Monday, February 2, 2009

The saga continues... day 5!

On Saturday afternoon we went back to our house, and on the way we noticed that some houses had LIGHTS on and our neighbors' generators were off. We were very excited. As I pulled into the driveway, I noticed a note on on our door. I figured Vectren (power company) left it saying our power was restored... Well, that's not exactly what it said. It said something like "power off, not Vectren problem, damage to mast". I almost cried.
On the second day of the storm a large branch fell and pulled our cable line out of the house (and we can't even get on the list of 20,000 people who need repairs until our electricity is back... oh, and our cable also provides our internet and phone). Well, apparently it also pulled our electric meter out of the wall. We've now learned that we are responsible for that... Yesterday, Pete called for an electrician and we are supposed to hear back today with an estimate for when they can come and fix it.
So, on Saturday we headed back to Vanessa's house for the 4th night. They were excellent hosts and we appreciate all they did for us, but we were ready to get back to our own stuff!! Sunday the kids and I went to church and after Michael (Vanessa's husband) planned on hauling his generator to our house and hooking it up with his special cord that would run our furnace, fridge and some lights. Our next door neighbor also offered his generator. So, we got the neighbor's generator and Michael's cable and we were ready to make this thing work. Well it didn't. Michael's cable wouldn't connect to neighbor's generator because one was 12o v and the other was 130 v. So, we were back to hauling Michael's generator to our house, but we decided to check our dryer plug first (I don't understand exactly how this works, but Michael was going to take us off the electrical grid and run the house on the generator by plugging into our dryer plug). His cable wouldn't fit our dryer plug... We *could* still run a couple of space heaters (which we don't own), but that didn't sound terribly appealing to me... When I was at church I was offered the key to a 2 bedroom condo, but I had declined. I quickly made a phone call and went and picked up that key!!! The condo's owner is currently in France, and when she heard about the storm she called and offered it for anyone who might need it. We would be the second family to stay there (their power had come back on so they didn't need it anymore). So, we spent our 5th night in a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom condo with power, heat, and cable!!! The kids' bedroom is decorated in Hello Kitty and Littlest Petshop, so Hannah is in little girl heaven :)

2 comments:

~Debbi~ said...

Wow, how nice is that condo owner? How long can you stay? Keep us updated. I'm sure the kids think this is a big adventure (mine always do, even when it's just a 10 minute power outage - long enough to light a bunch of candles and then feel stupid!) but I know it's a pain for the grownups. Hang in there!

Anonymous said...

Oh Brooke! I can't wait for your life to get back to normal ;)