Wet blanket

I thought I was fine with being alone in the dark, but I was feeling pretty crap about it when I went to sleep last night.

Thousands of people lost power in my suburb yesterday, after two huge trees fell and took the power lines with them during a cyclonic storm.

My ex took the kids to his place and I bunkered down.

It felt novel at first to read a book by candlelight, with no electricity or hot water and limited mobile phone coverage.

When various people kindly offered me a bed or a hot shower, I turned them down. I said I’d be fine.

But as I crawled into bed, I decided it sucked to deal with it on my own.

I felt quite sorry for myself.

The rain arrived in Sydney with full force on Friday, which was both a blessing and a curse.

I was so thrilled to see the city and surrounds finally get a good drenching, but I wasn’t stoked to be heading to Twilight at Taronga to see Pete Murray in the torrential downpour.

I kept checking the event’s Facebook page throughout the afternoon as the weather got wilder and wilder … and the official word remained that the event was still proceeding. People were becoming more and more irate in the comments section.

Finally, in the late afternoon, word came through that it was off … and, of course, the skies immediately cleared. Since we were geared up for a night out, we headed to a local Lebanese restaurant for dinner instead, with the couple who were joining us at the Pete gig and had a lovely night eating dippy things and shawarma.

Unfortunately, DD is away on a business trip for the rescheduled gig, so we need to decide what to do about our tickets.

In light of the crazy weather, I also cancelled my morning walk with my local buddies on Saturday morning and suggested we have breakfast together at a local cafe instead. And then the morning dawned bright and rain free, but we proceeded with our cafe plans and had a fabulous chinwag, as I’d missed the previous weekend’s walk due to Red Hot Summer in Port Macquarie.

Afterwards, I took the dogs for a walk to make the most of the break in the weather … and halfway through the 45-minute amble, the rain came gouting down. My pampered pooches refused to walk another step and lay down on the ground like drowned rats. I tried forcibly dragging them along, but they were having none of it.

A neighbour drove past and didn’t have room in his car for us, sad face, but loaned me a golf umbrella … and so I found myself struggling up hill and down dale for the next 25 minutes, juggling two four kilo dogs and a huge umbrella in my arms.

I tried to get the little bastards to walk under the umbrella, but they refused to co-operate. I found the situation hilarious at first … and started laughing out loud about the ridiculousness of it all. But it didn’t seem quite so funny after 20 minutes of struggle with two squirming, soggy dogs. Eight kilos was feeling pretty damn heavy by the time I made it back home again.

I decided to battle through the rain to DD’s for dinner on Saturday night, as his cousin was making Curtis Stone lamb chops. I arranged a dog sitter at home as I didn’t fancy facing a dark and stormy drive home.

Sunday morning dawned to cyclonic rain and I made it home just before two roads on my journey were cut by flooding, past a nasty car crash and cascading temporary waterfalls down rocky outcrops.

Getting into the gym for my 8am pump class wasn’t much better, the whole reception area and carpark were flooded as well.

Squelch, squelch.,

And then we lost power on Sunday arvo, so that’s where I’ll leave this blog post as I need to conserve battery.

There’s still no power this morning and Ausgrid has no idea when it will be fixed.

Hope all is ok around your way.