My First Rain Day

I woke up this morning to a text from the kids’ school: canceled. In January, this is nothing unexpected. In late October, when the temperature is above 60? I hadn’t seen that coming. Yes, I’d heard there was some wind on the way and a couple inches of rain, but it didn’t seem like it would be too big of a deal this far inland.

So I chalked it up to the school being abundantly cautious.

Of course, then I looked outside when I went downstairs, and I saw the police car next to my house, blocking off the road because of a downed tree and power line. Since my road is one of the main ways to the high school, suddenly the closure made more sense.

Still, I got in the car and trekked off to work as normal. It was quite gusty, but not even raining at that point. Thirty minutes into my emails, the power at the university flickered and died. And never came back. So the university decided to delay opening until noon.

I trekked back home (in much windier, rainier conditions) noting a whole lot more power out along the way. Again, this wasn’t crazy driving. I didn’t see any other downed trees, but it looked like something had taken out a whole lot of electricity recently.

Once I was home, I got my writing done and prepped to go back again, checking the news from time to time. Then I saw how many people were without power. (Currently over 400,000). And I read an article about how the power company has said they won’t be bringing power back online until tomorrow at the earliest.

And then the university threw in the towel, and Denisa and I both got the day off.

We’re lucky. We have power and internet. About 1/3 of the state does not. And of course it makes me think of the people in Puerto Rico, and how long they’ve been without power, and how much more extreme the situation is for them. We got some gusts up here in Maine. Nothing hurricane force, but it’s still going to be a few days before we get it cleared up.

That said, I’m grateful it’s not snow. (Not something I typically ever say.) When people have no power in the winter up here, people freeze to death. I’ll take the warmer temperatures for this one.

In any case, I think I’m going to use this time to clean my room some. Here’s hoping the rest of the state can hunker down and have a quick recovery.