Fun in the H crib

It all started with a lightning storm earlier this week. The power was out for a good bit of Tuesday morning. Yesterday it rained cats and dogs again.


Yes, that's standing water. My black croc floated about like a wee, unfashionable dinghy.


So I took a couple of pics of Freida since she got left out of the last photo shoot due to a sudden case of distemper.

But that photo shoot was cut short by the loudest lightning I've heard in a long time. My ears rang and I had a headache for the rest of the day. Later I saw half a dozen firemen all over and in and around my neighbor's house. Apparently the tree in her backyard (directly behind my house) was struck, leaving the following burn mark where its root had singed the grass:


Yes, it was that close and yes, the power went out for quite a while. It came back on for a bit and then went out yet again in the evening. Slumber was fitful for myself and Thing 4. When we finally got into deep sleep, our house-wide fire alarm system went hellishly bonkers at 5am. We all (save only Tag who, disturbingly, slept through the whole thing) leaped from our beds, found no smoke or other evidence of fire, and then proceeded to cover our ears and scramble about madly, trying to find the problem. Nothing can describe that most heinous racket. My ears still hurt and I hear screechy beeps in every white noise in the house. To make a long, tedious, nauseatingly annoying story shorter, it took almost 12 hours, three batteries, two visits from maintenance, three phone calls to the main office, and much gnashing of teeth to get the situation taken care of. It turns out that a battery was low from all of the power outages and the one smoke alarm was malfunctioning, possibly from the lightning strike which also fried our modem. The upside is, we are now getting our AC fixed. So glad to know that the unit, while adequate, was malfunctioning and shall be made right.

We also had a delightful visit with incoming friends who needed a place to crash that contained both chairs and laundry equipment. We tried some Zumba (at which I officially suck as my feet are not the happy sort), grilled beef franks and veggies, laughed, and beat each other at Mario Kart. Thank you, H2 clan, for brightening our day.