Sit Down in Darkness

Mother Nature had a temper tantrum yesterday.

The heat and humidity that had been enveloping my part of New Jersey finally exploded, sending walls of water down the sides of the enclosed porch where we sat (after just getting back into the garage in time from our time out and about Saturday) and watched fierce winds nearly snap the dogwood tree in half.

We received three days worth of rain in 30 minutes. The globally warmed air masses that had sat over us and kept temperatures 10 or so degrees more than the norm, ran into some cooler air creating what the forecasters call "an unstable air mass." That has to be the understatement of the year.

What we saw was the kind of weather you would expect in a tropical rain forest, not suburban New Jersey. We later learned streets we had driven just a few hours earlier were closed because of downed trees, snapped power lines and flooding.

This kind of weather, we've been warned, will become more common now that ice caps are melting, waters are warming and air masses are stuck over us bringing too much cold or too much heat to what used to be called temperate zones.

Twenty minutes into watching this maelstrom in our backyard, I realized if one of our trees fell on the porch roof it would kill us. Ten minutes after the rain let up just a bit a hummingbird came to the feeder. It fed a long time and then went into the nearby apple tree to ride out the storm.

I walked inside and was not surprised to find the power out.

A power failure is not the time to discover many of your flashlights don't have working batteries. Luckily, we had quite a few that were working, and radios with batteries. It is also not the time to realize your neighbors - the ones you wave at and rarely speak to - would have no idea if you died during this storm and could care less.

Calling friends from our hot car, where I had the phone plugged in to charge, produced no results either. No one was taking my call. One friend later told me she heard my message and was surprised because she thought I was so self-sufficient.

MH and I can take care of ourselves but there are times, I've now learned, that is not enough.

And then there was the power company.

Mine is owned by a conglomerate in Ohio. The first time I called, at 3:30pm, 15 min. after the outage, I got an automated voice, gave my information and was told the power would return at 6pm. At 7pm, still in the dark, I called again. This time the automated voice shunted me to a customer center, likely in Ohio, where the woman was completely in the dark, so to speak.

Three times she told me if the problem was my fuse box, it would cost $85 for a service call. Three times I told her the entire street was out. Then she told me I was the first to report the problem. I exploded. What the hell have you been doing for 3 1/2 hours? No doubt she used my phone number to gain access to my records - I did not care to look for the last bill with the account number on it - to see I had indeed called and assure me crews would be out soon.

Would I want a call telling me the power was back? (This "service" from the utility always annoys and amuses. Why would I want you to tell me something I can see?)

Sure, I said, and then hung up.

For the next 3 hours I tried not to go insane as the den, which was the coolest room in the house (we had been out all day and had not put the AC on), slowly warmed. I tried not to worry about whether the basement would flood because the sump pump has no backup battery. I tried not to worry about the food in the refrigerator. I got out my portable WiFi and my laptop with its long battery life. I could see sites but not send messages.

I discovered that while it is nice to have that real keyboard on my old BlackBerry, not a lot of websites are set up for old BlackBerrys anymore. MH's Samsung allowed him access to the utility's site - a site put up after Hurricane Sandy kept much of the state without power for over a week - and we learned that at one point only 11 people in my town had no power. That number corresponded to the number of houses on my street! That was the nadir.

To see lights on a block away while I was reading by flashlight depressed me. That I was reading the essays of William Styron - author of "Lie Down in Darkness" and "Darkness Visible" - provided a bit of macabre humor.

It was almost nice to see those houses on the next block lose power, too.

We went upstairs to lie down, wondering how we'd sleep. I had one window open a crack for air as the rain continued to fall. We heard the utility trucks.

At 10:15 p.m., seven hours after it started, it was over. The lights and the fan went on. We waited to see if it would last. It has.

At 10:30 p.m., the utility called to say power wasn't expected to be back on until 12:30 a.m.

Waiting for Sandy

Hurricane Sandy, or what the media call "Frankenstorm," is a few days away from hitting somewhere along the Midatlantic. There is a good chance it will strike the Jersey shore, but even if it is not a direct hit we will all be feeling the effects.

October 2011 snowstorm

Didn't we go through this around now, last year? Why yes, we did. Only last time we had a freak snowstorm that hit the leafy trees, pulled them down and disrupted power for a while.

This year the expected cold front won't make it here in time but the moon will be full and the tides would be higher than normal anyway. With the expected very high winds pushing high water there could be severe flooding along the coast, and that includes the tip of lower Manhattan.

Here in my part of New Jersey, my husband, with his scientific way of thinking, has been buying nonperishable groceries, restocking the battery case, refilling the flashlights. This morning I held the ladder as he climbed to the lower roof gutters to pull out debris.

At the same time, here is how many of those in my area were getting ready. They were blowing leaves to the curb.

I have lived in the suburbs for nearly two decades and I still can't understand this lawn lust, this need to water excessively, cut to literally within an inch of the grass's life and blow every last thing off to the street, heedless of whether it impedes a person's or a car's ability to travel down said street.

For me, it is a USELESS and WASTEFUL activity to blow several weeks's worth of leaves to the curb just ahead of a hurricane or tropical storm.

Best-case scenario - the leaves blow back on the homeowner's lawn, forcing him or her to do the job all over again, or pay someone else to do it all over again.

Worst-case scenario - the rivers expected will be blocked from going down the drains, creating ponds in the middle of the street. Already-treacherous travel will worsen. Water may even back up into homes.

The noise from the leaf blower-fans, which are much more power than the electric-powered blower I use only as a last resort, is deafening. As I sit in my home office, making plans for what to do to keep working and living should we lose power, the sound is as loud and as annoying as a continual car alarm or a siren.

Even as these lawn services or homeowners finish, the breeze brings down another handful of leaves. But hey, you've just paid for several big guys to do 10 minutes of work to give you 14 seconds of spiffy green lawn. Hurrah, I guess you're better than me.

I can barely see the grass in my backyard for all the elm, oak and maple leaves but there is no way I am going to go out when more leaves - and perhaps some tree limbs - come down in the storm. There are more important things.

These people will probably also freak out because they can't watch their flat-screen tvs, use their fancy big ovens and may lose what's in their fancy refrigerators.

Barnegat jetty. Will it be enough to protect the coast from Sandy?

Some do plan. There's my neighbor with the big gas-powered generator. Last year he ran his continually. It made a lot of noise and stunk of gasoline but at least he kept his refrigerator and other appliances going.

As these "freak" storms become more common, as even more of those who deny there is anything called global warning start wondering about all these extremes - too much rain, too much wind, too much heat, no snow, too much cold - we've been having, I am going to have to plan to buy a generator, too, for the next storm.

Even in my modest home, if I don't have power, I don't work, and if I don't work, I don't earn money. That is, literally and figuratively, the bottom line.

But at least I do not live near the water. All those people who built homes on barrier islands and those other people who tore down low-lying bungalows to put up high-profile behemoth beach houses should be ashamed of themselves. But they aren't. The builders got their permits and are long gone, and the homeowners will rebuild.

I don't want to wish this storm on anyone, especially anyone on the Delmarva, where I expect to be traveling in a few weeks, but I hope Sandy's blow isn't as hard in New Jersey as I fear it will be.