slammin' sandy

One year ago, the famous October snowstorm put us personally without power for 8 days bringing me literally to tears a few times as I tried to juggle work, the kids being off school all week and just trying to cope with figuring out how to exist without power, all topped off with a delayed Halloween - my favorite holiday!!  Who could have thought that we would be in such a similar scenario one year later??    Obviously my husband Tom, who insisted we hire electricians to install a big fancy generator which at the time seemed like an expensive indulgence because deep down, I truly NEVER believed something of that magnitude would happen again and even more incredibly this soon!   HOW WRONG I WAS!!! (yup, you heard that right)  And I can almost say that the annoyingly loud humming noise it makes, which we hear throughout the neighborhood as though we are in a post-apolcalyptic world, is a comfort to me knowing that we can almost exist in a 'business as usual' fashion when this same scene last year had me rendered immobile with panic.  Even though our cable internet is not working, my little handy verizon mifi card is doing the job!  So I am not going to complain at all... even though 2 of our big trees fell, one on our neighbor's car, and one on the power lines - neither landing on our house which could easily have happened if the wind gusted "to" rather than "fro".... and even though I know that our house in LBI is underwater after new kitchen cabinets and carpets were installed one week ago... nope, you will not hear one complaint from me.  Halloween is once again postponed a few days - very spooky, pun intended.  But I am truly thankful that no one was hurt and that I live in a neighborhood where so many people with generators have offered their homes to others for showers and power and even with all the devastation locally, most everyone who was out walking around today seemed to be in good spirits.  It was wonderful to get so many messages from those not in this area, people from work, or relatives who are not local, to check up and make sure we were all ok.  I do feel very blessed and I want to share some photo highlights of the local effects that Hurricane Sandy had on us and some others in my neighborhood.