as gentle as Irene was around here today, she still had her way with way too many lives.

Verizon landline phone service is back. Susan reached Fred on his Sprint cellphone, but mine still shows no service, no how.

Irene seems to have taken several hours along with her when she blew herself out of the area. If you find any of them among the branches and other things she dropped along her path, please return them to me. Thank you.

Grief Sucks, Day 2

Real sleep Saturday night came as a welcome relief. The big challenge of the noonish morning was getting dressed. I was all about comfort clothes today, but the more I looked in my closet and drawers for a comfort top, the more my heart and mind kept telling me that I haven't any comfort clothes that are up to this.

( And so on... )

Various things that needed accomplishing got accomplished. Other things I would have liked to have made some progress on didn't get any time from me at all. But I survived the day and that is a Good Thing. Many thanks to all of you for helping make that possible, for helping ease my own way through it.