The news shows have dubbed this storm "The November Nor'easter". As if there has never been another one in November. I'm not positive, but doubtful that is true.
We have been fortunate, and except for a few minutes here and there, have kept power throughout the whole ordeal.
Teresa, a friend of ours, has not been so lucky and she and her 2 year old daughter and dog moved in with us Thursday evening and are anticipating staying until Saturday night at 10pm when their power is supposedly going to be restored. Brandon and Lindsey lost their power today, for 23 hours, but it has already been restored.
Lillian's room had water standing above the ceiling and maintenance came over and made holes in the drywall and drained over 10 gallons of water out of it. The rain is still coming down so the holes are still dripping, and the water spots on the ceiling are getting larger still with every hour.
The carpet in the hallway in front of the guestroom is wet. And the guestroom window has so much water damage, the molding and drywall are separating, falling down and leaking rusty water all over my curtains (now down) and the carpet.
Maintenance says they will be over next week to "fix it" although we have yet to hear what that will entail. Hopefully more than a paint job this time. Until that project is complete, Lillian is (not) sleeping on her portable cot in our room. She normally sleeps 13 hours at night, last night she was at about 7, broken with fits of screaming.
We were able to get out today to go to the mall. We braved the rain and wind, and had a good time, although one section of the mall was closed and out of power, and the children's play area was closed due to a water leak.
Teresa and I also got out to the grocery store and picked up pizza for dinner, and ran by her house. We were hopeful the power would be on earlier than predicted, but it was not. We did, however, rescue most of her frozen stuff, including her Thanksgiving turkey, all by the light of our two blackberry phones. I knew those expensive phones were good for something, if nothing else, they have a bigger screen to guide you with when the power goes out.
The good news is that Teresa's renter's insurance will cover the cost of the groceries that spoiled. She was on the phone with them tonight and they are going to deposit almost $200 into her account.
Everyone else is down for the night and R and I are following shortly. Tomorrow Savannah has gymnastics and R and I are going to try to do a couple errands, hoping the businesses we need to visit have power and no water damage.
R's duty, the Veteran's day holiday, and this nor'easter combined gave us a 6 day weekend. Too bad we couldn't have known that ahead of time and gotten out of town. Although, we would have come back to a fallen ceiling in Lillian's room and a lake on the floor, not to mention ruined pink furniture and that would have been the end of my sanity (not that there's much left at this point anyways).
A friend recently asked for photos of our playroom. That, of course, required that we clean it. We have a strip of cork tiles across the far wall, to display learning materials and completed artwork on. You can't really see it, but we have pink and orange flowers hanging from the cieling. The curtain is fabric from Ikea. The gate is a LIFESAVER. We got it from Babies R Us and attached it so the playroom (dining room) is blocked off from the living room and kitchen. Most of the time the gate is open, but we close it if I need to take a shower (or its clean and I'm keeping it that way).
Our table, also from Ikea. Perfect size but the wood portion is raised higher than the white portion, making it a complete pain in the rear to clean. We hope to get a new, flat top one at Ikea while we are in Michigan. The doll cradle is a family heirloom which houses all of her stuffed animals.
The green tubs are toys that are out of rotation. Right now the tubs contain Music, Kitchen and Little People. The VS bag on top is dress up clothes that Lillian is getting for Christmas and were just temporarily setting there. The dollhouse bookcase was made by my dad just for Lillian from a picture in the Pottery Barn catalog.
In the corner is the Learning Tower, which can be used as a lemonade stand, puppet theatre, fort or a tower to stand at the kitchen couter safely. She loves it and so do we, but its a pain in the rear to move from playroom to kitchen.
