Power's Out and Back

So Hurricane Irene blew through this weekend (just days after an earthquake, which added to the fun for the weather-phobic second grader). The biggest problem we had was a 23-hour power failure and about five bags of mostly sticks and twigs.

The girls were a little apprehensive trying to fall asleep without power on Sunday night (the power failure happened around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, while the girls were asleep — although Evelin and I were awake, watching the downed line melt the sidewalk —), but they were doing well ... until about 8:05 p.m. when the power flickered back on for about five minutes. Quinlan jumped up and started her "Disney Princess: Ultimate Song Collection", then hit pause to move her blanket and pillow to her preferred sleeping spot on the floor, head next to the air conditioning vent. Sadly, the power cut back off before she could hit play on the CD player, and Q — had to fall asleep without the dulcet tone of Belle and Cinderella.

Flash forward to about 11:30 p.m., and I sit straight up in bed; certain it is 8:something in the morning and we've all overslept. Turns out, no, we hadn't overslept the power had just come back on ... and we'd fallen asleep with most of the lights in our bedroom on. I got up, reset the clock and alarm, turned off the lights that had been inadvertently turned on downstairs, and then went back to sleep.

Flash forward to about 4:45 a.m. I had woken up about 20 minutes earlier and was downstairs making lunches, filling the dishwasher, and a few other chores that required electricity, when I heard Quinlan's princess CD start up. She wakes up early sometimes (and this was quite early, especially since school was cancelled for the day due to wide-spread power failures), but I wasn't going to try arguing with her about it ... and I was hoping she'd fall back asleep.

Flash forward an hour to about 5:45 a.m., Quinlan comes downstairs weeping: "Daddy! I can't fall asleep ..." I told her that it was really early, but it was morning and she could be awake if she wanted. A very excited little girl then spent a good bit of time jumping around and bouncing off the walls — she still thought it was the beginning of the night ...