AAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

We were hit by a pretty nasty storm early Monday morning (described as a "derecho"--Google it) and I have been without power, and thus without internet, since then. I'm on borrowed time here at my mom's (the withdrawal symptoms were just about killing me......).The story so far--the power pole at the back corner of our property, which had a transformer on it, snapped in two. In fact, about a third of all the poles in the neighborhood snapped in two, and a good many of the others are leaning dangerously. Everyone has power lines down on their property, and everyone has damage to one degree or another. Thankfully, the service on our house itself is undamaged, so once the power is restored, we'll be in business. And Brad was able to procure a generator from Koehler, which we're using intermittently to do laundry, wash dishes, and take showers (we're also taking advantage of the showers at the YMCA, now that they are up & running again!). Brad repaired the electrical service on the homes of a couple of our neighbors, and got a good second hand snowblower in payment. That should come in handy this winter!I have loads of cool pics of the storm and its aftermath, and am currently taking pics of the progress as the repair crews work. But, since I'm unable to download pics from my camera to mom's computer without a lot of fuss, you'll have to wait until my computer is out of hibernation to see them. I think you'll enjoy them--I did not enjoy living through it, however. On the morning of the storm, I was home alone (Brad & Leo had gone to the Y), and was quite ill. Yes, I had stomach pain again.....I was just waiting for Brad to get home to take me to the ER (again). But before he got there, the power went out, the storm hit, and the whole time, I was sitting on the floor rocking back & forth, in horrible pain. It was awful. I was watching the trees bending in half, listening to the wind assault the house, and seeing the neighbor's trampoline blow over onto the fence. I kept hearing cracking & creaking wood, but didn't realize until it was over how much damage had been done. Once the rain let up some, I checked out the back door, and saw the power lines down. I opened the door just to get a clearer look (the door was fogged up) but I could hear that telltale "buzzing" of live power--so I very quickly shut the door & called it in. Then I went back to sitting on the floor, moaning & praying Brad would hurry up & get home. However, he had a tough time getting home, because of all the storm damage along the way.Well, I finally made it to the ER, which was powered by backup generators, got my drugs, and went home. Just a sidenote on that--one of my docs, Dr. Constantinou, is going to have me tested for a variety of genetic disorders (all rare and unusual, naturally) that might explain not only my pain, but a number of other symptoms, as well. We'll see how that goes....Back to the storm--today we finally have crews working to cut out the damaged trees & such from around the pole. They will have to do a lot of clearing in our case, and in the cases of all the others with broken or damaged poles, since they will have to be able to get their equipment back there to set new poles......I do not expect to have power restored for several days, at least. And with Mediacom, who knows when we'll get our cable back! I'll hope for the best. That's all for now--I'll post pics as soon as I can~!