Survival skills of a tired mommy

We're sitting in the Starbucks parking lot in our car, borrowing their wi-fi.

I'm getting pelted by leather shoes, toddler size 8 from a Wee Ski who doesn't want to sit in the car. But this mama needs a break.

We had power for a sweet, sweet eight hours.

Eight, count it, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Eight blissful hours after being our for 144 hours on the farm.

In those eight hours, I deep cleaned and bleached two fridges, freezers, cleaned the bathrooms, ran four loads of wash, a load of week old cloth diapers, two loads of dishes, bleached the kitchen sink, tossed the food we lost from the fridges, made a tasty delicious dinner with roasted everything, celebrated our snow-packed-and-still-frozen-a-week-later meats and seafood, moved them to our sparkling clean and cold-again freezers, gave both boys baths, took showers, and climbed into bed to rest.

And then the lights turned off.

Again.

I am so grateful for how hard PSE has worked to restore power to hundreds of thousands of homes. I just wish that my intense wish for snow hadn't turned into a freak snowstorm turned ice storm turned windstorm over the course of a week.

Thomas reached for the remote this morning and when he realized it didn't work, he said, "mommy? Where's the powers? It's broken again! Are you kidding me?"

So we packed up our toothbrushes and headed early to St. Columban for Mass. They have running water, heat and a brief respite from the stress having a toddler and infant in a cold, dark, waterless house.

I prayed for grace, patience, and crazy fast response times from the crews, just one more time.

And then I looked at both my boys and thanked God that we were all in one piece, safe, and healthy, and with fresh baths from the night before.

It will be okay.

Especially after we get Zeus, our generator, wired into the house. :)