the night the world almost ended

i don't know if you've heard about friday night's storm in virginia (you may have because of this), but it really threw off my life these past 5 days.

on friday night, i was closing the registers at work when the power started flickering. it went out like 7 times before i could get everything wrapped up for the night and we could leave. as we were walking out, we noticed how many people were still in the mall.. sitting in huddles, mostly in hallways. it didn't sound like it was raining, so i asked someone i semi-knew, and they said it was really windy? like.. ok. windy. so the part-time employee that was with me, jordan, and i carried on our merry way to the doors so that we could leave. a security guard had to help me open the door because the wind was pushing so hard (should've been a sign..). come to find out, the security guards weren't supposed to let anyone leave the mall at all that night (until after the storm). but he HELPED us out. :( cool, dude.

it WAS windy, but i have this thing where i'd prefer to be headed home and get hurt than sitting somewhere waiting something out and get hurt. does that make sense? whatever. i got turned around about 8 times trying to get out of the mall area, because so many trees had fallen, and firetrucks had completely blocked intersections. this probably should've deterred me, but i mean.. i wanted to get home. i didn't pass a single traffic light that was still on, i saw torn and bent signs on the interstate (torn metal signs?!?!!??!), i saw a traffic light fall on a car, i saw power lines and trees fall right before i would've been up under them, and there are lil scratches on both sides of my car where i had to come right up next to fallen branches in order to pass through somewhere. i even had to drive in people's yards to get home at one point.

once i got home, there was a dark street, and this:

easily the best goodwill purchase to date.. it's the only reason we had any light!

scaredest, sweatiest, brattiest girl right thurr

we had no idea how long the outage would last or who had power (both of our phones were dead, too). our house was already in the 100s temperature-wise, and i was still shaky about my trip home, so we turned in early.

the next day, i opened at work and found out that the power outage seemed to have hit about half of our town. some people's flickered, others lost power for a couple of hours, and others, like us, were hearing things like 4-6 days until power comes back up. complete and total first world problem, but this is the hottest it's been in virginia for years.. and we live in the upstairs portion of our house. we ended up pulling our roommate's mattress into the tiny downstairs foyer we walk into (it seemed to be about 20 degrees cooler) and hung out down there when it got too dark, which made life more bareable.

we spent a lot of time the past 4 days (mostly 100 degree weather + virginia humidity) on our front porch, reading books day and night:

you guys - the misery is actually not posed. ;)

anyway, i started my new job on monday, unable to shower (hence the bandanna.. that has become a staple, ugh). BUT!!!!

today, austin texted me to let me know that the power had returned. my house feels like pure luxury. like i feel spoiled now. it's awesome. i got home pretty late, and my downstairs neighbor said, "please go inside and feel how heavenly it is." haha! needless to say, we're super appreciative of how quickly the power companies worked.

the only thing i'm still a little bitter about is how much food we're having to throw away and how much money i've spent on cold drinks/warm food this week. but now i know how much worse it could be.

i'm worried this storm is not a one-off happening, and we'll see another this summer. this was a pretty big lesson to me, so i think i'll handle it better, but i hope next time i don't have to drive through it..

<3