Don't even talk to me about the joys of country life

In retrospect, driving under the tree blocking my road may not have been a brilliant idea. Granted, I had watched another car drive under the trunk of the tree without scraping on the dangling branches so I knew it could be done, but I didn't even consider what would happen if the tree shifted in the high winds and continued falling (crunch), and it didn't even occur to me that squeezing under a tree that had fallen on a power line was probably not the textbook way to Arrive Alive. 

I had been driving around an obstacle course of fallen trees and limbs for more than an hour and I was eager to see whether anything big had fallen on my house, so I took a deep breath and drove under the dangling tree. On the wrong side of the road. On a blind curve. Under a tree that had fallen on a power line.

But I made it home unscathed and soon discovered that nothing big enough to do damage had fallen on my house, hurrah--but on the other hand, the power was out. Which means no heat and no well pump and therefore no water, no toilet-flushing, no lights, and did I mention no heat? Without power, my house is very quiet and very cold, but I had good flashlights and candles and plenty of blankets. Last night I lay in bed listening to the wind whipping through the trees and wondered what I would find outside in the morning, which came earlier than I'd expected: I woke around 5 needing a bathroom and more blankets.

The inside temperature fell to 54 overnight, which is not bad but also not particularly comfortable, and it was still very dark and did I mention no water? So I dressed quickly and drove a few miles up the highway to a McDonald's that had light, heat, and water. The tree I drove under yesterday had been removed, but two new trees had fallen to cover half of my road at that same blind curve. I don't know about you, but driving on the wrong side of the road on a blind curve isn't good for my blood pressure. (It didn't occur to me until much later that I'd left the house in such a hurry that I'd forgotten to take my blood-pressure pill.)

But here's the goods news: the storm didn't kill me and didn't hurt my house. The power company estimates that power will be restored by midnight tonight, although that estimate is subject to change based on unknown elements. The outage map shows a power outage affecting only 25 customers along my road, so I suspect that we won't be at the top of the priority list, especially with many more customers and businesses still lacking power in Marietta. But the campus has power (and heat, and light, and water), so I'll hang out there until things get back to normal, or as close to normal as it is possible to be when high winds are dropping trees all over the county.