Hurricane Michael arrived in Virginia yesterday afternoon and evening and was down graded to a tropical storm. It spawned multiple tornados across the state and as hubby and I went to bed the power blipped off. The generator kicked on, but then the power came back and I thought we were past the worst. Turns out I slept through the worst (winds of 30 to 40 mph) and when I woke up at 5:30 a.m. I learned that we had lost power completely just after 2:30 a.m.

The generator is on and continues to run, and I’m very grateful to have it. We did not have a generator at our other house when Hurricane Isabel came through years ago and we lived without power (meaning also no running water as we were on a well) for 12 days. My children were young then and open to the idea of camping indoors and basically toileting outdoors. We listened to the battery operated radio and went to fetch ice every other day or so. About 10 days into it, the Red Cross finally showed up but by then I had my daily cooking and cleaning routine down and didn’t need their help. I just wanted my power back.

In any case, Michael has turned off the lights throughout the Northern Neck and added some pretty significant flooding just for fun. There are three roads (two of them heavily used by local residents) with bridges gone, so they are blocked. All have detours that are negotiable, but in the dark of the storm last night, vehicles ended up nose down in two of those washed out catastrophes. I understand there was also flooding in several communities that seem always to flood out whenever we have heavy rains (and we got about 6 to 7 inches in about 4 hours). Many, many trees are down or broken and have fallen on houses and across roadways. The gravel at the entrance to our driveway once again decided to slide off into the ditch.

My husband went out and with the help of a neighbor, cut up and moved three trees that had fallen across our lane blocking egress. Then he came in and got me and we went out and picked up branches from trees in our yard that had fallen in our yard and driveway and moved a bunch of #3 gravel (basically small rip rap) from a recently delivered pile to the end of the driveway. We shoveled much of the pea gravel that had washed into the ditch drain, out of the ditch and back on top of the now rip rapped driveway. Maybe the darn stuff will stay put next time. If not, I’m seriously thinking of buying a bunch of bagged cement powder and gluing everything together. I’m tired of moving half the driveway out of the ditch every time we have a heavy rain.

And, of course, I can’t get a cell phone signal. My husband can, but he is using a national carrier. I went with the cheap plan and so right now I’ve got no service.

Because of the power outage and the road issues, the basket weaving class I had planned to take today was indefinitely postponed. Just as well, since I was needed to help shovel gravel…

And because the generator can only do so much, there is no electricity in my painting studio and without lights it’s kind of hard to see what I’m doing, so no painting happened today, either.

We have computers working thanks to the generator, but if you want to talk to me, you need to send an email or a Facebook message.  I’m grateful for options today. I’ll have to go outside to paint before too many days pass. Could be interesting over the next few days or weeks.