RE Cap

hello, girl friday here. it's been a while. i have been thinking about a few things...

storytime by candlelight. 

as a mother i find i wear lots of hats: dietician, wardrobe consultant, interior decorator, financial planner, event planner, and after this past weekend, wilderness guide. let me explain.

barbara and doug treated us to panera

a storm came through our area {the DC area that is}. did you hear? yeah. it did. and well, we had a pretty big tree limb fall on my car {again}, but this time it slid off and thankfully caused no damage. when the storm came we rode it out with our windows open. we laid in bed giggling and enjoying the cool breeze it brought with it. then the power went out. no biggie. it was around midnight. how long could it last, right? three days for us. some are still without power and they are predicting a week. who is "they" you ask. i do not know. it's just what i keep hearing whenever i ask the barista, the neighbor, the random person walking down the sidewalk. 

phones with cameras are fun in a power outage

a crazy part of this story is while we were struck without power-we being my family and a couple of neighbors, the rest of our little community went right on with their lights burning bright and their refrigerators keeping their food nice and chilled. fortunately the Mister had already planned to take our 3 older boys down to their great uncles in northern alabama for cousin club work camp {more on that in a different post}. they left me and george in the wee hours of the morning on saturday, lighting their path to the car with flashlights, dodging down branches, zig zagging their way to the interstate where they observed for miles trees uprooted and landscapes littered with limbs and debris. that "silly storm" that we had thanked for bringing cooler temps was actually something very much akin to a tornado. straight line winds. and those cool temps lasted for about 5 hours and then the heat came. and it came with a vengeance.

waking up after our camp out living room style

we cleaned out our frig and took refuge at my dear friend barbara's {more on her later too}. we swam in her salt water pool and basked in her a/c and were literally wined and dined for the weekend. i must say if you are going to be struck without power in the summer time, finding someone with a pool is a mighty nice way to bide your time {note to self we must figure out a way to get a pool in our backyard}. i forgot my swimsuit, but decided it was too hot not to swim so i jumped in the pool in my mui mui-much to the delight of the littlest. it was so fun! o, am i rambling? 

lest you think it all went splendidly the truth is we did spend a couple nights camped out in our little hillside cottage hopeful at any moment the lights would flicker on. it took barbara two days to convince us to come stay with her and doug. they even invited kipling, but we kept him home with plenty of water {they are an older couple with a really nice, CLEAN house}. 


this morning as george was swimming his morning laps, my neighbor texted to say the electricity was back on! now we are home, busy packing and cleaning in hopes of leaving for a vacation which begins in a few hours {as soon as the Mister gets home from work}. we are packing Kipling for his first "camp" experience in a kennel.


dodging branches, reading by candlelight, living without a/c, eating out, camping on the sofa and ultimately finding some really comfortable digs with hot water. that's my idea of wilderness training.


i'll be sure to report from the road. for now, this is girl friday, signing off. xo


p.s. i recently read a book on how to survive an EMP {living close to DC makes me nervous}. i must say, this little trial run convinced me i am not ready for a real catastrophe. more beach reading!