Big Storm

Quinn left straight from work on Friday to head down to Portsmouth. It’s a 2 part mission… part 1 is to check out the reported standing water underneath River Shore, and part 2 is to go surfing this weekend! As of yesterday, I’d have expected that to be the big news for the weekend, but that was before last night’s nature performance.

The kids and I just hung out during the daytime. It was a SUPER hot sunny day, with a heat index well above 100º. After I put them in bed in the evening, I happened to check the weather, to see if it might rain (so I could shut the screened-in porch windows) Well, I’m glad I did. There were 3 warnings about severe thunderstorms! A massive system was moving towards us at 65 mph, full of high winds and golfball sized hail. It was about 11pm when I checked, and the warning expired at midnight. That left an hour for this reputed behemoth to hit us and be gone. I went out to the front porch to see how the air felt, and it wasn’t any different than it had been all day… a thick heavy blanket of hot humid air. No wind, no feeling of impending storm. I went around and shut all the porch windows, then headed upstairs. I figured I’d just read in bed til midnight, wait it out, then go to sleep. About 5 minutes after I got settled in bed, book in hand, the wind picked up. And when I say “picked up”, what I really mean is that it felt like I was standing in front of a house-sized Vornado, and someone came and turned it directly from “Off” to “High.” It was amazing. One second, the night was still and quiet. The next minute, the trees were whipping around like pinwheels pointed straight up at the sky. At that point, it was all wind, and nothing else. No rain, no thunder, no lightning. VERY eerie.

About 2 minutes after that, the lights flickered and went out. About 15 seconds after that, the boys came tearing up the stairs in a panic. By now the wind was pretty intense, though still no thunder and lightning. With all the windy chaos outside, I decided that it was time for us all to “camp out” in the boys’ room in the basement for the duration of the storm. I told the boys to go back down to their beds, and that we’d be there soon. I went in and woke up Nomes (poor sleepy critter), and gently herded her down the 2 flights of stairs to the basement. I got the boys in their beds, and built a little sleeping spot for Naomi and me on the floor. Then we waited. I’d drawn a pitcher of water before the power went out, and we shared some. By this time, the lightning and thunder had arrived, and it was a crazy sight to see the trees whipping around in the wind, illuminated by the constant flashes of lightning. I wish I had a camera that could have caught it, and I hope to never see anything that violent again.

By then, it was probably 11:40 or so, and I tried to get the kids to settle in and go to sleep, despite the raging storm and strange sleeping accommodations. The boys’ room was pretty hot (no AC in the basement), and with no fans to move the air around, it was fairly unpleasant. Also unpleasant was Ben’s constant whining about how hot it was, and how he couldn’t sleep. :sigh: Not a peep of complaint from Nate or Nomes though.

About 15 - 20 minutes later, just as I was drifting off, we were woken up by the alarm system going off. I’m not sure how it managed that, because the power to the house still wasn’t back on. Maybe it’s got a battery backup, and a limb smacked a window. Who knows? It happened once more after that as well, maybe at around 1am. I didn’t check the time in either instance, just zombie-walked up to the front door, flipped down the control panel cover, and made it stop blaring out its useless cry.

The power came back on at some point while it was still dark outside, but I stayed camped out on the floor until I could see the light, since I didn’t want the kids to wake up and be worried that I wasn’t there. I finally headed up to my bed at 6am, and crashed out hard until 8:30am. So… all in all, I probably got 4-5 hours of sleep last night. Garçon! More coffee!!

There were a couple neat things outside this morning, aside from all of the branches and leaves on the ground. One was that I was looking out at the mess, and saw a deer up in the woods. It was a gorgeous buck, rubbing at the velvet on his antlers! He’s maybe a 4 point, but it was hard to tell since he was in the dappled shadows. The other cool thing is that a dead branch that had been hanging from a tree since last year’s hurricane FINALLY got knocked down, and now isn’t a concussion danger to anyone any more. ☺

For as vicious as the storm was, we got off almost completely unscathed. From the house, I can’t see a single tree that’s fallen. There are lots of small branches and leaves scattered around the lawn and driveway to clean up, but nothing sizable. I just found a link to an article about the storm. Pretty neat reading, especially since I’ve never even heard of a “derecho” before.

Our cable internet got knocked out at some point, and when I called the automated number, I got the recorded message that they were aware of an outage in my area and had technicians working on it. We’ll see how that goes!

Update: It took until this morning (Monday) at 10:30am for our Comcast service to resume. I can’t even put into words how infuriating that was. The electricity was off for a max of maybe 4 hours, but it took Comcast 2.5 DAYS to resume service? Ugh.

My lovely hallucination...

So I’m going about my business this morning, and suddenly notice a few little snowflakes in the air. My first thought was: “Huh! I don’t remember the forecast calling for snow today.” I checked again, and nope, no snow. The current condition was listed at Partly Cloudy, with a 0% chance of any precipitation today. The following 2 hours of beautiful snowfall were therefore a complete hallucination, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The temperature was warm enough that it melted as soon as it hit the ground, for the most part. By the very end, some of it was sticking, but now, only an hour after it stopped, it’s all melted away. It’s as though it never happened at all, which makes me even gladder that I took a few pics while it was falling. ☺ Up above, I circled the treehouse, in case it’s hard to spot. What a great day!

**You’ll have to right click on the picture, and click Open in New Window (or Tab) to see the whole panorama**

Calvert Cliffs Hike

Today the weather was glorious! After a week of grumbly crabby clouds, sudden showers, and downright unpleasantness, the skies turned happy again, with sunshine galore! We slept in, got up late, had last night’s pizza, and set about to having a nice lazy day. At around 3pm, we decided to head to the Calvert Cliffs Park to hike to the beach. You park in the lot, and follow the signs to the trail.

Then it’s a lovely 2 mile walk to the beach. The woods portion is beautiful, even with some really large trees down across the path. Hurricane Irene was *really* hard on this place. :/

After the woodsy part, there’s a large portion of the walk that’s all flooded marsh on the right side. The map labels it as the “beaver meadow”, so I guess that’s how it got all waterlogged, though we didn’t see any beavers. We *did* notice some tree stumps that had definitely been gnawed by the little guys though.

The kids had a really great time, with nearly no complaints or whining at all, which totally surprised me. The lone unhappy incident happened while we were at the beach part.

Nomes got herself soaked by a wavelet (while wearing a long sleeved shirt and sweatpants), and I made her come up away from the water and sit with me. Much whimpering and many tears ensued, but by the time we started back for the return journey to the car, Quinn had cheered her up by having her practice flying. How do you fly? Well, you just hold one feather in each hand, run really fast, and flap your arms as fast as you can. (duh!) It was a great visual. ☺

Here’s a panorama of the beach. Click the partial picture below to see the entire pano…

On the way back, we stopped at the tire park, which is right near the entrance to the trails, and let the kids run off the last of their steam. As you can see, Quinn had to rescue Nate from the ferocious dragon that guards the entrance to the park.

All in all, it was the perfect way to spend this crisp sunny fall day!

Hurricane Irate (err… Irene)

So, Irene sorta came to visit without an invitation.

Any of YOU are invited to come drop in on us without one, but we do wish that Irene had checked first to see if she was welcome (she wasn’t, for the record) We were up in PA from Friday evening until about 9pm Sunday evening, for my Grandpa Rice’s memorial service. He was an awesome man, and no amount of my typing would do him justice, so I won’t even begin to try. Suffice it to say that 2 days wasn’t enough to celebrate his life, but it’s what we had.

We were gone for Irene’s tantrum, but got back in time for the cleanup. Not knowing what to expect, I prepared myself for a totally obscured driveway, and 2 or 3 trees crashed into our roof at various points. Since the forest comes right up to the house, that wasn’t a crazy visual, by the way.

As it turned out, though, there were some pretty big branches across the driveway (draggable to the side), and some trees fallen over (away from the house) but we were remarkably fortunate to escape as unscathed as we were. Every tree that fell was pointing away from the house, and even the ones that are leaning are headed away.

After Quinn went to work today, the kids and I did too. Ben was my amazing right hand man. That kid did a full day’s work without a single complaint, and didn’t stop until I did. It might have been the bribe promised reward of pizza, or maybe he’s just getting more mature, but he was a real trooper today. We got the whole driveway cleared out and swept, and a good portion of the yard cleared of debris, before my blisters and back called a halt to the work. Nate and Naomi would have been great as just cheerleaders, but as workers, they left something to be desired. Aah well. ☺



There’s a lot left to be done, and many trees to be removed, but it was good to stretch out today and get a lot of the aftermath cleaned up by hand. I’m sure my opinion will change as the week goes on, but for now, I’m stubbornly pleased to have gotten so much accomplished with my own muscles. I’ll post pictures as the work progresses. ☺

First Day of School!

So today at a little before 8am, Ben (6th grade) stepped onto the middle school bus. Then at nearly 9am, Nate (3rd grade) and Naomi (kindergarten) were off to Dowell Elementary. When Quinn left for work, that left me…. All….. Alone. In the whole house! By MYSELF!!! I still haven’t processed it, actually. It’s the first time in over 11 years that I’m going to have the entire house, entirely to myself, for the entire day. The mind boggles. I told Quinn I was going to make carpet angels, and then pass out. As a side note: it’s amazing how many little noises there are here. I never heard them before, and now I do! I keep getting startled by the rustle of a paper, or the creak of a branch outside the windows. I LOVE IT! :D

Bowie and Annapolis day trip

So yesterday, Quinn signed up with Aerotek in Bowie (pronounced “boo-ee” - strange, eh?) to become a 6 month contract worker, after which he’ll transition over to Progeny! Yay! His official start date is tomorrow, so after we wrapped up the paperwork in Bowie, we headed over to Annapolis to celebrate with the kids. We parked pretty close to the dock, and had lunch at a place called Sugar Buns in the Kitchen.



VERY interesting place, super tiny and filled up with more brightly colored paint than any preschool I’ve ever seen. Yelp had varying ratings, from horrible to awesome, so I was curious which end of the spectrum we’d experience. Quinn ordered for me... I got the lobster roll sandwich. YUM! He got a portabella & onion sandwich, and Ben got the Mega-BLT (or something like that) It was basically 2 slices of bread, with 2 sandwiches-worth of B+L+T inside. It looked great! The littles got mac-n-cheese, which was about 1 cup of Kraft box mac-n-cheese, with a little bit of grated cheddar on top. So basically, the 3 “adult” meals were very good, but the kids stuff was totally meh. Quinn and I also shared a cup of crab bisque, which was phenomenal. The broth was thin, but very flavorful, with white wine. Yum! Quinn didn’t like that there were a lot of crab shells in it, but I didn’t care.

After lunch, we wandered down to the end of the dock and let the kids run around on the bricks while we lounged in the sun. What a lovely way to wrap up Quinn’s “summer vacation”! We strolled back towards the car, and stopped at a Starbucks on the way. All in all, we had 8 minutes left on the 2-hour meter when we got back in the van and headed south. What a great little visit!

Father's Day Saturday

We don’t usually need much of an excuse to go on a date night, so this whole “Father’s Day” thing was definitely more than enough reason to call our favorite babysitter, Jake. Ok, ok... here in Maryland, he’s our ONLY babysitter, so far. But it honestly wouldn’t matter. He’s awesome. The kids ALL love him, and he’s excruciatingly polite and impossible to rattle, at least from what I’ve seen. And you know what? When we get home, the dirty dishes are IN THE DISHWASHER! Amazing, eh?

So anyway, Jake did the Relay for Life Friday night. That means he ran for 12 hours, from 6pm -> 6am. He told me he went over 21 miles. Pause while we all think about that.
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Ok! So he slept in nice and late Saturday, and then Quinn went over and fetched him a little before 4pm. I’d plotted out the timing of our evening, which was a little different than usual, since Quinn wanted to watch the movie, THEN go get the dinner. That way, he says, you have something to talk about over food. Agreed, though I never seem to lack in the conversational department anyhoo. We went to see X-Men, First Class. It was funny, cause we’d *just* watched “Wanted” on Friday night. The star of both movies is James McAvoy, who neither of us had heard of (or seen) before. Another neat thing... in Wanted, he plays a shy geeky American, and in X-Men, he’s Professor X.... silver-spoon toting British guy. Sorta neat watching his entire demeanor (not to mention his accent!) change from one to the other. We liked the movie, but Emma Frost (January Jones) was totally horrid. They could have used a cardboard cutout of a person, and saved themselves a boatload of money. Aah well.


Anyhoo, after that, we headed over to the American Grille for our noshing delights. Their website is loaded with mouth-watering descriptions of their food, so by the time we got there, we were ready to be good little carnivores and tear in! Quinn tried one of their fancy beers to start with (the “Ten Fiddy”, in case you were curious), and I had a Planter’s Punch. We had calimari for our appetizer, and it was soooooo tasty! It was the lightest crispy breading we’d ever had, and the little squid-rings inside weren’t chewy at all. No rubberbands for us! Quinn got this amazing entree called the “Drunken Ribeye”, and if you ever get to the Grille, get it. Just.... get it. :drool: I went all high-class and got the petite filet mignon, but you know? Quinn’s was better. We were monumentally dumb, and ordered the “Chocolate Legend” for dessert. They should have called it the “Luscious Chocolate Monstrosity of Doom”, but I guess that would take up too much space on the menu.


Afterwards, I dropped Jake off at his house, and since we’d started our date so early, we weren’t even up ridiculously late! Yay for smartness! :D

On the road again...

So after Wednesday’s barftastic driving spree, I was absolutely dying to try the whole “take all 3 kids out in the van” thing again. Today’s goal was to get my passport application in, and maybe the kids’ too, so that we can get to Wolfe at some point this summer. First, we took Quinn to work, and then headed to WallyWorld. Nate & Nomes needed some new footwear, and we needed to stock up on Quinn’s Father’s Day goodies. I’d gotten him a GoPro HD, but ended up giving it to him early - we had been getting ready for the PA Warrior Dash the previous weekend, and he lamented that his GoPro wasn’t the HD model. It just wasn’t worth taking it, since the video quality wouldn’t be that great, with all the shaking and bouncing around. I got his new toy out of my secret stash, and gave it to him, but he ended up not taking it with us after all. (Clever way to make me give you presents early, honey!) Next present I’d gotten him was an ice crusher. Since our fridge here doesn’t have an ice maker/crusher attachment, we’ve been going old-school, and putting the ice into a gallon Ziploc bag and smashing it with a hammer. Fun, but not terribly effective. So mid-week, Quinn asked Ben to go down to the “mancave” to fetch his hammer (yet again), and I went back to my secret present stash again, and fetched gift #2! Now we can have classy crushed ice, not that ghetto stuff! ;)

So, having already given Big Gift #1, and Medium Gift #1, I really needed to restock on Friday. I didn’t want to get a ton of stuff, but it’s always nice to unwrap presents ON the day of the event. I let each kid pick out an orange shirt, and I scoured the food departments for anything orange, or wrapped in orange packaging. It was actually really fun. ☺ The kids loved helping me look for orange stuff, and they really liked that they got to pick out clothing. We ended up with a TON of treats, and although I went over budget a tiiiiiiiiiiiiny bit, it was worth it!

After scouring Walmart, we headed back across the bridge, and stopped to replenish our dwindling mai tai supplies. Then it was on to the post office, to get my passport application sent! Turns out, the Dowell post office is actually a rusty trailer out past the Annemarie Garden. It’s the craziest post office I’ve ever been in. The open interior space is maybe 4’ x 10’, max. I sent the kids to the back corner, where they informed me that there were a LOT of dead bugs. (thanks, guys)

Well, turns out that nothing’s easy, not even in the most derelict post office in the US. To apply for a passport, you must send your ORIGINAL birth certificate, marriage licence, etc off for processing (the nice man assured me that they mail them back to you) and since I needed those things to get my MD driver’s license, I didn’t want to ship them off for the passport. So guess what we did next! We hopped BACK in the van, drove BACK across the bridge, and sat in those comfy chairs at the DMV yet again! This time, with my marriage license in hand, I was able to get my MD driver’s license, after only a total of 45 minutes in the building. Keep in mind, it’s about a 20 minute drive each way, too!


After that, it was time to head back to the post office and surrender all my docs to the great churning bureaucratic machine and hope for the best. Side note: without going through the gnarly details, I decided not to bother getting the kids’ passports, as it would take 2 forests worth of lumber to generate enough paper to make it happen. And I just can’t have that on my conscience.

Final stop for the day: Food Lion! I’d waited to do that last, since I had some fridge items on my list. Plus, the kids had been SO good, I told them that they could each choose whatever lunch they wanted, and we’d buy it and make it when we got home. This is how Ben got chicken alfredo, Nate got cheeseburgers, and Nomes got pizza! I was feeling rather carnivorous, so I got steak. Noms!

I think it was about 2pm when we wrapped up lunch, and I tucked the Littles in for their naps. I just didn’t feel like treading (I felt like I had been on a treadmill all morning, actually), so I skipped it.

When it rains, it pours

This afternoon, I was at the computer and heard the squawking of the pileated woodpecker again through the open window to my right. I slowly looked right so as not to startle it, and after a bit of looking, I found him/her working for breakfast on a tree just inside the woods line. As I was smiling at the sight of the silly thing hammering away at the wood, I saw another one flap in, and start poking around! They seemed like they were in a family unit, because they were quite close to each other, yet didn’t spend any time in any kind of overt communication between themselves. So I’m enjoying the show when a THIRD one joined the first two! There they were, all 3 of them, tap-tap-tapping at tree branches and trunks, not even thirty feet away from me! They are such goofy birds! I had no idea until I watched this trio flutter-flapping from one spot to another. One of them even hung upside down, picking at something between his toes, while one of his ?siblings? landed on top of the same branch and bounced a little. They remind me a LOT of the Pixar short, for the birds.


I wish I’d been able to get a picture of their antics, but my camera’s just not that good, and I was afraid if I moved, they’d get spooked and fly off.

Awesome sighting! :)

Aloha "HI FIV" :(

Wednesday was a busy day. Yes indeedy. Besides being the first day of summer vacation for the boys, I had a ton of errands I needed to get done. Quinn took the van for his early morning workout, and I treaded at home and showered. He got back here to pick us up for a lunch date at the Chinese buffet near his work, and then my plan was to go to the MD DMV to get the van’s title/registration updated, get my MD license, and then hit up the Waldorf Costco, and head back down to fetch Quinn by 5pm. The morning was going along as planned, up until I got done showering, and noticed that Nomes was just lying like a limp little rag outside the bathroom door. When I checked her out, her forehead was far warmer than it should have been. Uh oh. :/ She said she felt fine, though in retrospect, THAT is when I should have given her a dose of ibuprofen. 20/20 hindsight, as usual.

Quinn got to the house, we all loaded up, and headed off to the New York Buffet (which, strangely, serves not pizza, but Chinese food) By the time we got to the restaurant, I could tell that Nomes was only getting warmer, so I gave her half of a 200mg pill, not sure if she needed 100 or 200, and not wanting to give her more than she was supposed to have. As it turned out, she’s up to 200mg now... which I will NOT forget again. We had an uneasy but tasty lunch, with Nomes only having some jello and a few cellophane noodles. After we were done, we headed to Loveville to get as much done at the DMV as possible. Just like I’d expected, there were lots of people waiting for their numbers to be called. I was able to get the van’s title & registration updated pretty quickly (and expensively!), but the wait to get to the driver’s license update lady was pretty rough. By this time, Nomes was NOT feeling well, and just sort of lay on my lap and snuggled Snowy. After 45 minutes of waiting for the 2nd lady, we finally got to go up to the chair, but turns out you need to have your marriage license if you’re transferring an out of state license to MD. I was pretty peeved, because that wasn’t mentioned on the website, and I’d brought every other thing that was needed. :sigh: Nothing to do but leave and come back another day.


Since we were 2/3 of the way to Costco, I really wanted to get that taken care of. I talked to Nomes, and she said that she’d be fine to rest in a shopping cart pushed by Ben, while I pushed the cart with all the groceries, so that’s what we did. What a sight we must have made, trundling around Costco... Me in front, coaching Nate not to run over my ankles, with Ben behind me, pushing poor Nomes. I’d spread out my hoodie on the bottom of the cart to give her a tiny bit of padding, and she lay there curled up, clutching Snowy, with her other hand on her barf bucket, just in case she needed it. I tell you, that was THE fastest Costco run I’ve ever done!

We headed out of there, and back down the highway, and by now, I was pretty sure Nomes was going to get sick. She was such a trooper, though and didn’t complain a bit. She kept a good hold on the bucket, and I kept my eyes on her in my rearview mirror. When she finally did get sick, it was sort of a relief. She’d kept such a death grip on the bucket, she didn’t make any mess at all - what a tough little girl! We got home, and I tucked her in to bed, and she crashed out for the rest of the day --> night, and didn’t wake up until about 9am the next day.