The Perfect Storm

In the summer of 2011, the day before Hurricane Irene was scheduled to hit the Northeast, I was on the Massachusetts/New Hampshire state line taking a riding lesson.  It was a gorgeous, dry, summer morning and it was difficult to imagine that in just a matter of hours a massive storm was headed our way.  Still, I headed all warnings - I stocked up at the grocery store on my way back into town, I made sure my Jeep was filled with gas.  I carried in all of my plants from my back porch, turning my kitchen into a sort of green house, I stacked my porch furniture up against my building as best I could.  I filled buckets with water, I had flashlights at the ready.  And then...nothing really happened.

Because of that lack-luster storm it was initially hard to take impending storm Sandy all that seriously.  I went up to Maine on Saturday, and as I drove along the highway on a gorgeously warm and lovely late fall day, it seemed nonsensical that in a mere 48 hours or so the weather could change so dramatically.  Oh, but that's the thing about mother nature isn't it?

Sunday morning, as I sat at the kitchen table in my friend's old Maine farmhouse, sipping coffee with our group - the majority of whom live in Boston or Connecticut - our chatter turned to Sandy.  Reading updates aloud from our phones, hearing about schools that were already cancelled for Monday, well...all things Sandy began to feel a bit more serious.  When I initially left Maine, making my way back to Boston, people and things still seemed rather calm.  However, the closer I got to the city, the more ominous things felt.  The grocery store near my house was busier than I've ever seen it, with bread, batteries, and water flying off the shelves.  Determined to get a run in before the storm arrived, (I know, I barely recognize myself these days with the running...) I headed out yesterday evening in the mist and damp.  As I made my way through the streets around my neighborhood, I watching people tying their trashcans to fences, families bringing in their children's bikes and lawn toys.  And I have to admit, there's been a strange sense of impending excitement and thrill in the air, the sort of electric energy that flows through people anytime Mother Nature decides to throw out one of her curve-balls.

I've once again stacked and secured my porch furniture as best I am able.  Though I've been lucky enough to have never lost power in my apartment, (yet) I do have candles and flashlights at the ready.  My company has closed the Boston office today in anticipation of the storm, so I am home, tucked away in this little one bedroom apartment of mine, for the foreseeable future.  It's grey and windy as I type, with a misting chilly rain.  According to all of the reports I've been following the worst is yet to arrive.  So now, as ready as we can be, we wait.