To the future!

We got some happy news the night before last - no, no baby yet - but James got the official word that he passed the NYS bar exam! Of course most of us had no doubt that this would be the outcome, but we are super proud of him nonetheless, and it is a huge relief to know for sure that he (we all) won't have to go through that whole bar prep/testing stress again...especially not during the first few months of our new baby's life, which is already going to include a major move (our return to NYC in a month or two).

Leave it to the kids to keep things in perspective, though: when James gleefully told them that he passed, Cadence said "so does this mean you have a job?!"

...

Well, no, Cadie B, it doesn't...but it's still a really good thing and a step in the right direction!

We decided to celebrate anyway...Alas, the little bit of celebratory champagne I had did not encourage baby's arrival, as was rumored. C'est la vie.

We remain on baby watch as I continue to be pregnant-now at 39 weeks, 5 days...I can't really complain about that since technically I'm not even full term, but my last two came completely naturally at 39 weeks and 39 weeks 2 days, so it feels strangely long...though I know it really isn't. I actually don't think I would care so much about the timing under normal circumstances, but since mom has to return to the south next week for her surgery, I'm quite anxious for baby to get here so they have a chance to spend some quality time together before she leaves.

Contrary to my feelings during the storm when I was avoiding anything that might trigger labor, I'm now actively avoiding anything that might, well, avoid it. Instead of taking it easy and letting myself be cautious, I've been wearing my (very low) heeled boots and walking around downtown dc carrying my giant backpack and Hazel, enjoying spicy meals, dance parties with the kids, lifting stuff, chasing cats under furniture...and so far, nuthin'.

I'm half convinced this kid wants to be a thanksgiving baby.

Sigh.

But in the meantime, we are trying to make the most of this waiting game, and are thinking a lot about our friends who are still struggling with the effects of Sandy...many are still without power, heat, hot water, and many are still unable to get access to their homes - some are even facing total loss of their homes from damage that amounts to the need for condemnation - so I really do feel amazingly lucky and I don't mean to take what we have for granted or complain about our relatively very cushy situation...

Here's to the future! Jobs! Babies! Homes! Quick & painless recoveries, FOR ALL!!!

Frankenstorm: we did something right!

Just a teensy note to correct a sentiment I expressed here about the makeshift window sealing job we did-and then ridiculed-yesterday...guess it actually did some good and I shouldn't be so flippant about it.

The building sent the maintence team through early this morning to asses & begin fixing any damage...evidently lots of apartments had similar problems with the windows on that side of the building, and most of them had much worse damage than our own. We had some soggy towels to launder and a bit of damp paint around the window, but that's about it...evidently many of our neighbors weren't so lucky and had extensive damage to their walls & carpets. We've heard the watervavs going all morning, and lots of sounds of furniture being moved.

Counting ourselves lucky (again!) and feeling glad that we took the precautions we did, even if we thought they were silly and inadequate at the time.

Frankenstorm: hurricane, baby!

Well, we made it through the night!

Actually it weren't no thang...mom, James and I stayed up til like midnight watching the storm, then (after several friends helped us figure out that the blue sphere thingies were probably an electrical substation exploding-awful!) put on an episode of Dr Who and by the time it was done, the winds had died down considerably. I still couldn't sleep, but there were no more major weather events that took our attention.

I wish I could say the same for our beloved NYC and all of our friends there. It sounds like a bit of a nightmare scenario out there right now, at least for some folks. One of the scariest things this morning is the relative radio silence...after many hours of constant info pouring out of the area via social media, checking this morning and only seeing updates from 3 NYC folks (and all with dire news) was a bit disheartening. As we get farther into the power outages and people's phones are dying, I hope that everyone is able to reach those they need and that everyone stays safe. Here's to a speedy recovery/cleanup for all!!

As for us, we're cautiously reverting from hurricane watch mode back to baby watch mode. Sunday, as the pressures began to change, I could feel how easy it would be to accidentally set off labor - every little thing I did would set off contractions...being unsure of the severity of the impending storm and not knowing if my midwives would be able to safely make it to me in the midst of it, I took it super easy and went out of my way to avoid any potential triggers. Yesterday, when the storm was at its worst, I had pretty frequent but super irregular contractions all day, and towards the evening they got very consistent for an hour or so, and i started getting the brain-scatteredness that comes with labor...but then the contractions lessened back to irregular and mild, and though they're still occasionally popping up this morning, they don't seem to be part of anything larger.

My still scattered and hormonal brain is worried that I somehow "missed" something I was supposed to take advantage of for an easy labor, but I know that isn't rational...trying to let it go, and we'll have fun today finishing our Halloween crafts before the holiday tomorrow!!!

Today's plan: sock puppet bats!! Footprint ghosts!! Maybe even handprint cats...

Frankenstorm: What the...

So, we're a tad freaked right now...

Cadence opted to sleep in the "playhouse" (a giant walk-in closet in the interior of the apt...really probably the safest place to be right now) so James kept her company in there while I cuddled with Hazel on the couch.  (Hazel was going to sleep in the playhouse but got very angry when bedtime came and ended up wanting to be with me wherever I was, so we settled in on the couch while mom sat next to us...

So, laying there in the semi-dark I start to see lightening...but it's odd, it's remarkably blue.  After several flashes I remarked to mom that it was quite the lightening, and she agreed, but it wasn't until a few minutes later, after James and I decided (based on how much the balcony door -which is pretty well protected by the terrace walls and not even on the side of the building that's taking the brunt of the storm - was shaking and straining) to close off the room with the leaky window (wind and rain coming through the glass...not terrible, but that is the window that's facing the hardest hit side of the house, and if the winds are going to continue to increase as they say, it's not one I want to rely on... ) and had herded the cats out of there and shut the door (SACRILEGE!) and James, mom and I were all back in the living room when we saw it for what it actually was...

"What the hell was that?"

So, I don't *think* it's lightening...it was a giant, bright blue sphere that appeared (as if blooming) on the horizon (at ground level) and flashed so bright it lit up the entire sky just as lightening does, and then retreated into itself and disappeared, as if closing up.  What. The. Crap.

I saw it first, and had just enough time to explain what it was before James was on his feet, seeing it for himself as it happened again behind my back, and then Mom was up too, and we all watched a third burst...it didn't happen again in a brief time and I realized that when I had been laying on the couch and noticed the blue quality of the "lightening" I was seeing, I had noted that it seemed like it was coming in waves...several (maybe three?  I wasn't really paying attention!) 'bolts' in a row, then nothing...

I have my camera at the ready now, so if I see it again I'm gonna grab it and try to record it...but that's probably a guarantee that it won't come back.  Does anyone have any clue as to what that could have been?  It was unlike any lightening I've ever seen (and I have seen ball lightening before), and it was originating from the exact same spot every time...I wouldn't call it a UFO 'cause, as I said, it seemed to be originating from the ground (or at least only slightly above it)...google did me no good, my searches only turned up UFO reports that didn't seem anything like what we saw...anyone else in the DC metro/MD area see this thing?  Anyone know what it is??

WEIRD.

Frankenstorm: Worrying about friends

Things are still relatively consistent/calm in our area...

James remarked a while ago that he was surprised to see people still driving around out there...and just a few minutes later the news started reporting that Maryland had its first storm-related fatality, and it was due to a car crash right here in our county.

Still, I feel pretty lucky, our little fam is doing just fine so far...the lights have flickered every now and again, and there are still scary gusts, but for the most part the winds aren't so bad as to take attention away from what's happening indoors, so that's good...

Checking facebook has been far scarier than anything that I have seen on the news, because soooo many of our friends - most of them back in NYC - have been posting real-time, real-life pictures, videos,  and reportings of things happening to them and around them.  Friends have posted about streets  being underwater, pics of water covering entire stairwells, submerged cars, downed trees, cranes dangling dangerously from high rise construction sites, entire facades of buildings tearing away, collapsing scaffolding, the east river flooding its banks and making an island of the carousel in DUMBO...The girls' school is right across the river from that carousel, actually, and seeing the extent of the flooding on the brooklyn side gives little hope that our stompin' grounds on the other side will be able to muddle through without taking a bit of a bath.

Stay safe, everyone, I hope that whatever damage happens is manageable and only to material things...Much love coming to you from a blustery DC...we're staying safe, listening to the wind rattle the balcony door...Despite our sealing, there is enough wind coming in that bedroom window to make the call to spend tonight on the other end of the house for sure, so its off to prep the kids for a campout-at-home.

Love love love to all!

EDITED TO ADD:
WTF, EXPLOSIONS, now?  seriously?  Hope most of you are bored senseless and not in imminent danger...

Frankenstorm: WAVES!!!

So we have a cute little terrace up here in our skyline abode, and usually speaking it stays remarkably dry in any rain, since there is an identical balcony above us which covers the same area.  The wind has to be blowing pretty hard for rain to get more than a few inches in on the edges...

Now the wind is blowing hard enough that the water is pretty horizontal , and our terrace (which also features drainage holes) is pretty well drenched.  So drenched, in fact, that I don't feel like I am exaggerating when I say "flooded"...especially given the fact that the wind is now causing WAVES to lap at the balcony door!!

OK fine, you can't really tell that its waves based on my poor point-and-shoot still photography...the lighter areas there are MOVING WATER.

The pond is also looking rather swollen  - I think the ducks have finally taken shelter...

Feel free to correct me if you can spot any ducks.

And one of the benches in our little park flipped over...

Reminds me of the sarcastic "never forget" meme of the overturned plastic chair...but this bench is significantly heavier.

Our bedroom window has leaked through our gerry-rigged sealing system and we're now considering just relocating the whole family to the other end of the house for the night...juuuuuust in case.
It's starting to get chilly in here...but the power's still on (for now) and that falafel smells divine!  DINNER!

Frankenstorm: Welcoming Sandy

Well, here we are about a year after our exciting little mini adventure with Hurricane Irene, living in a new city under very different circumstances, and we're right in the path of the "catastrophic" and "devastating" effects of another "historic" storm: hurricane Sandy, AKA Frankenstorm.
I figure-hey, we've already got the hurricane tag for posts here, and why not? Could be fun. Plus, it's kinda neat to see the similarities and differences in the storms and our reactions to them.

An opening recap of what'd gone down so far:

So we're in the dc metro area for this (hurricane + nor'easter + couple o' cold fronts from different angles =  megastorm), living on the 19th floor of a high rise building without much of anything else this tall around us.  There are trees everywhere (granted, all well below us) but nothing to shield our building from the winds this time around.

We've taken the usual precautions, stocking up on non-perishable food, filling every empty juice container we could get our hands on with potable water, filling (both!) bathtubs with water for flushing/cleaning should that become necessary... and, as with last year, we have obsessively checked the weather forecasts at various intervals to see what we're in for...and been pretty consistently told we're totally in for it (even the radar showed the big red spot headed straight for us!  Imminent danger! it'll be here within the hour and the power will be GONE!) ...and then there wasn't really much to speak of other than some cool lookin' clouds and drizzle.  Glad to keep the family safe, but kinda silly nonetheless.

I was supposed to have a community prenatal session this afternoon (wherein all the home-birthing moms due around the same time travel to the midwives' homes instead of the midwives coming to ours - a chance to meet other families within the home-birth community and an opportunity for discussion and education and all that good stuff), but given the weather, it was postponed until next week, and the midwives braved the morning storm to makes sure they checked in on every one of us before the worst of the storm hits.  Good news:  Baby and I are just fine! Yay.  So back to hurricane endurance.

Hazel's creations on the left,  Cadence's on the right.

So far, we've been spending our time hangin' out and having fun...the past few days we've spent doing Halloween crafts, which we continued today.  The kids have been VERY busy carving jack-o-lanterns, crafting ghosts out of cheesecloth (with sharpie-drawn faces!) and decorating foam pumpkin decorations with spooky-themed stickers.  This morning Mom helped them to hang their ghosts, pumpkins, and pumpkin wreaths up, and then they settled in for today's creation:  Jar-o-lanterns.  Basically, you take a mason jar, make a masking tape face on it, and then paint the whole thing orange. When you remove the tape and insert a light source...non - perishable jar-o-lantern.  They did a first coat of paint this am, and once they're dry we're planning to do one more coat before  removing the tape.

Spooooooooky!

As the wind and rain have been picking up, we did have our first "eek!" moment when James discovered that our bedroom window was leaking, but even that was pretty comical as we took our crafting skills towards sopping up the excess and creating a makeshift seal.  The wind is really hitting the building from that direction, so that's the area that is getting the brunt of it.  As such we decided to seal it as best we could, and then cover the sill in towels just in case, and close the blinds juuuust in case the window did happen to blow out.  And then we decided that we should move the bed out from under the window, too.  Which meant moving everything in the room, pretty much, which of course happened to be a mess.  So that was a silly little adventure, but was soon accomplished.

not that you can really see our hack, but the whole window well have been stuffed with paper towels, covered in duct tape, and then covered with cloth towels and the blinds (not pictured.)  The white on the horizon is just clouds, visibility is moderate at best right now.

 James and the kids are now in the kitchen, cookin' up some falafel...the winds are getting a bit more howl-y now, and the rain is holding steady...But, since there are still ducks chillin' in the (VERY swollen) pond outside, I think we're ok for the time being.

If you look closely at the center of the photo, you can see the little specs that are the ducks, I swear!

(iphone photography from 19 stories up through 50mph winds ain't easy.)

The big wet apple-still going strongish, sorta

Somehow the winds have been slowly picking up as the day has gone on, and now they are pretty sustained and strong. Evidently a separate tropical storm warning was issued this afternoon because it is so strong. I've tried several times to get a good picture of the trees blowing and bending in the wind, but it's remarkably difficult to capture (on an iPhone). Here are a couple shots to show you what a rainless tropical storm looks like:

Can you see how much it's leaning? (no? sorry, my photography sucks.)

Can you tell it's blustery in this one? (Still no? Gah. How 'bout dramatic clouds?)

I got a text from Kelly a bit ago saying they'd just lost power at the farm from all the wind, so it seems we aren't the only ones feeling the post-storm winds. She'd reported earlier in the day that they'd weathered the storm with just a few downed trees and minimal flooding...then she sent me lots of pics of her covered in kittens. I don't think she's suffering too much.

The big wet apple makes lemonade (and tea!)

So what do you do when you've got gallons and gallons of water leftover after a non-storm? Well, the same thing you do when life hands you lemons...you make lemonade! (and tea.)

Step one: take a bunch of lemons (and one citrus fruit that can't decide if it's a lemon or a lime, added to the mix by our lovingly open minded 16 month old), wash 'em and cut them in half.

Step two: squeeze the lemon halves into the pitcher of water, then drop the rinds in.

Note: if you can have your 4 year old do it, it adds a spark of magic.

While the big girl is doing the grunt work, cover the Giant stock pot full of water and turn on the burner it's already sitting on.

Try to ignore the awful reflection on your awesome shiny stock pot, and return to lemon squeezing.

Once the lemons are all in, squeeze in some agave nectar under the theory that since its liquid it'll mix better.

Once your stock pot boils, add a whole bunch of teabags, and turn off the heat.

It'll turn into tea pretty quickly after that! Let it steep to your desired strength. Let it cool for iced tea!

Back to the lemonade: now its time to shake shake shake! You can enlist the little one to help with this job.

Of course, teamwork never hurts, either. But that's it, then serve & enjoy, with an emphasis on enjoy!

The big wet apple-maybe not so wet?

Good morning!
Hm, wasn't there supposed to be some kinda storm or something?

In case you can't tell through the wet window, that's...nothing. A few kids meandering down the sidewalk in shorts and t-shirts. Sigh. Guess we did all that prep for nuthin. Oh well, better safe than sorry.

I woke up around 7 and it seemed too quiet for a storm, and i was suspicious because the cats with all their good animal instincts were not at all worried and were doing their usual FEED US NOW routine, but I tried to imagine raging winds of nature earning some respect from these urbanites...and my phone kept chiming with warning texts from the city about flooding and road closures...alas, when I got up and peered out the window, I just saw a pretty standard wet morning, people milling about, no weather events at all. We stayed up for a couple hours after my last post, and evidently that one gust was kinda it, the worst it got. I don't even see leaves down from the trees.

So much for "the height of the storm" occurring between "8am and noon" as they said last night...our bathroom didn't even leak any more. (maybe it IS the neighbors, after all?)

In other cute news, Hazel helped me feed the cats this morning, and managed to get wet cat food ON the cats...all in all, far more destructive than our experience of Irene.

So anyway, now to fried CSA eggs and rolls for breakfast, then the commencement of operation cool- the-freakin'-house-down!

The Big Wet Apple - let the games begin!

....AAAAAnd thar she blows! Hello Irene!

Not the worst thing ever at this point, but equaling the worst weather we've seen here for long enough for us to declare defeat and remove the last AC. Operation overheat-the-house step 7, complete.

Also, good Kentucky Bourbon as a nightcap, and we're out. See ya in the AM, hopefully!!
Stay safe, all!

The Big Wet Apple - sweet dreams

The girls are (finally) asleep, and the rain is occasionally looking more scary and going at a sort of an angle, but only in spurts and gusts, and then it dies right back down.

Operation overheat-the-house continues with step 6, close up all the windows before bedtime. Given the calm-ish demeanor of the current weather we haven't taken the bedroom AC out yet, so we'll still need to move to step 7 before long...

The Big Wet Apple - Hurricane Holiday

So, I'm staring at a tree across the street from our kitchen window, and it's standing completely still. NY1 is reporting power outages in queens and staten island, possibly some in brooklyn, too, and they say some places are already beginning to flood, but here there are still folks hanging out in the street, the rain steady, but not even as heavy as it was a couple weeks ago when we returned to the city after several months away and had to move back in in a thunderstorm...the leak in the bathroom has reduced to a few beads that drip occasionally, and according to the radar, we're being pommeled right now...but evidently we're in a weather bubble where not much is happening. So, what have we been up to instead?

Why, baking cookies with the girls, of course! Operation overheat-the-house step 5, complete.

Anyway, here's a look out our window. not much to see, yet:

The big wet apple- the heat rises

Dinner time!
Made some sautéed greens (fresh from Channery Hill Farm where Kelly is interning) and paired it with some fresh mini penne that Hazel picked out...Operation overheat-the-house step 4 complete!

In other news, the rain picked up a tad, and now mr. WeatherDude is saying there is a tornado watch...and that the eye of Irene is tracking directly towards us...

Oo, look! Now the 'on location' reporter is berating some genius who's at the (closed) beach, surfing. Genius says "c'mon, it's a category 1, Come on out and surf!"
"are you for real??"
"yeah, its nothin'!"

Personal opinion; if you are told "DANGER GET OUT" and you CHOOSE not to, the first responders should not have an obligation to risk their lives to save your butt.

The big wet apple-disaster begins!

Oh look, it finally started to rain!

Wait, what's that?

Aha. So, that really sporadic leak the maintenance guy thought was from the upstairs neighbor's failure to use a shower curtain seems, in reality, to be A LEAK IN THE ROOF, trickling down several stories to drip from our bathroom doorframe. (we're on the second floor here, folks, how is this possible?!)

Well, wanting to minimize damage from a possible torrent when the storm actually hits (it's still a solid drizzle at the moment...), we've taken extreme leak collection measures:

Good thing we have two bathrooms, huh?

The Big Wet Apple - the calm before the storm

This morning, when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed after one of those cozy wonderful lazy mornings with the kids playing on and around us while we 'slept', the sky was a whitish grey, and the world seemed deadly calm. No leaves rustled in the trees on the street below, no birds, no vermin, no bugs...hardly any cars, and the few people who were on the street were all hurriedly carrying bags of groceries and exhibiting an excited calm. Looking out our living room window, we could see the ominous darkness approaching from beyond the empire state building like the nothing from the neverending story.

Watching hurricane Irene (a storm which, incidentally, shares its name with my maternal grandmother), we thought it might be fun to blog through this adventure as it happens! As long as we have power, we'll try to check in whenever we notice something noteworthy. To play catchup:

Morning:

Still dead calm outside, we begin to hear a far-off voice, seemingly amplified, drawing ever nearer...turns out it was a prostlytizer, preaching about the dark times and the guidance christ would give us through the quite literal storm. Wandering around on foot with some sort of microphone under his giant black umbrella, spreading his word to the empty streets. It somehow managed to be simultaneously eerie, pitiful, and cute.

We turned on NY1 to check in on the latest...the reporter standing at the south ferry began getting pelted with rain, so it was off to throw everyone in the shower one last time before the storm hit. Everyone clean and dry, the rain came...and then left.

Watching the news, the con ed rep made the rather amusing statement that it snows all year round in NYC. Huh, I didn't know that!

Cadence is concerned by the language they use to describe the storm, and keeps asking us why we're gonna "get hit."

Found some more containers fit for holding potable water, and decided to take advantage...we've been boiling & bottling/jarring water for just-in-case storage instead of buying jugs of it. Operation overheat-the-house step one complete.

Speaking of water, time to fill up the tub with water - not to drink, but to have on hand for such things as toilet flushing or washing things, should such a need arise. Uh oh, our bathroom drain doesn't work...DIY bathroom plug to the rescue! James sealed the drain with duct tape, and then I found an old silicone shoe insert, covered the drain with that, placed a washcloth over that and topped it all off with a mug. Seems to work pretty well!

Afternoon:

It doesn't feel very hurricane-y around here. Only the lightest of breezes, the pigeons came out again, no rain, still cloudy, but the streets are full of foot traffic. No buses, though, which is odd...the MTA officially shut down all public transit at noon.

Oh! the MTA did do one thing I was actually proud of, though...they suspended fares for the last trains in evacuation areas (meaning people could ride for free) and allowed passengers to take pets with them (this is usually heavily restricted). Go MTA! Showing a human side!

James roasted the chicken we got from our CSA earlier this week. Smells AMAZING in here. Operation overheat-the-house step 2 complete.

Fresh baked bread? mmm, awesome! Operation overheat-the-house step 3 complete.

Really decadent hot-from-the-oven roast-chicken sandwiches with farm-fresh greens & tomatoes on bread fresh out of the oven for lunch? Not very hunker-down-adventure-like, but awesome. And tasty.

Cadence is now worried that we're not gonna get hit after all.

We'll check back in soon! Love to you all!