So yes, I have power back. I really should have found time to blog about the ice storm a lot sooner, but I’ve been all wrapped up in school related things mostly. I am a obsessed teacher. I obsess over school things. :blush: Our district is being audited next week and so I’ve had a lot of extra stuff to do to get ready for that fun (not) time.

Let me tell you how the ice storm went down. School was canceled on the Tuesday. Colin also didn’t have to go to work. It’s rare that they close the college for weather. It certainly never happened the 4 years I was there! Colin woke up before I did because he had to find out if he had to go to work or not. Well, when I got out of bed awhile later, he said we had no internet or cable. I was okay with that. I thought it might come back a little later and at least we could still watch DVD’s. (I’m Roswell obsessed right now. I got Season 1 for my birthday!) Anyway, around 12:00 that morning/afternoon, our power went off. I mean, it went off and stayed off. It was off from Tuesday until the next Thursday.

So in total, the power was out for 10 days. It seemed like the lights would never come back on. We have natural gas in our apartment, so we were able to cook on our stove top. We also used the burners for heat during the days until we got a kerosene heater on Saturday or Sunday of that first week. (We got the last heater by the way. Score!) Tuesday night was rough because it was so dark. I didn’t have many candles around the apartment, so I could hardly see anything. We only had one flashlight too, and it wasn’t the greatest either. On Wednesday, we drove to Hopkinsville and went to Wal-Mart, Big Lots, and the Dollar Store to get candles, batteries, flashlights, a cooler for food, etc. Candles and flashlights and batteries were wiped out!! We DID manage to get some candles and things though. We found some here and there. Wal-Mart had a pretty big collection of “Jesus candles.” You know, those tall religious themed candles. We got three of those not knowing how good they’d be. (They ended up not being that great.) Wal-Mart was limiting the amount of purchases. They still had power in Hopkinsville in most places, but the computer systems were totally messed up. We had to pay with a check or credit card in increments of $50. It was crazy. People everywhere. We got a cooler to keep on our balcony and bought hot dogs, bologna, bread, and things like that. It was so good to be in Wal-Mart because they had LIGHTS!!

We returned to Hopkinsville several more times to buy candles and food and things. NOTHING in Madisonville was open – no stores, no gas stations, no nothing! It really looked like a disaster zone out there. Like army tanks plowed down our trees or something. Katee ended up spending three nights with us. My parents live out in the middle of nowhere and do not have natural gas. It was way colder in their house. They had some very old kerosene heaters, but since they are so old they don’t give off much heat. We finally went to Nashville to look for a kerosene heater or generator (because every place around here was wiped out of everything like that). We found nothing in Nashville (except some candles which came in handy!!), and we ended up going to Bowling Green from Nashville to get a generator at the Home Depot. I found my kerosene heater at the Lowe’s there. My parents also wanted a heater, but they weren’t able to get one until three or four days later.

Going from store to store and not being able to find things we needed was so depressing. It really makes you stop and think about things you might take for granted. My hair was a mess because I had no way to flat iron my hair or fix my bangs. I felt like a total hobo. But… I had it a LOT better than some people who couldn’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars on candles like I did. People who couldn’t get a kerosene heater or didn’t have natural gas. My dad had to drive a school bus over to a church shelter that lost power so it could sit in the parking lot with the heat on so people could get on and sit and warm up. He had to drive people from a nursing home up to Indiana in a bus because they had no power. My parents had it really bad because they live out in the woods practically, and their road was COVERED in trees. It took them one whole day to cut their way out of there. It’s just unimaginable.

I bought hundreds of tea lights. I had a tin can that Girl Scout candy came in and I used it as a sort of candle holder. I could fit 16 tea lights inside the tin with the lid off, of course. Well, one night Colin and I were sitting on the couch. Colin said, “It looks brighter in the dining room for some reason.” Well, it was!! Those 16 tea lights caught fire!! There was this big flame rising up from the tin. I was freaked out. Colin did the first thing he thought to do which was dump a pitcher of water on the whole thing. (Not the best idea, but it did work.) A big puff of smoke went up from that. Another time, I had bought some stick on lights and stuck a couple on the back of the stove so we could see to cook. Well, the burners being on caused the stickyness to melt, so the light fell down into the burner and caught fire. I burned myself twice on oil lanterns. I will have a scar from one of the burns. No severe damage though.

We did go to my parents’ twice after they got their generator. We got to see some TV and that’s when I wrote the other blog post about what was going on. I felt totally cut off from the world! I’ve been without the internet before, but I was without internet, TV, radio, and the news! I had no idea what was going on out there in the world. Colin finally got his old mp3 player that has a radio to work so we could listen to the radio for the news.

So what did we do? Played board games, played our Nintendo DS’s until they died, read books, went out to buy supplies and whatnot. I went to a teacher store to get some books to plan things with. (No power and I’m still obsessed with teacher stores!) Colin’s portable DVD player had 2 hours on it, so we watched episodes of the first Survivor until it died. (We couldn’t watch Roswell because it was stuck in our DVD player!!) When the college power came back on, Colin got a couple of laptops from there and we watched DVD’s on the laptop. (Oh, and Colin took our DVD player and we finally got our Roswell DVD out of it. Hooray!)

I know I am going on and on, but so much happened and it was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I hope it never happens again. My town was declared a federal disaster area. It’s going to look pretty rough around here for a long time. So many trees have been destroyed. The evergreen trees are so bent over from ice, I don’t know if they will ever straighten back up. Branches are still piled everywhere. It is unbelievable. I have lots more pictures on my Flickr account.

Going back to school was tough. We went back on a Thursday (which was the 100th day of school), and then Friday was the Valentine party. We don’t know yet how many days we’ll have to make up. Right now it seems like we’ll be in school all summer. I don’t think they are taking our Spring Break away thank goodness. I’ve just been so absorbed in school that once again, my blog has been neglected. I really want to blog more, but how can I find energy to do it?? I wonder….

I realize this post is kind of disjointed. I skip around here and there to things, but it’s really hard to put it all into words. It was the worst ice storm Kentucky has ever had! The rumor is that in March we are supposed to get another ice storm that will be worse than this one. I sure hope we don’t!!

First, my grandmother found out she has breast cancer. She is probably going to have to have her right breast removed. Hopefully that’ll take care of everything, but I don’t know when she’s going to be having the surgery.

Secondly, Freebie is no longer with us. It’s a miracle he lasted through the ice storm. He was not happy with no light in his tank and being in the dark. His tank got a little grungy during that time. He had a good life though. He wasn’t like swelled up and in pain or anything. He just died a normal fish death I guess. He will be missed.