As I'm sure you will all be incredibly relieved to hear, I did eventually make it to my parents' house after my long, exhausting, and well-documented airport day on Thursday. On my return to the airport on Friday morning at 4:30 in the a. - m. (which, by the way, is ENTIRELY too early to go to the airport, but sacrifices must be made), I boarded my plane with no problems and flew the first leg of my journey to Atlanta. After an only slightly harrowing run-around to figure out which gate my plane was ACTUALLY at, I settled in next to a girl from Georgia who was going to visit her basketball-playing boyfriend at Dartmouth where, she informed me, she had been a student, but left NH to attend community college in Georgia because she didn't like the fact that NH has so much organic food. She likes her food to have flavor, thank you very much. She and I chatted about the merits of flavorful food for a few minutes, but were interrupted by a phone call from my mother, which went something like this:
Me: "Hello?"
Mom: "Where are you?!?!?!"
Me: "Um, in Atlanta, waiting for my plane."
Mom: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN ATLANTA?!?!?! WE HAD AN ICE STORM AND WE DON'T HAVE POWER AND WE MIGHT NOT EVEN BE ABLE TO COME GET YOU!!!!!!!"
(Okay, okay, maybe that's a little bit exaggerated and not fair, but that's what it seemed like to my poor, sleep-deprived mind.)
Me: "Uh... don't worry... see you in a few hours... bye!" *click*
Since my flight was on time, and we were getting ready to board, I didn't think it was necessary to get all worked up about a little bit of ice, so I went ahead and got in line with the rest of the tired-looking NH-bound people. Our plane was not at a real gate (hence my difficulty in finding it), so they loaded us onto one of those airport shuttle buses to drive us out to our plane. That was interesting, considering how many people can fit on a plane vs. how many people can fit on a bus. I won't go into immense detail, but it made the already-grouchy NH people all the more enjoyable once they were packed in like sardines. I found that the attitude remained the same once we actually got on the plane. I was lucky enough to be sitting in the exit row next to the grouchiest man of all, who I made sure to question cheerfully and in great detail about whether or not he felt capable of performing his exit-row duties should we experience some kind of plane emergency. My mother called while I was in the middle of all that, calmer this time, and so I gave her a description of the people on the plane. I have to say, NH people are seriously assholes. I'm trying to remove curse words from my vocabulary, but seriously people, WTL?! (The "L" stands for love. Which is not a curse word yet.) Take a deep breath and try hard to make it look like you're not actually miserable. Life could be so much worse.
So, with this cheer and optimism, I began day two of my trip home.
As the plane began its descent over NH, I realized that I should have stayed down south. From the air, I could see that everything was absolutely coated with ice. Thankfully, the Manchester airport has a heated runway, so landing the plane was not a problem. Once I got into the airport, I discovered that everyone working there had the same attitude as the people on the plane. A little Mexican man who wheeled my dog to me on a dolly informed me that the crate she was in was entirely too small and I was a terrible, inhumane pet owner. By that time, the attitude was catching, so I muttered something unflattering about illegal immigrants and took my dog, who was sleeping happily in the back of her crate. Thankfully, my parents came to get me shortly thereafter with no issue, and after a delicious lunch of Indian buffet (probably my favorite kind of buffet, if I have to rank them), we headed back to their house. It is important to note that all roads lead to my house, really, and there was only one which was passable. Trees and lines were down all over the place, and no one had power. See figure A.
It became more and more obvious as we neared my house that this was not an isolated incident. Nearly all of the area was without power, and the prognosis was not good. That evening, we ended up eating Wendy's for dinner (the line was out the door with people who could not cook), and going to Starbucks so I could charge my phone, my only outlet to the powered, connected world. See figure B, charging my phone in Starbucks sans shower.
Delightful!
To add to all of the fun, I had brought home a suitcase full of dirty laundry, operating under the (ridiculous) assumption that I would be able to wash clothes when I got home. This was, obviously, silly, and I will not do that again. (I wore dirty clothes until Tuesday night, when I had the good sense to wash some underwear at my aunt and uncle's house.)
Saturday night, still without power, I realized that I could take a shower at the storm shelter set up in our middle school. My brother drove me down and I had my first shower in 48 hours. It was delightful. See figure C, a sign on the door of the shelter.
Priorities!My family was surviving well, as we have a woodstove and a gas stove, so we could cook and heat our house. Saturday night we made chili, and Sunday morning I made toast. See figure D, no-power toast.
Yum!
By the fifth day without power, my family and everyone else was beginning to lose their minds, as evidenced by the newspaper. See figure E.
I made a prediction that it would be two more days without power, and it was. This afternoon, I awoke from a nap to find that my alarm clock was flashing at me to reset it and the Christmas candle in my window was glowing brightly. My family returned to their normal sane selves almost immediately, my mom made a delicious dinner of pork tenderloin with apples, and I wrote this blog.
The forecast for this weekend is at least one foot of snow accumulated before Monday. Say prayers for us that the power stays on this time!
