Spring is certainly coming in like a Lion!  We haven't even made it to the official first day of Spring, but we are getting a taste with a lovely Nor'Easter. We were warned that the wind would be very strong and to expect power outages. I woke up around 3am on Friday morning to the sound of the creaking house and howling windows.  Cookie was not a happy camper. Also the power was flickering. It managed to stay on though, so I had a cup of coffee and caught the morning show early  since I am off on Fridays and Cookie and I could not sleep. I did however have an appointment that afternoon to tour a new Assisted Living facility for my mom.

Turns out Mom B decided to walk out of her facility on Tuesday that week which got her a Fast Pass to the locked unit in her building. I was not very happy to hear that. They put her up with another resident since they did not have any open apartments. Also not happy to hear that. The locked unit worked fine for my Dad-he really had no concept of what was going on. But Mom still participates in many activities, including outings and trips, so I really don't want her world to be limited on a locked unit. Not to mention most of the other residents on the locked unit need more assistance, or wander in and out of the rooms, or take items out of the rooms. So now I am left with having to move Mom out of her large, 2 room apt and pack up all her belongings. And look for another facility to that allows for more freedom with safety so she can't wander out. Great.

So on Friday afternoon I spent all my time visiting two facilities and speaking to the Marketing reps. One facility reported being secure, but that only meant at night. It also had a locked unit like the one Mom is staying on, so never mind that place. But I liked their apartments and it was close to home. The next facility was beautiful, but very expensive and farther away and I hated their apartments. And it had a locked unit too, but it was quite large. I was just amazed that this brand new facility had design issues. The strong wind outside was blowing open their doors that lead out to the balcony. They actually had to prop heavy trash cans in front of them to keep them shut. So I did not make much headway all afternoon and I came home to find that our power was out.

Scott was home for the day. They had cancelled school since they figured it was going to be a bad storm. And it was. We did not have much snow or ice, but a lot of trees and branches came down all over Baltimore and power was out for nearly 400,000 homes and businesses. It got dark pretty quick, so Scott and I pulled out the lanterns and flashlights. Mom had power at her place, and so did Allison at school. Not that it mattered, as she was off to New Jersey for a frisbee tournament.

Besides dark and still very windy, it was quite cold. Scott and I kept warm with our gas fireplace. Other neighbors headed to hotels. We decided to head out to dinner and were surprised to see all the businesses and street lights out on our main road, Rt 40. So we went to dinner near Gma's place at the mall since they had power. Afterwards, we tried to see a movie-The Black Panther. Again, sold out. So we headed home to sit in the dark. Scott had gotten most of his homework done in the morning and was able to send it via email on his phone to his teachers. He decided to entertain me by introducing me to a few video games on his cell phone. That is how desperate we were for entertainment! He pulled out his Nintendo switch control which you hold in one or two hands and he  showed me how to play Tetris(which I always hated and suck at-nothing changed). And then he introduced me to Mario Kart. Mostly he beat me, but I did manage to beat him on the last game while dodging buses with my Mario Kart! It made for a terribly funny end to a long day!

Meanwhile, Tom was supposed to be coming home from his business trip to Scotland. Wouldn't you know, Europe had the biggest snow storm they'd seen in 10 years! Scotland was snowed under. Tom said none of the buses or trains could run. He had to walk everywhere. And his flight was delayed by 1 day. No matter-we had lots of cancelled flights here in Maryland. So he made it home on Saturday night instead of Friday. He had hoped our power would have come on by then. Not likely. Scott and I were out and about on Saturday assessing the damage. Whole trees came down bringing whole telephone poles with them in our neighborhood, so we figured it would be awhile before we got up and running again.

I borrowed Scott on Saturday and we picked up coffee and plastic containers at Target and headed to my Mom's place to start the packing. Of course we ran into half of our neighborhood in one of the few places with power and stopped to chat a bit before going to see my mom. Scott and I managed to get quite a bit of packing done and then took mom out to lunch. Afterwards we spent a few more hours packing and hauled a few things out to the car and then dropped it off at her storage unit. On Sunday, Tom pulled out our generator and got it running for the fridges and one power strip for a lamp and to charge our phones. Also we have been practicing using our portable chargers for our cell phones. The chargers have been coming in handy. I also took advantage of the hot showers at the Y. And naturally I ran into most of our neighborhood. I spent some time catching up with the neighbors while drying my hair on the status of our power outage, and even ran into a few people I haven't seen for many years. I skipped my Girl Scout choir practice and headed over to pack up some more of mom's items. Plus move a few items into her temporary room, like clothes. I took her to church in the afternoon-just in time for the return of their power! And then we went out to dinner at Boston Market. Tom was visiting the library to get his homework done for his new class since our power was still out, and Scott finally made reservations to go see The Black Panther with his friend from school. After all that, he did not like the film.

So I was getting behind in laundry and dishes since I could not run anything with the power outage. I also had the added bonus of finding a leak under our kitchen sink during the week. Turns out Tom installed a filter for our garbage disposal with an easy access pipe connection. And the connection decided to come apart and leak under the kitchen sink. Long enough to fill up a drip tray that Tom conveniently left under the sink in case it leaked. I knew I kept hearing water dripping, but thought it was the coffee maker. No. So Tom also spent Saturday refitting the plumbing. However, it did not really matter since I could not run the dishwasher.

What a lovely week I had.