No Power

I realize it's ironic to talk about power outages on a blog which clearly requires power. But I'm at the library not close to our neighborhood, claiming back a few of my tax dollars by charging my cell phone here.

We had a windstorm on Sunday thanks to our friend Ike. When I say windstorm, I mean a hurricane without the rain. Friends in downtown Columbus live in a building that can withstand winds up to 90 mph. Apparently, they only got up to 86mph. And where, you ask, were we during that excitement?

Why, out on the sidewalk in front of our house with the rest of the neighborhood, of course. In our neighborhood, natural disasters are like block parties without the chips and dip. (Though the beer was present.) We stood around for hours listening to the horrible cracking sounds and watching the tops of our trees fall off. We lost the one in front of our house and an apple tree in the back was saved from falling by Benjamin's hearfelt prayers. (Story on the next post.)

The power went out on Sunday afternoon. It's Tuesday and it's still not on. They told us not to expect it until Thursday. Ugh. It's been fun in a lot of ways, though. All the neighbors hung out together yesterday helping to clean up one another's lawns from all the debris. And last night I invited people over for a bonfire (to burn the debris) and a feast to cook everything in our fridges that was going bad. It was wonderful. We sat around the fire while the kids ran around playing together. It made me unspeakable amounts of happy to have time with the people I love and to enjoy a campfire and good food, too. Lack of power seems like a tiny price to pay for such happy memories.