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The house in Connecticut is still out of power, and ETA puts power coming back on in 7+ days. Most of the traffic lights in our neck of the woods are still out, and while they’ve cleared some of the roads, others are still blocked– mostly by downed trees, moreso than flooding.

My grandparents had to be evacuated in Delaware due to tornado threats in their town. Several homes in my aunt’s apartment complex were destroyed, although hers is intact, thank goodness, and she spent the night in a high school that was serving as a shelter. My grandparents went to my cousins’ house. One of my other cousins lives in a trailer park where she said that her trailer and three next to hers were all right, but everything after that was destroyed by a tornado. I am just so relieved that everyone in my family made it through safely.

At around 2 am Saturday-into-Sunday, I shut down my computer, ready to go to bed, and the power blinked out. I laughed, certain that my timing had just been impeccable– but two minutes later, the power came back on.

So I started turning off lights, when I heard the most tremendous noise coming from outside. The wind was loud, but it wasn’t the wind. It was the chickens. Crying. Now the chickens were as safe as they could be, in a storm pen inside the stable, with things to climb on if the stable flooded (unlikely, since it’s at the highest point on the property). But they were crying so loudly and so mournfully, it was like nothing I’d ever heard. Screaming chickens. For a second, I considered going outside to see if they were all right– I feared the worst, a problem with the stable or a wild animal that found its way in. But common sense told me that going outside in the height of a hurricane to check on chickens was not the wisest choice I could make, so I went to bed (in the basement, as my bedroom is just beneath two massive old sugar maples).

I woke up at 12:24 pm to discover no power and the storm more or less dissipated– it was still rainy and windy, but there were patches of sun, and it was perfectly reasonable to go outside. We made some scrambled eggs on the grill, ate some blueberry pie that my mother had made the day before, and made a lot of headway on de-cluttering the room that is eventually going to be our bar, let the chickens out, and hunted down the cat, who was hiding in a ball in the loft in my bedroom (my bedroom used to be a hayloft). It was probably the point closest in the whole house to the wind, so possibly not the most intuitive choice for hiding, but whatever she wants to do, you know.

The chickens, by the way, were totally fine, if their feathers were a bit ruffled (literally).

We went to the neighbors’ house, and helped get things ready for their daughter’s wedding next weekend, and had some quick dinnery things along with copious amounts of delicious homemade wine, and used their generator to re-charge our phones and check the mass transit situation. The train line I usually take home had downed trees on it, so it was pretty apparent I was not going to get to work today, even if the roads got cleared (most of the roads out of our neighborhood were blocked by trees). We munched on some quickly-melting gelato, and went home. I called Brendan, who had already come to this conclusion on his own, and told me that out neighborhood here was totally fine– we live about three blocks apart from each other on top of a hill, so it seemed pretty good.

When we got home, though, we discovered that the chickens’ coop had been blown shut by the wind, while they were all outside doing chickeny chicken things (all but one), and they were all huddling in a pile on top of the coop all shivering and cold and awwwww poor chickens. My mama picked them up one by one and put them in their nice warm coop, and they cuddled against her for warmth.

By then, it was getting too dark to see, so out came the battery-operated lanterns.

I read for about two hours until my lanterns all started to fade, and then went to bed at around eleven, and woke up at nine this morning– to a distinct lack of any power.

So my mother and I cleaned out the fridge– but left the freezers shut tight, in the hopes that maybe the power would come back on before the food defrosted completely. And then we made up this delicious lunch:

That is some delicious gnocchi with brown butter and crispy fried sages, and some yummy wienerschnizel. I am quite pleased with the fact that this is what we managed to cook on our outdoor grill (since the stove in the house is electric).

We did some other cleanup chores, then chased the chickens around to get them back in their coop– they hate going in in the middle of a beautiful day! And left to get home.

Well, getting home was a pain in the butt, since there were still a lot of roads on our usual route that were blocked by down trees, and still a lot of traffic lights out in the area. A trip that usually takes an hour took three hours, but after three hours, I was home safe in my apartment that still has power, nothing damaged, and I was able to turn on my air conditioning, and, realizing that I was probably about the filthiest I would be for a month, scrubbed the heck out of my bathtub, which was looking for a cleaning, before taking a Daenerys-Targaryen-hot shower, and scrubbed and descaled and shaved and did a nice face mask and all sorts of lovely things. And then I put on a dress! A dress, after breaking my I Don’t Wear Pants rule twice over the weekend (this is a rule I have, in which I only wear pants when I absolutely must, for things like beekeeping), and it was lovely and wonderful and I felt very grateful that all was well.

My parents are still out of power, and we found out only after we left that it may be a week till the house gets power back, and I don’t know if there’s an ETA for the apartment (also out!). I feel really badly for them; I’m not sure if they can get water without a pump since they’re on the second floor. I told my mother she could come back over here, but she declined.

So I went out to Whiskey Monday, saw some new friends, met some new-new friends, had some lovely drinks, and now I am home and so sleepy in a luscious, languorous way that is the result of hard work that makes it very satisfying.

I hope that all of you are safe and cozy and the things and people you love are intact! And that your chickens did not cry too hard.